comparison K20 Pro vs OnePlus 7

K20 is not a competitor of the OnePlus 7, but the K20 Pro is. Most of the specs on both these phones are similar, and the K20 Pro is also closer to the price of the OnePlus 7, so trust me this is the right comparison.

Let us start with the point that many of you are most concerned about, Price. Redmi K20 Pro starts at Rs.27,999 for 6GB RAM and 128GB Storage variant, and the OnePlus 7 starts at Rs.32,999 for the same amount of storage and RAM.

Which means there is a Rs.5000 difference between the base variants of both these phones. Both these phones also come with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of built in storage. Redmi is asking Rs.30,999 for that variant, where as OnePlus wants Rs.

37,999 for it. Which mens, there is an even wider price gap of 7000Rs. between these variants. Initially the K20 Pro was being sold in limited quantities, but now you can buy both these phones in an open sale.

So if you are someone, whose decision is solely going to be based on the price, Redmi K20 Pro seems to be the one for you. Next, lets talk about the Design and Build materials. With an all screen design and a pop up selfie camera, design of the K20 Pro has more in common with the much more expensive OnePlus 7 Pro.

It gets a metal frame, which is sandwiched by Gorilla Glass 5 at the front and back. Back glass has subtle curves to the edges, and depending on which colour you go for, there are these amazing patterns under the glass.

Due to this, K20 Pro is the most premium smartphone in the Redmi’s lineup. Subtle curves to the back and the Red accents around the camera and power button gives it a very premium and cool look. OnePlus 7 uses Gorilla Glass 6 to protect the display, while the back of the phone is protected by a curved Gorilla Glass 5 layer.

Other than the slightly upgraded camera module, OnePlus 7 look more or less similar like the OnePlus 6T, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There are certain elements of this design, which differentiates the OnePlus 7 from other phones with glass at the front and back, like the refined horizon line to the metal frame and the textured alert slider.

Design of both these phones look and feel really great in the hand. But be aware that since both of these have glass backs, they catch a lot of smudges and fingerprints, and there is a constant fear of the backs breaking if the phone falls, or gathering scratches with time.

You can obviously use cases to protect the phone, but I like to put these skins on the back from our sponsor Capes India. Which not only look really good, but they also protect the backs from scratches, and add a bit of grip to the phone, which reduced the chances of it slipping out of your hands.

Plus, you don’t have to constantly keep on wiping the back, to keep it clean. Head over to Capes India’s website from the link in the description, and use the code ‘tecworkz’ to get 10% discount on your order.

Now the OnePlus 7 is lighter of the two by about 9grams and it is also a bit thinner, but holding both of them in your hands, you wont even be able to tell the difference. As design is a personal choice it is difficult to pick one.

But for the overall in hand feel, if I had to choose I think the Redmi K20 Pro feels a bit more comfortable in my hands. Buttons and ports wise, Both the phones have power button on the right. K20 Pro has a red coloured power button, which I think adds a bit of personality to the phone.

Above that, it also has a volume up and down button on this side. OnePlus on the other hand has an alert slider above the power button. At the top, OnePlus 7 just as a noise cancelling microphone. While the K20 Pro gets a motorised pop up selfie camera with a notification LED, a noise cancelling microphone and 3.

5mm headphone jack at the top. There are no buttons or ports on the left side of the K20 Pro, but the OnePlus 7 has its volume buttons and the SIM tray on this side. At the bottom, both of them have a speaker grill on the right, a USB type C port for charging and data transfer, a microphone on the left, and the K20 Pro also has its SIM tray at the bottom.

SIM tray on both can take 2 nano SIM cards. And none of these phone have the option to expand the storage further via a microSD card. The Redmi K20 Pro offers you something that the OnePlus 7 doesn’t, a 3.

5mm headphone jack. This might not be a big deal for all, but for someone who likes to listen to their favourite music via wired earphones, this port is very important. None of them come with earphones in the box.

But with the K20 pro, you can use any existing pair of earphones that you might have lying around. For the OnePlus 7, you will either have to invest in a new pair of wireless or USB C earphones, or in a USB C to 3.

5mm audio jack adaptor. Audio via the headphone jack is loud and crisp on the K20 Pro. I tried using same earphones with the OnePlus 7 via a usb c to 3.5mm adaptor, and the output was not as impressive.

I think the K20 Pro gets louder, and delivers a cleaner sound. The story is a bit different when it comes to the speakers on these phones. K20 Pro has a single bottom firing speaker. It gets loud enough, but the stereo speaker setup on the OnePlus 7 comes on top by a big margin.

Moving on to the displays, OnePlus 7 comes with a slightly bigger 6.41inch Optic AMOLED display with a resolution of 2340×1080 pixels. It gets a small water drop style notch at the top for the front facing camera.

Redmi K20 Pro has a hair smaller 6.39inch Super AMOLED display with a similar resolution of 2340×1080 pixels. K20 Pro doesn’t have any kind of notch, it hides the front facing camera under this motorised popup mechanism.

Other than the top bezel, side and bottom bezels on both these phones are very thin, and pretty much the same. Both the phone support HDR10 playback, so if you have one of the higher priced Netflix plans, you can enjoy some of your favourite shows in HDR.

Speaking of watching videos, the overall viewing experience is much better on the Redmi K20 Pro, thanks to the bezel less display and no notch. On the OnePlus 7, the notch is easily visible if you stretch out the content to cover the full screen.

It is not very intrusive, but it is still there. Both of them also have their fingerprint sensors under the display. These fingerprint sensors are very refined, and they are fast to read your fingerprint and unlock the phone.

The one on the OnePlus 7 seems a bit faster, but it could also be that the speed of both is same, but the unlock animation is faster on the OnePlus 7. In either case, both the fingerprint sensors are fast and accurate.

K20 Pro has a low powered always on display, so its fingerprint sensor is always ready to unlock the phone, even if the phone has been sitting idle for a while. We don’t get always on display on the OnePlus 7, so you have to wake the display before the sensor can start reading your fingerprint.

It’s not a huge deal, but not having to do this on the K20 pro, feels a bit more convenient. There is a tiny earpiece speaker above the display on the K20 Pro, where as the earpiece speaker on the OnePlus 7 is pretty huge in comparison.

Despite of having a smaller earpiece speaker, you wont have any issues hearing to the call on the K20 Pro. Coming to the back. Since the fingerprint sensors are moved to the front under the display, only thing to check out here are the rear cameras.

OnePlus 7 has 2 cameras at the back, while the Redmi K20 Pro come with a triple camera setup. Out of the 2 cameras, primary camera on the OnePlus 7 gets a 48 megapixel SONY IMX586 sensor, with F/1.7 aperture, and Optical image stabilisation.

2nd camera is a 5 megapixel depth sensor with F/2.4 aperture. Below that, there is a dual LED flash. Out of the 3 cameras on the K20 Pro, primary one gets the same 48 Megapixel Sony IMX 586 sensor as the OnePlus 7, but on this phone, it is coupled with a slightly narrower F/1.

8 aperture, and it is not optically stabilised. Next camera gets a 8 megapixel sensor with F/2.4 aperture and a 53mm lens which gives us 2x optical zoom. And the 3rd camera gets a 13 megapixel sensor with F/2.

4 aperture and 12mm ultra wide angle lens. And there is a dual led flash below this camera module. So on the K20 Pro you can take images and videos with all the 3 lenses, whereas on the OnePlus 7 you can’t even switch to the secondary depth sensor, unless you are taking portrait shots.

Both the phones can shoot 4k videos in upto 60fps, and 1080p videos in upto 240fps, but on the K20 Pro, you can even take 1080p 960fps videos, whereas you are limited at shooting 720p 480fps videos on the OnePlus 7.

K20 pro also gets some cool features like studio lighting and sky replacement, once you have clicked the images. So camera features wise, K20 Pro is ahead in this competition. At the front OnePlus 7 gets a 16 megapixel sensor with F/2.

0 aperture and a 25mm lens. While on the K20 Pro, we get a 20 megapixel pop up camera with F/2.2 aperture. I have a lot of image and video samples from these phones, so I am going to make a dedicate camera comparison between them in the few days.

In the mean while, here are a few samples that I took with both. You can see the image quality, exposure, dynamic range and colours for yourself, and decide which images look better to you. I will reserve my judgement about the cameras for the dedicated camera comparison, which should be coming very soon.

If we look at the camera features on paper, as I said before, I think the Redmi K20 Pro comes on top. Inside, both these phones pack in the Snapdragon 855 processor with Adreno 640 GPU and 6 or 8GB of RAM, coupled with 128 or 256GB of internal storage respectively.

OnePlus 7 packs in a 3700mAh non removable battery, while the Redmi K20 Pro comes with a 4000mAh non removable battery. While most of these specs may sound similar, one major difference is that, OnePlus 7 uses the latest UFS 3.

0 storage while the K20 Pro sticks to UFS 2.1. This should make the OnePlus 7 a bit faster in general performance, and this is exactly what the benchmark results show us. OnePlus 7 scores a bit higher than the K20 Pro in all the benchmarks.

But how much difference does it really make in day to day usage? We tried opening a few apps and graphics intensive games, and the OnePlus 7 was a hair faster at loading them. While switching between apps, OnePlus 7 had more apps in its memory, while the K20 Pro had to load some apps like YouTube when we got back to it.

The overall performance is pretty much same, you are noticing these differences because I am comparing them side by side. And as much as either of these companies want you to believe that one phone is way faster than the other, if you use these phones on a daily basis, I doubt you would notice any difference in their performance.

What you will notice is the change in the user interface. While both are running on the latest version of Android Pie, they both have their own unique flavours. OnePlus 7 is running the Oxygen OS on top of android, which is as close to stock android as you can get, with a few minimal design changes and added features.

K20 Pro on the other hand runs MIUI 10 on top of Android Pie. While it is not my favourite skin, I must say it has been fun to use. I love the dark mode and the multitasking app switch on this phone. But what I don’t love is the loads of bloatware apps which come preinstalled, and the amount of spam notifications these apps send you.

Worst thing are the lock screen ads, if you are using the wallpaper carousal, which is one of the first things you should disable when you get this phone. There is no such issue on the OnePlus 7. Its UI is clean and simple, and OnePlus has designed it in a way, that navigating through this UI also feels faster thanks to the faster animations.

OnePlus is also usually much quicker of the two to send security and major software updates. OnePlus phones age very well, and one of the main reasons for it is the software it runs on. I have a few friends who are still using OnePlus 2 or 3, and are still happy with it.

I doubt we can say this about many Redmi users, because their phones tend to slow down after a year or two. K20 Pro is their 1st attempt at a flagship smartphone, so hopefully things will be different for this phone.

So when it comes to software and overall longevity, I am going give it to the Oxygen OS on the OnePlus 7. When it comes to how long both these phones last on a single charge. Redmi K20 Pro comes ahead, where it can last a few hours more than the OnePlus 7 thanks to having a slight larger battery.

Both these phones will comfortably take you through the day, even if you are a power user. For charging, despite of having glass backs, none of these phones support wireless charging. OnePlus 7 comes with a 20watt Dash charger, which we all know juices it up pretty fast.

It can charge upto 90% in an hour, which is really nice. K20 Pro on the other hand comes with a 18 watt charger, which can charge its 4000mAh battery to about 80% in one hour. If you want to charge it even faster, K20 pro supports 27watt fast charging, but for those charging speeds, you will have to buy the 27watt charger separately.

Those were all the points we had to compare. I hope you guys got all the similarities and differences between these phones. if you want, you can go through the video again, and jot down the points that matter to you the most.

That way it will be easier for you to make the decision. Alright, so now it’s time to sum it all up. With good build quality, top notch specs, best in class performance, and a great price, OnePlus 7 offers us all the bells and whistles that we might expect from a decent flagship smartphone.

But the Redmi K20 Pro also offers you the same things, but with a bigger battery, futuristic looking bezel less design with a pop up selfie camera, 3.5mm headphone jack, and a bigger battery, at a lower price point.

So the Redmi K20 Pro offers you the most value for your money, and that is our choice as a winner in this comparison. But that doesn’t mean the OnePlus 7 is not good. If you have the extra money, that one will offer you a better software experience, and it will most likely hold its performance for a longer time.