Redmi 9T Malaysia: Better than the Poco M3

The Redmi 9T is here! The latest mid-range smartphone from the company has just been launched, and we have the full details available—including pricing and availability in Malaysia. But first: let’s get the elephant out of the room: yes, the Redmi 9T is more-or-less a rebadge of the recently-launched Poco M3, but there are a couple of significant differences.

As per the headline, these differences make the Redmi 9T the better option than Poco’s (former?) king of the budget segment—but before we go any further, here’s everything you need to know.

Price and availability

The Redmi 9T will be officially open for sales on the 15th of January 2021 on Lazada and Shopee. Unfortunately, Xiaomi has confirmed that there will be no pre-order sales or promos. Of course, we do expect to see discounts during future online sales, which we’ll certainly cover on SoyaCincau.com.

Official pricing in Malaysia is as follows:

Redmi 9T – 4GB RAM, 64GB storage – RM599
Redmi 9T – 6GB RAM, 128GB storage – RM699

You can also pick up the phone in four colour options: Carbon Grey, Twilight Blue, Sunrise Orange, and Ocean Green. And yes, you will get a charging brick out of the box: a 22.5W charger (although the phone only supports 18W fast-charging, but we’ll get to that later).

Specs

Specs-wise, the Redmi 9T is almost identical to the Poco M3. This includes a 6.53″ FHD+ LCD display, which Xiaomi/Redmi is calling the “dot drop” display—but basically, it’s the same ol’ teardrop/dewdrop notch that we’ve seen on plenty of phones in the past. There’s an 8MP selfie shooter housed in that notch, and on the back of the phone, you get a quad-camera setup: a 48MP main camera, a 2MP depth sensor, a 2MP macro lens, and an 8MP ultra-wide angle lens.

If you haven’t already realised, this is one of the main differences between the Poco M3 and the Redmi 9T. The rest of the cameras are identical, but the presence of an ultra-wide camera on Redmi’s mid-ranger means that you get more versatility in general for photography.

There is also one other significant strength that the Redmi 9T holds over the Poco M3, which you might have noticed in the price and availability section above: memory. Specifically, RAM, with the top-range model equipped with 6GB of RAM, paired to 128GB of UFS2.2 storage. Meanwhile, the 4GB+64GB variant uses UFS2.1 storage instead.

The rest of the specs are identical to the Poco M3. A Snapdragon 662 under the hood, and a gigantic 6,000mAh battery to sustain the device. The Redmi 9T supports 18W fast-charging, although Redmi is packing a 22.5W charger in the box (perhaps they had some extra power bricks lying around). Meanwhile, you get a 3.5mm headphone jack, an IR blaster, and even FM radio, although you’ll need to plug in headphones to use that last feature.

Do note that the Malaysian unit of the Redmi 9T that we have with us does not have NFC support.

Like many LCD displays, this does not come with an in-display fingerprint scanner, so there’s a scanner mounted on the side of the phone instead. And of course, this looks very different from the Poco M3, with the latter featuring a rather garish-looking camera bump that stretches across the width of the back of the phone. Redmi’s budget phone, on the other hand, has a more conventional look, while it also ditches the faux leather finish of the M3 for a textured finish instead.

So, what do you think? The Redmi 9T—other than aesthetic elements—is essentially the Poco M3, with a better camera setup and more RAM in the top-end configuration. Which makes it pretty clear to me: this is a better phone. In the meantime, you can watch our hands-on and unboxing by clicking here.

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