Redmi 17 5G Review: The POCO M8x Under Another Name

Hindi cinema has been running this plot since Ram aur Shyam: identical twins, raised in different houses, mistaken for each other by everyone except the audience. Xiaomi has now released it as a phone. The POCO M8x arrived in India on 21 August. The Redmi 17 followed on 3 September. Same face, different family name, 2 weeks apart.

We are not guessing. Xiaomi's own India spec sheet for the Redmi gives 170.12 x 78.42 x 8.8mm and 232g. The POCO's listing gives the same height, the same thickness, the same weight and a width 0.01mm different, which is a rounding difference rather than a different chassis. Battery, chipset, memory type, storage type, screen, glass, cameras, charging, reverse charging, IP rating, Bluetooth version and update policy all match. Two phones do not arrive at identical numbers on 14 lines by accident.

A battery this size used to need a brick around it.

Start with the good news, because there is a lot of it. 7,900mAh is a very large cell, and it fills at 45W with the charger in the box rather than sold separately. That pairing matters more than either number. A big battery behind a 15W charger is a promise kept slowly; this one is not that phone. It will also push power back out over a cable at 22.5W, which turns it into a small power bank for whoever in the family forgot theirs.

Then the details nobody prints on a hoarding. A 3.5mm headphone jack. Stereo speakers. A card slot that takes up to 2TB. Gorilla Glass 7i over the screen and an IP64 rating, which is splash and dust protection rather than a swimming certificate, and an honest one. And the software promise is the headline of the whole sheet: 4 years of Android updates and 6 years of security patches, on a phone at this price. That takes it into 2032.

Overall that makes the Redmi 17 better specified than 33% of the 205 phones we track on sale in India: a phone with two outstanding bars, a battery and a card slot, and a screen near the bottom of the market. The more interesting number is value. Against the 47 phones at its own price, the Redmi is better value than 26%. Its POCO twin, scored against the 29 phones at its lower price, is better value than 63%. Same phone, same bars, a very different verdict on value, and the only thing that changed is the price.

720 pixels across 6.9 inches is a lot of glass for not many dots.

The screen is the bill. 720 x 1600 was a reasonable resolution on a 6.1-inch phone some years ago. Stretched across 6.9 inches it works out to roughly 254 pixels per inch, and text will look softer than on the 1080p panels most phones near Rs. 24,000 now carry. The 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling smoother; it does not add detail. Those are two different specifications and this phone only bought one of them. Our AMOLED versus LCD guide explains why the panel type matters here too: this is an LCD, so blacks are grey and there is no always-on display worth the name.

The other shared compromise is memory. LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage are older, slower standards, and the Snapdragon 4 Gen 5 is an entry-level chip. Fine for messaging, payments, maps and video. Not a phone to buy for heavy gaming, and not one that will feel quick in 2031 just because it is still getting patches then.

And the cameras: one 50MP f/1.8 main sensor without optical stabilisation, plus a second lens Xiaomi lists only as "auxiliary" and declines to give a resolution for. Spec sites print two different figures for it. A lens the maker will not specify is a lens we will not count, so treat this as a single-camera phone with a decorative neighbour.

Five differences, and only two of them are worth money.

Here is everything that actually separates the Redmi 17 from the POCO M8x, as published by the 2 brands and corroborated by independent listings.

The card slot is the quiet win for POCO. On the Redmi, a microSD card takes the place of your second SIM. On the M8x it gets a slot of its own. If you run two SIMs, which a great many Indian buyers do, the POCO is the only one of the pair on which you can also add storage. On a phone with 128GB and no larger option, that is a real difference.

The 8GB option is the Redmi's one hardware argument. Neither twin can be bought with more storage, but only the Redmi comes with 8GB of RAM. With an entry-level chip and slower memory, the extra headroom is the most useful upgrade either badge offers.

The third is not on a spec sheet, and for some buyers it decides everything. The Redmi is sold through Xiaomi's own store and in shops, so you can hold it before you pay and walk back to a counter afterwards. The POCO is sold online only, through one retailer. If buying offline matters to you or to whoever you are buying for, that settles it.

Same phone, two price bands.

This is where the family resemblance stops being a curiosity and becomes your money.

At launch the comparable configurations were close. The Redmi 17 launched at Rs. 23,999 for 6GB with 128GB and Rs. 26,999 for 8GB with 128GB. The POCO M8x launched at Rs. 20,999 for 4GB with 128GB and Rs. 22,999 for 6GB with 128GB. Like for like, at 6GB, the Redmi badge cost Rs. 1,000 more on launch day. Those are launch prices, and we are labelling them as such.

Since then the two have moved apart. Live listings for the POCO M8x now sit between Rs. 19,000 and Rs. 22,000, with the 4GB model already below its launch price. The Redmi 17 is still listed at its Rs. 23,999 launch price at one major retailer; we could not confirm a second independent live price for it, so we are not printing a band. The effect is that the same hardware now sits in two of our budget bands: the POCO in Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 20,000, the Redmi in Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 30,000.

Against its twin, and against the phones its price puts it beside.

The twin first. We reviewed the POCO M8x 5G earlier, and everything we said about its battery, its 720p screen and its long support applies here word for word, because it is the same phone. Read that review for the hardware; read this one for which badge to buy.

Above the twins, the Redmi's own price puts it in a band where the competition is sharper. We set the Redmi 17 against the Motorola Edge 70 Fusion in a head-to-head, and the short version is that more money buys a far sharper screen and a stabilised camera, at the cost of some battery. If endurance is why you are here, our battery guide for Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 30,000 is the field this Redmi has to beat at its price, and the guide one band down is where its POCO twin competes. For a broader shortlist, start with the best phones under Rs. 25,000.