diff --git a/nixos/modules/config/console.nix b/nixos/modules/config/console.nix
index d0672c792bf8..571f723a823f 100644
--- a/nixos/modules/config/console.nix
+++ b/nixos/modules/config/console.nix
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ let
 
   makeColor = i: lib.concatMapStringsSep "," (x: "0x" + lib.substring (2 * i) 2 x);
 
-  isUnicode = lib.hasSuffix "UTF-8" (lib.toUpper config.i18n.defaultLocale);
+  isUnicode = config.i18n.defaultCharset == "UTF-8" || cfg.useXkbConfig;
 
   optimizedKeymap =
     pkgs.runCommand "keymap"
diff --git a/nixos/tests/console-xkb-and-i18n.nix b/nixos/tests/console-xkb-and-i18n.nix
index 6dfada160e56..757825a785af 100644
--- a/nixos/tests/console-xkb-and-i18n.nix
+++ b/nixos/tests/console-xkb-and-i18n.nix
@@ -4,8 +4,8 @@
   meta.maintainers = with lib.maintainers; [ doronbehar ];
 
   nodes = {
-    # Nothing to run on this node, a bug (TODO: where?) is causing a builder of
-    # the configuration to fail. See:
+    # Nothing to run on this node. Only verify that this configuration doesn't
+    # produce the bugs described here:
     #
     # - https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/445666
     # - https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/411374