Xiaomi 14T Pro Review

Xiaomi is one of the biggest smartphone brands in the world and it just dropped its latest smartphone, the Xiaomi 14T Pro. It’s the mid-generation all-star, following the pattern Xiaomi has established in last generations, and offering a combination of impressive features and solid performance at a competitive price. At $1,069 for the 14T Pro and $868 for the 14T, they aren’t what you would call cheap, but they’re competitive and offer a great overall experience. 

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Specifications

Xiaomi Official Site

Xiaomi 14T Pro - Design and Highlights

Since we were sent the Xiaomi 14T Pro, that will be the focus of our review. But, since the two exist side by side and the 14T is significantly less while still being quite good, we’ll highlight some important differences for you to consider. 

The Xiaomi 14T Pro is a large smartphone with a 6.67-inch high-res display. It features an aluminum frame for rigidity but eschews the usual glass back for a textured finish. And thank goodness. It’s nowhere near as slippery as my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and is less likely to break should it fall. There are volume and power buttons on the side, a USB-C port on the bottom, and a dual-sim tray that pops out of the frame.

It feels good to hold thanks to that finish and is one of several reasons you might want to choose it over the standard 14T, but it also comes with a silicone case that covers the back completely when installed, so this point may not matter as much if you prefer not to go in the nude. 

The AMOLED display is simply excellent. It has a resolution of 2712 x 1220, giving it a very crisp pixel density of 446 pixels-per-inch (PPI). That’s a hair’s breadth from the iPhone 16 Pro Max and 56 PPI from the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. It can run up to 144Hz for smooth motion in games and scrolling long web pages and documents. It also gets ridiculously bright with a maximum brightness of 4,000 nits, twice that of the iPhone 16 Pro Max and 2.5X that of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

Between its infinite contrast and exceptionally high peak brightness, the screen is great for HDR content. It supports HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. It also features intelligent features like Adaptive Color which modifies the white balance depending on your current environment. 

It’s also a flat-screen, which is a blessing if, like me, you don’t like the waterfall edge on several other high-end smartphones. They make finding tempered glass screen protectors a chore and a half, and I would be quite happy to see that fall by the wayside entirely. 

Internally, the Xiaomi 14T Pro uses the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ chipset. It’s an eight-core SoC that was released earlier this year. It’s not a Snapdragon, which still seems reserved mostly for the Ultra series, but it’s a high-performance chip for all-around performance as well as gaming. It includes the Immortalis G720 MC12 GPU, as well as a dedicated MediaTek NPU 790 for AI processing.

The system also has 12GB of LPDDR5X memory clocked to 8533 Mbps. You can also opt for 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. Sadly but expectedly, there is no support for expandable storage, but so it goes in 2024. It has a large 5,000mAh battery and supports 120W fast charging when plugged in and 50W fast charging wirelessly.

Xiaomi is also going big on AI with its marketing for this release. Google has made several of its AI features broadly accessible, including Gemini, circle to search, AI interpreter for real-time translation. You’ll also find AI-enhanced features like object removal within the Google Photos app, if you use that (Xiaomi has their own version of this in its own, however). Xiaomi’s own AI services include AI Notes, an AI Recorder, and AI subtitles for streamed content and meetings. 

There are also a number of features within its photo and video apps. You can use AI to automatically create short videos; all you need to do is choose which photos and clips you want to use. For photos, AI lets you expand pictures beyond their original frame and uses context to create the additional area outside its original bounds. There’s also neat AI Portrait functionality that allows you to create fake portrait shots of yourself or create 3D avatars for social media. 

Xiaomi 14T Pro - Camera System

Xiaomi has been delivering excellent cameras on its phones for some time and the 14T Pro is no exception. It features a three-camera array composed of the following:

• 50MP Main Shooter: f/1.6 aperture, optical image stabilization (O.I.S.), 23mm equivalent focal length
• 50MP Telephoto (2.6x zoom), f/2.0 aperture, 60mm equivalent focal length
• 12MP Ultrawide (0.6x), f/2.2 aperture, 15mm equivalent focal length

The main camera utilizes the Light Fusion 900 sensor, which measures 1/1.31 inches. It’s not quite as big as the 1-inch sensor on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra but at 0.76 inches, it’s not far off and delivers crisp shots with good low-light performance. The standard Xiaomi 14 uses a Sony IMX906 image sensor, which can deliver quality photos and video but should be considered a step down from the Light Fusion 900. 

The front camera is built into the display and comes in at 32MP with an f/2.0 aperture, and a 25mm equivalent focal length. 

For video, the rear cameras can shoot at up to 8K30 or 4K60. The front camera can shoot up to 4K30.

Xiaomi has continued its partnership with Leica on optics and image processing. This means sharp pictures with classic Leica color. In the camera app, you’re able to fine-tune the image by choosing either Leica Authentic or Leica Vibrant. The former is darker and has more contrast but is arguably more accurate. Leica Vibrant is brighter and more color-rich. For this review, I shot in Leica Vibrant mode. 

There are lots of options within the app for different shooting modes. If you’re shooting a portrait, the Master Lens system opens up and allows you to choose from a handful of different picture styles, including: 35mm Documentary, 50mm Swirly Bokeh, 75mm Portrait, and 90mm Soft Focus. The autofocus is excellent and rarely misses. There’s intelligent eye tracking, as well as burst modes for motion shots. Additional modes encompass a 50MP high-res mode, AI Camera mode, Panorama, Slow Motion, Long Exposure, Documents, RAW mode, and a Pro mode that gives you full control over the camera system. There is no macro mode this time around. 

In the gallery above, you can see the field of view and image quality when cycling through its five shooting modes: 0.6x, 1x, 2x, 2.6x, and 5x. Remember, the camera system includes optics for 0.6x, 1x, and 2.6x, so the other two modes represent digital zoom. Overall, they’re not bad at all and offer respectable detail and accurate colors. 

I would like to thank Simon and Juniper for standing in for these portrait shots. Xiaomi has an excellent portrait system. It is very accurate when separating the subject from the background and fading into bokeh for simulated depth of field. It’s genuinely some of the best algorithmic bokeh I’ve found on a smartphone. It also isn’t limited to human or animal subjects. You can tap anything and it will analyze the shot to create a similar effect to the above. 

And here is yours truly, captured using the portrait mode on the front camera. The optics and metering do a good job of evening out highlights and shadows to create an appealing image. It’s quite good.

Just because there’s no macro mode doesn’t mean you can’t take macro shots if you’re able to get close enough. This picture was taken in the standard photo mode. The focus distance is very short, so you can get close to the subject. There is no cropping on the image above, either, which means there’s room for additional zoom if you don’t mind the reduced resolution.

For the rest of this section, I want to focus on Night Mode photography because Xiaomi leans heavily on the 14T Pro’s low light capabilities. It is, overall, very good but it’s not perfect and I’ll demonstrate why.

In the above two shots, you can see a photograph of a church. The darker picture was taken in normal phot mode with automatic Night Mode disabled. The second picture was taken in the dedicated night mode. It absolutely brightens the image and restores a great deal of lost detail. You would think there were a light facing the trees in the front but there was none, as you can see in the standard shot. 

When you look close at the church, however, the lighting seems unnaturally bright. The camera system works to white balance as well as brighten, and I suspect it’s the combination of the two that achieves this effect. This wasn’t a regular occurrence but it is something I encountered multiple times throughout my testing. 

Here’s another example, taken of a historic schoolhouse next door. The white balancing went the opposite direction and warmed the picture up quite a bit, bringing out the red of the bricks. It doesn’t look unnatural to me, however, and is a solid result considering how dark it was at the time of shooting.

Here is a third example. The warmer flag was taken in the standard photo mode and the zoomed-in, bluer shot in Night Mode. It did surprisingly well removing the amber of the street light above but the mix of lightening and white balance again result in a picture that looks slightly unnatural to me. It may just be because of taking the two back to back and seeing the results side by side. You be the judge.

This star shot really exemplifies how effective the night mode is. To the naked eye, the sky was just showing the first minor glimmers of stars. But with night mode and only a few seconds of holding still while it captured, you could make out more than you can even see on a normal clear night where I live. 

Sometimes, things can go a bit awry. If you look closely at the hand in this shot, you’ll notice that it almost looks painted in. This appears to be a result of the processing that occurs in night mode and, from this close, it doesn’t look great. The optics also caught a reflection of the hand that made its way into the picture. 

At its best, the Night Mode can really capture some great shots. The way it brightened the sky and enhanced its color makes this one of my favorite nighttime shots I’ve taken. In reality, it’s much darker and the sky dimmer than it appears in this shot. It injected it with life. 

While the results of the camera tests show that it doesn’t quite reach the level of clarity and consistency as the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and it’s 1-inch sensor, it’s a very capable phone capable of taking excellent photos and videos in different lighting conditions. 

Xiaomi 14T Pro -  Performance 

Moving on to performance, it should come as no surprise that the Xiaomi 14T Pro excels. Though it has a MediaTek processor driving the experience, it lacks little behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and has an effective cooling solution to maintain solid performance in games and demanding apps. 

In Geekbench 6, a whole system benchmark, it performed exceptionally well. It topped the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra in both single-core and multi-core performance and earned a particular lead in multi-core. This is great for multi-threaded apps and if you plan to use the phone in desktop mode as a PC replacement. 

Turning to gaming benchmarks, it even outperforms the Apple iPhone 15 Pro. These are demanding tests and offer a good insight into how the phone will handle a wide range of games. 

For even more comparison, I’ve included 3DMark’s performance graphs that highlight where it scores compared to The Apple iPhone 15 Pro, Google Pixel 8 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. It leads the pack against each with the most significant lead against the Pixel 8 Pro.

To test thermal throttling, I used 3DMark’s most demanding stress test, Steel Nomad Light, which runs the original benchmark 20 times back-to-back. There’s definitely a bit of thermal throttling that occurs after the first loop. From then on, performance was consistent. Given the slope of the temperature graph, we can surmise that the cooling system works well and that you should experience much performance loss in games. 

Final Thoughts

The Xiaomi 14T Pro is a very good phone, though I find it to be on the expensive side for photography when the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is available for around the same price. If you want the latest and greatest AI features and 50MP resolution on the main and telephoto, the 14T Pro is a very good option and an especially good choice for content creators of all stripes.

The product described in this article was provided by the manufacturer for evaluation purposes.