Xiaomi 13T Pro

The market for mid-range mobile phones is confusing and often filled with last year's top models mixed with a myriad of solid offerings, but Xiaomi now wants to show what they can do.

Xiaomi's offering is the Pro edition of their 13T mobile phone. But where it gets a little strange is that there are quite a few similarities, in fact, the only differences are the CPU and RAM. However, it also has an impact on the camera that runs with 8K video and 10-bit by recording video in H.265 format, and can shoot at a lot higher fps, but everything else is identical, which makes the higher price seem a bit steep.

The screen is a fairly bright AMOLED, 6.67", 446ppi, 480Hz touch sample rate, and 144Hz refresh rate. The brightness is stated to be 2600 NITS for HDR use and 1200 NITS at maximum brightness otherwise. 100% DCI-P3 rendering is promised, and the screen is definitely a bright spot.

There's a 120 watt charger included, a hefty thing that charges the phone from 0% to full power in under 20 minutes. That's pretty good, I never let the phone die completely, but it's pretty fast.

The phone's chipset is MediaTek Dimensity 9200+. To demonstrate the difference between the two models, the more expensive Pro edition is equipped with almost three times the performance in terms of raw processing power. It has a G715 GPU, 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and a modern storage system with 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. There are also versions with 512GB and even 1TB storage.

The big trick in this phone is the camera, as it is identical in both models, but due to CPU limitations it cannot record 8K video in the small model. Leica has chosen to get involved, and also uses Leica's two best-known colour filters. It is from Leica's Summicron series and has a primary 50MP wide-angle camera combined with a ditto telephoto and a 12MP ultra wide-angle. The selfie cam is a 20MP.

The camera performs well, the images are clear, colourful and detailed. The sensor for the primary camera is a Sony IMX 707, which was on last year's top model. In addition, it says it captures 25% more colours. More than what? My blood pressure can increase by 25%, but there's a big difference between whether it's compared to what it's been at its maximum before, or whether it's my resting heart rate in a deep sleep. If you don't want to mess with Pro Mode-exclusive colour profiles, you can play with Vibrant Look where the colours are more eye-catching, or my favourite, Authentic Look, which makes everything look like a stylistic picture from the 1950s. Or you can just keep it neutral. On the other hand, it's pretty good at finding and maintaining focus. Night shots are decent, but not flawless - but then again, no one is.

Connectivity is the usual Bluetooth 5.4, but there's no wireless charging, only wired charging, but for the price it's perhaps to be expected. By the way, the battery holds an insane amount of power in standby mode.

The price is £700 which, as mentioned above, seems fine until you realise that the smaller model can do pretty much the same thing for most people, and for almost £300 less.

My biggest complaint, however, is the operating system. MIUI 14 works a little differently, for example, when you bring up the overview menu to close applications, it shows two at a time instead of one, and then you end up closing the wrong one, and I had ongoing problems with swiping down to access physical functions like flashlight, brightness and WIFI not working, and although it's hardly the operating system's fault, there was a ghost alarm, meaning that an alarm I had set and later deleted kept popping up and going crazy every morning, even though it didn't exist. And that's a problem, because you can get a OnePlus 11 for the same money, which has a really nice user experience, or a Pixel 8, both of which are phones I find far more attractive. It's a tough market and the user interface has to work 100% every time, and using MIUI 14 has been downright frustrating at times.

The big plus is the screen, it's really good, and it and the camera lift this mobile phone above the competition - but I still have a hard time dealing with the strange operating system.