Xiaomi 12T Pro

Review

We haven't had Xiaomi for a long time, so here it is, in addition with a 200-megapixel camera and 120 W charging. Will this make Xiaomi 12T Pro stand out from the crowd?

Good simple style

The producer gives us a nice welcome. The set is quite rich - in addition to standard papers and a needle for opening, we will find a strong, large and fast 120-watt charger, a USB-C cable, a silicone phone cover and a factory-applied protective film. It is known that the foil will wear out quite quickly, the cover will turn yellow in half a year, but at the beginning we do not have to look for these little things in stores - we have them in a set and very well.

The smartphone itself did not particularly captivate me with its design. It's a bit boring, but on the other hand everything is fine - it's just right. The back is made of frosted glass, so there is a risk that it may break, but it collects fingerprints relatively slightly. I can't say that at all - the rectangular frame for the camera collects the most dirt - but it gets dirty so slowly that you don't have to rush to your smartphone with a cloth every now and then.

From the front we will see a typical screen with a hole for the selfie camera. It is flat, which many of you will probably enjoy. The device is not the lightest in total, but it is very nice in the hand. The buttons fit perfectly under the fingers. The fingerprint reader may be a bit too low, but for a reader hidden under the screen it works quite decently - quite quickly and flawlessly. Facial recognition also works. Overall, I am satisfied with the technical finish, ergonomics and construction of this phone.

The only thing I complain about is the lack of full waterproofness - it's IP53, which is emergency. If you get caught in the rain, or if you splash water on the phone lying at the sink, nothing will happen, but under no circumstances should you jump into the pool with it.

Flawless display

The aforementioned flat screen offers a fast 120Hz refresh rate, and most importantly, it is AMOLED. You will appreciate it especially on a sunny day, when the sun shines on the screen and it remains legible. The touch panel works as it should, and the color balance can be adjusted to our preferences in the menu - the set of options in this area is simply typical for Xiaomi and I must admit that it is quite extensive. The minimum brightness level does not strain the eyesight, there is eye protection, you can also widely personalize the Always-On Display. I can't say a bad word about the screen - everything is fine.

The role of the interface is played, as usual, by MIUI - some like it, others don't like it. For me, this overlay is quite decent - the times when Xiaomi threatened us with ads and an excess of additional applications have happily passed and hopefully they will not return. The overlay in its current form is nice and friendly. Of course, there are still additional apks pre-installed by the manufacturer, but most of them are of the useful type - Facebook, for example, is downloaded by almost everyone anyway, system maintenance apks too, for transferring files between phones can also come in handy. There is no typical terrible garbage that we would like to get rid of in the morning.

Typical for Xiaomi is also quite a wide range of personalization possibilities in this interface - we can have it in a flat or tray form, we can navigate with keys or gestures, we can have more smaller icons on the desktop, we can have fewer but larger and clearer icons. There are also cute dynamic wallpapers that change basically every time you unlock. If someone likes variety, they have it too.

Throttling only in theory

When we have the top Snapdragon and a large amount of fast memory inside, the phone has no right to disappoint with performance. It must work smoothly and in a way that gives a really great pleasure to use. Indeed, most of the time, that's exactly how it works. Are there any exceptions to this? Yes, if you try hard, you will cause throttling and performance degradation. The important thing, however, is that this happens basically only in stress tests. The stress tests were so dramatic that I had to take the phone out onto the balcony in the cold for the stress test to end at all, otherwise the phone turned off in the middle. In addition, it heated up so much that it could actually act as a hand heater.

Stress tests, however, are applications that force the smartphone to work at top speed - more than any demanding game would require. There is practically no throttling when playing, and the temperature is not bad - yes, the smartphone will get warmer, but less than with benchmarks. It will be 30, top 40 degrees. All in all, you don't have to worry about heating up or slowing down when buying Xiaomi 12T Pro, although it is worth considering that in some rare scenarios it may still have place.

In terms of sound, everything is fine

As you'd expect from a flagship, Xiaomi 12T Pro does not have the ability to expand the memory with a microSD card. However, you can use two SIM cards and, for the first time for Xiaomi, also with eSIM. In terms of communication possibilities, everything we need is here and everything works as it should. As for the sound, it's even better than okay - it's very good. During calls, the sound quality satisfied both me and my interlocutors, and there are two external / multimedia speakers - stereo, and at the same time symmetrical, identical at the top and bottom. In addition, they are also supported by Dolby Atmos. We can't cheat physics, so you can't count on powerful bass, but for their size, the Xiaomi 12T Pro speakers sound very nice.

Since we're talking about multimedia, the phone also has an infrared transmitter, thanks to which we can turn the phone into a remote control for our home appliances. Of course, there is a pre-installed application with a wide range of supported devices, and you must be really unlucky that this application cannot work with the devices you currently have.

Fast loading for volunteers

When it comes to the battery, in my opinion, together with the charger, it is the strongest point of this smartphone. First of all, the battery is enough for a whole day of operation with a large supply. In my case, when I used this smartphone on a daily basis, it was enough for two days of work. I just have the impression that this time the manufacturer applied itself to optimization and did something that allows this smartphone to consume less electricity when we do not use it. Seriously - even when I had an intense day, business trips, work, photos, calling, e-mails, etc... this phone calmly kept up with me until the evening, and most importantly, I had a 120 W charger. I had it because the manufacturer gave it in the set with a smartphone - this is worth emphasizing.

If you happen to run your phone completely flat, this powerful charger will fully charge it in just over 20 minutes. In practice, however, we almost never discharge the smartphone to zero, so you can safely assume that you will fully charge this phone in a quarter of an hour. To make it even better, the phone will not be excessively hot at all, and the charger will not turn into a home heater either. Both the charger and the phone will only warm up a little - just like any other device when charging.

The lack of inductive charging can be mentioned as a minus, although in this case this lack was not particularly bothersome for me. In addition, there is one detail that, in my opinion, the manufacturer messed up a bit - when you take the phone out of the box, the super hyper fast charging is turned off. You have to look for it in the menu and run it. Only then will you see how the smartphone can charge, because it charges slower by default. This is an option for those who are concerned about the durability of the battery and do not want to charge it so quickly. It's good that such an option exists, although in my opinion, mainly for marketing reasons, super fast loading should be enabled by default, with the option of turning it off by the user, and meanwhile it's the other way around. It's a bit weird.

What can 200 megapixels do?

To be honest - don't fall for it. It's not that this camera takes bad photos, but in my opinion, the view of "200 Mpx" next to the lens is too much for the imagination of the user, who later expects God knows what. With Xiaomi 12T Pro you will get good, correct photos, but not miracles.

In addition to the 200 Mpx camera, we have a fairly typical set - 8 Mpx wide-angle lens and 2 Mpx for macro. As for the macro camera, well - it just is. The wide-angle, as you might expect, gives way to the camera's capabilities, especially in low light. During the day, these photos will also be darker, and the colors in them will not be as saturated as in the main camera. The advantage of this wide-angle eight is that you don't have to move away from the subject to cover it in its entirety - it has a quite wide field of view, as much as 120 °.

The main camera by default takes 12 Mpx photos with pennies - you know, it combines pixels. You can force the photo to be taken in full resolution, but I don't know why, because firstly, such a photo will take quite a long time to process, and secondly, it will be huge - you will immediately clog the memory. Such a photo is 70, if not 80 MB, and it will not bring any greater added value when it comes to the visual side.

As I said, the photos from this camera are just good - the colors are rendered correctly, the focus is captured and set as it should be, the reproduction of details is also in the best order. Zooming still remains fully digital - it is true that 200 Mpx allows for better close-ups at lower resolution, but it helps mainly with double magnification. Later it is standard - the further in the zoom, the worse or worse. The multitude of megapixels is more useful when taking photos in low light - here night photos are the most cool. You can set the camera interface so that the night mode turns on automatically when you need it. You just have to remember to hold the phone steady then, so as not to blur the image, but when you succeed, the photo should be at least satisfactory and fully suitable for showing to friends.

Portrait mode also does a good job, although with the maximum blur setting it tends to get a little lost with more complex shapes. And what would I complain about? Well, the manufacturer could primarily improve the colour discrepancy between wide-angle photos and those taken with the main camera. This is, in my opinion, the basic problem that can be criticized here.

You can't say much about the selfie - they are perfectly fine and the videos recorded with this smartphone are also fine. We can record in 8K, of course, but when we want to record with HDR, we have to switch to 4K. And when we want to additionally turn on super stabilization, we have to go down to Full HD. In the front camera, recording in Full HD is the only option, so there will be no great movie frenzy on this side. With the rear camera, however, you can make a decent movie with a fairly smooth image, decent sound and quite well-functioning stabilization. In addition, in the menu we will find additional film effects known from previous Xiaomi models. If someone likes to have fun with filming, they have something here.

Without flaws and panache

The worst thing is that I can't quite sum up this call. On the one hand, it does not lack anything, I cannot say that I would be dissatisfied with its use. It has a good screen, good performance, not bad overall looks. Great battery and great charging. It takes decent photos and videos, there is really nothing to fault here, but on the other hand ... if you asked me why I recommend this phone, apart from the battery and fast charging, it would be difficult for me to name something that would distinguish this smartphone from competitors costing a similar amount.

What amount are we talking about? 700 euros for a model equipped with 8+256 GB memory. At this point, it is worth considering buying the Xiaomi 12 model positioned above. It may have less internal memory, but it will be a full flagship.

At any rate, purchasing Xiaomi 12T Pro will not be a mistake. It is certainly not that I advise you against it, but before you buy it, look well, look, compare with competitors, even among Xiaomi, and only then decide. Once you decide on this model, I think you'll be pleased, because it's a nice phone, just a bit boring. I hope that the next smartphone that I will test will arouse a little more excitement, but at the same time it will not be worse than this one.

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