Xiaomi 13T Pro Review

Xiaomi is going all-out with Leica-engineered flagship smartphone cameras and this time around, the 13T siblings will carry them. While both the Xiaomi 13T and 13T Pro look identical, the differences are mostly under the hood.

All eyes are on the Xiaomi 13T Pro which is packed with the latest hardware and a set of Leica-powered cameras — all under a price tag very few other flagship smartphones have dared to cross.

Check out our full review of the Xiaomi 13T Pro after the break.

Design and Construction

There are a lot of similarities to be found here between the Xiaomi 13 Pro and the 13T Pro and certainly a lot a changed since the Xioami 12T Pro. In our experience, it feels like Xiaomi combined some elements of the Xiaomi 13 Pro and the POCO F5 Pro that made it to the 13T Pro. The boxy chassis, the camera module, and the over-all look and feel.

The Xiaomi 13T Pro comes in three color options – Alpine Blue, Meadow Green and Black. The back panel of the Alpine Blue model features Xiaomi BioComfort vegan leather with a soft and unique texture, making the phone feel more premium and you don’t get that urge to put on the gel case that came in the box. Xiaomi claims this vegan leather surface is composed of multiple layers of materials to improve wear and scratch resistance.

On the other hand, the Meadow Green and Black models have a glossy glass back panel that’s reminiscent of the design of the Xiaomi 13. One difference here is that the leather version is slightly thicker at 8.62mm vs. 8.49mm on the other two. Conversely, the Alpine Blue is actually lighter at just 200 grams vs. 206 grams on the glass variants.

The power button and volume rocker are found on the right side; stereo speaker grills, primary mic, USB Type-C port and SIM card slot are found at the bottom; secondary speaker grill, noise-canceling mic and IR blaster up top.

Between the Alpine Blue and the Meadow Green that we have with us, the jury is split between the two. And, just like Xiaomi 13 and 13 Pro, both the 13T and 13T Pro are IP68 rated for better dust and water resistance.

If there’s one thing that we wished Xiaomi put a little more attention, it would be the thickness of the device. Having used the Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro, Xiaomi 12 Pro, 12T Pro and the Xiaomi 13, we definitely feel that 8.5-ish millimeters in thickness is a bit on the chunkier side. What more if you slap a gel case on it?

Display, Biometrics and Multimedia

The Xiaomi 13T Pro has a flat 6.67-inch CrystalRes Display supporting up to 144Hz refresh rate and 1.5K or 2712 x 1220 pixel resolution.

This display greatly improves the viewing and gaming experience, thanks to a high brightness mode of up to 1200nits and a peak brightness of up to 2600nits, along with 100% DCI-P3 coverage with 68 billion colors. Xiaomi 13T Pro also supports end-to-end HDR10+ and is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5.

The AMOLED screen looks really nice, crisp and bright even in the outdoors. Colors are vibrant and high contrast makes watching HDR movies a very pleasant experience that you can see the minute details clearly.

They’ve installed a plastic screen protection here as well but in the span of several days we’ve been using and playing games with it, the screen protector already had scratches and bubbles, so we decided to simply peel it off.

For biometrics, you have an in-display fingerprint sensor that’s well-placed and very responsive. Alternatively, you can also use the selfie camera for AI Face Unlock.

The dual speakers support Dolby Atmos which makes it more immersive than regular stereo speakers. It can belt out great music that’s loud and crisp with good enough bass. The placement is not optimal but understandable so you’ll need to be more conscious not to cover it up with your palm when playing games or watching movies.

Lastly, the signature IR blaster that’s a staple for most Xiaomi high-end smartphones. It’s very useful as a remote control for your appliances at home.

Camera

In terms of the camera, the Xiaomi 13T Pro packs a 50MP 24mm f/1.9 wide angle camera with OIS, 50MP 50mm f/1.9 telephoto camera with 2x optical zoom, and 12MP 15mm f/2.2 ultrawide camera.

To be fair, the camera on the Xiaomi 13T Pro looks almost identical to the sensor that we have on the much previous flagship, Xiaomi 13 Pro.

The overall image looks very cinematic right off the bat. Color reproduction is almost identical to what you will see in the real-world which is pretty cool. You get good contrast and very little, almost unnoticeable, image post-processing. Details are present without over-sharpening the image, even in low light conditions.

Since the camera system on the Xiaomi 13T Pro is tuned by Leica, a popular camera brand, you can choose between two photographic styles — Leica Authentic Look which produces images has a little boost in contrast; and Leica Vibrant, which give you a little bit more vibrancy in every shot. For the sake of this review, we’ll stick to Leica Authentic Look. These Leica photographic style really do mimic Leica’s signature color science.

There are also a host of filters to add more cinematic look to your photos. Pro Mode and a 50MP mode are also present for you to take full advantage of this device’s camera system.

We’re amazed at how this device handled different scenarios. When taking photos in board daylight, you will see that the HDR in effect and also looks very natural.

In Portrait shots, there are moments where it struggles at picking which subjects on the frame to blur out. Once it understands where you want to put the focus on, portrait photos came out really, really well. What’s cool about the Portrait mode is that you can adjust in the settings what “bokeh style” to use for your photo. You can pick from Documentary, which is a 35mm lens, Swirl Bokeh which is a 50mm, or soft focus, a 90mm lens. All these settings add a bit of a creative factor to you every shot, which is pretty nice.

Night mode images are also good, colors a a little bit saturated and contrast is a little bit boosted on this mode. With all these adjustments, we captured pretty interesting photos. For videos, there is also a night mode video option.

Selfies are also great on this device. We get pretty natural looking selfies, although there are times when we find the photo output to be a little bit soft even with beautification turned off. Nonetheless, the image quality is satisfactory for social media postings.

Overall, the camera on the Xiaomi 13T Pro is something that we didn’t expect on this caliber of smartphone.

For videos, the Xiaomi 13T Pro is capable on recording 8K at 24fps. There is OIS and EIS built-in, ensuring that you will have a perfectly stable video output. There’s Motion Tracking Focus on this device, a feature that we normally see on high grade cinema camera. This feature tracks your subject to keep it in focus at all times and is also an amazing feature especially for content creators out there!

What excited us the about the Xiaomi 13T Pro is the ability to record up to 10-bit 4K 30fps LOG video recording. You are not really going to use this feature everyday, but it is so amazing that this smartphone is capable of recording LOG video, giving clips that are ready for color grading and very versatile in post.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the Xiaomi 13T Pro is the latest MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ which is made from 4nm process that incorporates an Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU.

With LPDDR5X RAM + UFS 4.0 storage technology, you’re looking at a powerful combo here in terms of benchmarks – it managed to cop a score of 1,458,068 in Antutu Benchmark, the highest we’ve tested this year.

Check out the rest of the benchmark scores here:

Antutu Benchmark v10: 1,458,068
Antutu Storage: 3,769MB/s (Read), 3,220MB/s (Write), 1,075MB/s & 967MB/s (Random R&W)
PCMark Work 3.0: 13,670
GeekBench 6 CPU: 1,294 (Single), 3,584 (Multi-core) / 1,694 (Single-core), 3,912 (Multi-core) in Performance Mode
GeekBench GPU: 7,470 (OpenCL), 7,293 (Vulkan)

The 16GB RAM and 1TB storage variant is a great combination, the highest in any flagship smartphone out there.

OS, Apps and UI

The Xiaomi 13T Pro runs on MIUI 14 interface which is based on Android 13. This is almost the same OS/UI that we’ve been using on the Xiaomi 13 Pro from last February. Not much has changed here really.

There are many customization options here and you’d probably be spending many hours tinkering around with the UI and all the settings. Some of the hidden gems here include Back tap, Sidebar, Gesture shortcuts and Second space.

Xiaomi promises up to 4 years of major Android updates for the 13T Pro, including another year of security patches so you’re looking at a total of 5 years regular updates for your device to keep it stable.

Connectivity and Battery Life

As for connectivity, the Xiaomi 13T Pro has everything you’d expect — dual nano-SIM with 5G support, NFC, Bluetooth 5.4 and WiFi 7 capability.

It also comes with a built-in IR blaster which you can use as a remote control for your home appliances like TVs, aircon and more. Works like a universal remote control and is usually a staple in mid-range and flagship Xiaomi phones.

The Xiaomi 13T Pro has two Surge P1 charging chipsets to achieve a single-cell battery with 120W HyperCharge, allowing the device to be charged to 100% in just 19 minutes.

In our video loop test, the device lasted 18 hours and 40 minutes playing an 1080p video while in our battery benchmark test, the Xiaomi 13T Pro got a score of 12 hours and 56 minutes on a single full charge at 50% brightness, zero volume, and in airplane mode.

This is 2 hours shorter than what we got the last time we tested the Xiaomi 13 Pro 21 and a mere 40+ minutes better than the Xiaomi 12T Pro.

It could be primarily due to the fact that the Xiaomi 13 Pro uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that has a TDP of 6.3W while the 13T Pro’s Dimensity 9200+ has a higher TDP of 8W, even if both are manufactured using the 4nm process. The latter also has a higher clock speed of 3.35GHz vs 3.2GHz on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Conclusion

This iteration of the Xiaomi 13T Pro is like a mixed bag of nuts — a lot of great features and a couple of let-downs. Performance is really good if you asked us but the battery life isn’t at par with the 13 Pro. The Leica cameras are very nice though and everything else seems spot on.

If you are after great performance and camera, then the Xiaomi 13T Pro is an easy choice. It’s not perfect but its shortcomings are overshadowed by everything else it can offer, all at an affordable price for a flagship smartphone.

The Xiaomi 13T Pro is available in two storage options: 12GB RAM and 512GB storage at Php 37,999, and another with 16GB RAM and 1TB storage that is priced at Php 39,999. Available color options are Alpine Blue, Meadow Green, and Black.

Xiaomi 13T Pro specs:
6.67” FHD+ CrystalRes AMOLED display, 144Hz refresh rate
20:9 aspect ratio with 2712 x 1220 pixels @ 446 ppi
HBM 1200 nits (typ) , 2600 nits peak brightness
Pro HDR display, Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10
Corning Gorilla Glass 5
Mediatek Dimensity 9200+ chipset
1x Arm Cortex-X3 up to 3.35GHz
3x Arm Cortex-A715 up to 3.0GHz
4x Arm Cortex-A510 up to 2.0GHz
Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU MP11
12GB, 16GB RAM LPDDDR5X RAM
256GB, 512GB, 1TB UFS 4.0 internal storage
Triple-camera LEICA VARIO-SUMMICRON 1:1.9-2.2/15-50mm ASPH
50MP 24mm wide angle camera (1/1.28” sensor size), f/1.9, 7P aspherical lens, OIS
8K @ 24fps
50MP 50mm f/1.9 telephoto camera
12MP 15mm f/2.2 ultrawide camera
8K @ 24fps, 4K @ 60fps
HDR10+ up to 4K at 30 fps, 960fps slow-motion
20MP f/2.2 front camera
HDR10+ up to 1080p @ 30 fps
5G dual SIM (nano SIM + nano SIM or nano SIM + eSIM)
Wi-Fi 7, Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 6 capability
Bluetooth 5.3
NFC
GPS (NSA+SA)
Dual Speakers with Dolby Atmos
In-screen fingerprint sensor
IP68 Rating
MIUI 14 based on Android 13
5000mAh battery with 120W HyperCharge
Meadow Green, Black, Alpine Blue*
200 grams (PU) / 206 grams (Glass) (weight)
162.2mm x 75.7mm x 8.49mm (Glass) / 8.62mm (PU) (dimensions)

What we liked about it:
* Build quality is great but design is too ordinary
* Leica cameras are fantastic
* Performance is through the roof
* Great display
* IP68 rating is useful but don’t rely too much
* Great price point (16GB RAM and 1TB is to beat!)

What we did not like:
* Battery life is shorter than predecessor
* Feels hefty and chunky on the hands