Xiaomi 11T Pro review: A budget flagship phone done right
PHOTO: Xiaomi.
PUBLISHED ONNovember 16, 2021 5:39 AMByLiu Hongzuo
How cheap can a 'flagship' class phone go?
Xiaomi wasn't simply content with making a successor to the Xiaomi Mi 11 series. Enter the Xiaomi 11T Pro, where the Chinese electronics brand kept to flagship components, an aggressive price tag, and figurative magic.
We start with its $799 (12GB RAM + 256GB storage) retail price. That's already $200 lower than the Mi 11's launch price, and yet the Xiaomi 11T Pro still comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset.
In return, you get a lower-rated 1080p display using the same 20:9 aspect ratio, you lose wireless charging, but you still get IP53 water resistance instead of the usual IP68 certification on flagship-grade handsets. Xiaomi also made sure you didn't feel shortchanged with a ton of perks.
The newer 11T Pro boasts a bigger battery (5,000mAh) and crazy-fast 120W wired fast-charging. It uses a slightly different triple rear camera configuration (108MP + 8MP + 5MP), but has the same functions (primary, ultra-wide, telemacro lens). The AMOLED display gets a bump of its touch sampling rate to 480Hz, on top of its 120Hz display refresh rate.
If that's not enough, the 11T Pro sets itself apart from its predecessors with its 'cinemagic' features, which Xiaomi says makes pro-grade-like filmmaking easier.
Would its aggressive price point help us forego the few specs it toned down from the previous Mi 11 model? Is it truly as 'cinemagical' as it claims to be? What else are we giving up to get one of the most affordable Snapdragon 888 powered phones in town? Let's find out.
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Design and handling
Xiaomi 11T Pro's design is a slight refinement from its predecessor, the Xiaomi Mi 11. In essence, Xiaomi kept the physical elements that worked for its flagship-grade handsets. It shares the same OnePlus-like rounded rear edges and sides, with a high-polish plastic back.
If we liked one improvement, that would be the 11T Pro's rear camera housing. In fact, it looks almost like a Huawei P40 Pro from behind.
Both the Xiaomi Mi 11 and Mi 11 Ultra had distinct, yet unwieldy rear camera housings that did no justice to the phone's overall practicality. Instead of reusing their humpbacked look, Xiaomi 11T Pro's camera housing is slimmer than what you'd normally see on Huawei's earlier P series handsets.
It's a clean nook, with cameras flushed, and it helps make the 11T Pro look a little less cobbled together. However, we do expect higher attention to detail for the best of what Xiaomi currently offers.
Unfortunately, the phone still comes with excessive regulatory and warning labels that can't be removed, which really made us wish that the provided phone case in the box was opaque, instead of its traditional transparent protector.
As a "Pro" Android phone, 11T Pro is 76.9mm wide and 164.1mm tall, falling within the 'standard' size for phones of its class.
For reference, it's about the physical size of a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, but with a 6.67-inch screen instead of a 6.8-inch panel. Xiaomi also opted for a rounded volume rocker and flat power button, so it's easy to tell where your keys are without needing to glance at them. Beyond that, the phone's ergonomics isn't better or worse than most other China-made alternatives.
A subtle yet appreciated design point is the 11T Pro's built-in speaker placement. Xiaomi tried its best to ensure that both stereo speakers are placed on opposite ends of the phone, making it less lopsided than many other Chinese-designed handsets.
Surprisingly, the 11T Pro is not waterproof (only certified splashproof at IP53), which we felt was a much-needed feature that could've given its design and flagship positioning a little more weight. Nevertheless, it's still nice to know there's some water resistance for its reduced price point.
Display and audio
Xiaomi's 6.67-inch AMOLED DotDisplay (2,400 x 1,080 pixels resolution with a hole-punch for the front camera) comes with 120Hz refresh rate, 1000-nits peak brightness, HDR10+ support , and P3 wide-colour gamut. The display specs make the 11T Pro viewing experience great for online videos and high-quality images.
In the audio department, Xiaomi 11T Pro delivered unexpectedly impressive audio quality through its built-in speakers. With both speakers pointing in opposite directions, the 11T Pro offered a stereo sound stage and quality that exceeded not only most handsets but even some phones well above its price point. It's also one of Xiaomi's better-sounding mobile phones so far.
It offers a well-bodied sound signature leaning towards high mids and with punctuated basslines. Where it falls short is audio separation, trailing off at lower volume levels. The volume control does not sound uniform either, with the first 75 per cent incremental, and any tweaks above the 75 per cent mark being a massive step up in loudness.
UI and features
Xiaomi 11T Pro comes with MIUI 12 out of the box. The reskin is based on stock Android 11. So, you're not going to get new Android 12 features until a future firmware update (if it ever comes).
MIUI 12 can feel a little unintuitive initially since Xiaomi tucked related core settings in separate categories (e.g. not all display-related settings are under Settings > Display). Also, the phone's default settings don't take full advantage of its hardware and software features by default. You'll need to comb through your configuration to enjoy things like 120Hz refresh rate and its AI Image Engine.
A massive MIUI 12 refresh revamped its Control Center - that's the pull-down submenu for core phone settings and status. Pulling down Control Center will first show your notifications and alerts. To see Quick Settings (Airplane mode, Wi-Fi, brightness etc.), you'll need to swipe sideways after.
We're in two minds about Control Centre's interface. The full-screen look makes it easy to check more notifications in one glance, but the extra swipe to find Airplane Mode, Bluetooth, and Brightness feels clumsy. Fortunately, Xiaomi still offers the old Control Centre style with both settings and notifications available in a single pane, but you'll need to enable it within Settings.
MIUI 12 (global version) is also the first MIUI to properly ship with an App Drawer on boot (no additional installation required). To find it, you need to head into Settings > Home Screen > Home Screen and pick "with App Drawer" - this gives you the feature with an app search function at the bottom and app categories at the top.
What's remarkable is the ability to create your own "category". You can easily group your apps based on your needs (e.g. a food delivery category lets you park Grab and Foodpanda together, and a ride-hailing category lets you group the same Grab app, but with ComfortDelgro).
A major drawback in Xiaomi's new UI is its touch-and-go attitude towards app permissions. It seeks your app permissions like any other Android phone looking to access features like storage and microphone. However, the interface doesn't actually confirm if you agree or disagree with the suggested settings.
It's easy to accidentally dismiss the notification when your taps stray outside of the permissions pop-up. The downside is that it's never certain about allowing or prohibiting permissions - you'll have to go back and double-check what the phone chose for you.
We've lost count of the number of times where we went back to Settings to ensure the app received the permissions we're comfortable with. The lackadaisical approach to such privacy settings tells us that such basic protections on the 11T Pro are an afterthought, and it's not something we recommend on any handset - whether it's flagship-grade, Xiaomi-made, or not.
Imaging performance
On the rear sits a triple camera configuration with the following key specs:
- Main: 108MP, 0.7μm pixel size, 2.1μm 9-in-1 Super Pixel (after pixel binning), f/1.75 aperture
- Ultra-wide: 8MP, 120° FOV, f/2.2 aperture
- Telemacro: 5MP, f/2.4 aperture, variable AutoFocus (3 to 7cm)
On paper, the 11T Pro’s rear camera system isn’t anything to shout about, given how Xiaomi (and even Samsung) are no stranger to 108MP primary cameras - even last year's Mi 10T Pro featured it. To be exact, Xiaomi Mi 11T Pro is using Samsung's ISOCELL HM2 108MP image sensor. To sweeten the deal further, Xiaomi packed an insane amount of software-based features to make the 11T Pro really easy for most people to shoot with.
Videography received Xiaomi’s One-click AI Cinema treatment, with features like built-in Magic Zoom (basically dolly zoom, also known as the Hitchcock Zoom), Time Freeze (freezes the background while the subject is moving), Slow Shutter (commonly used in chase scenes), and many more effects.
Most of these extras are parked under the “More” tab inside Xiaomi’s default camera app (swipe right until the last option).
In our tests, these features are best paired with a gimbal or tripod. It’s nearly impossible to shoot a good Magic Zoom or Parallel World video clip in handheld mode unless you have surgeon-steady hands or excellent shooting conditions (a well-behaved subject, well-lit background, etc). In our sample above, our Magic Zoom shot was already assisted by an auto-stabilising gimbal.
What stood out to us more was Audio Zoom, which focuses on the subject’s speech, 8K30FPS, and 4K60FPS recording, and HDR10+ filming - these features are much more immediately accessible and consistent at putting out high-quality clips.
On to the sample images!
Sample images
It appears that the Xiaomi 11T Pro shoots well as long as you keep to 2x zoom or lower. There's far too much noise and artefacts in its 5x and 10x zoom shots for the images to be social media-ready.
Benchmark performance
As mentioned earlier, the main processor driving the Xiaomi 11T Pro is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888, which makes the phone a 2021 flagship-grade offering. You'd think that it's par for the course for a flagship phone to carry a flagship processor, but Xiaomi does it by offering these components at a price lower than most alternatives.
Granted, having a powerful chipset is only the first step to its pricing-first strategy; we'll see how it holds up against other flagship models where performance is concerned and as a phone as a whole.
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JetStream 2.0
JetStream 2 is a combination of a variety of JavaScript and Web Assembly benchmarks, including benchmarks that came before, like SunSpider and Octane.
It primarily tests for a system's and browser's ability in delivering a good web experience. It runs a total of 64 subtests, each weighted equally, with multiple iterations, and takes the geometric mean to compute the overall score.
AnTuTu
Note #1: As of March 9, 2020, all AnTuTu benchmarks were removed from the Google Play Store. This move likely arose from Google's attempts to relieve the Play Store of apps that violate their policies. AnTuTu is working with Google to restore their app listing. For this review, we used the APK file that was available on AnTuTu's website.
AnTuTu is an all-in-one benchmark that tests CPU, GPU, memory, and storage. The CPU benchmark evaluates both integer and floating-point performance, and the GPU tests assess 2D and 3D performance, the memory test measures available memory bandwidth and latency, and the storage tests gauge the read and write speeds of a device's flash memory.
Note #2: the Xiaomi 11T Pro automatically registers AnTuTu to its Game Booster performance overclocking tool and runs when the benchmark is live, resulting in manipulated benchmarking numbers. Take the score below with a large grain of salt. The bigger the grain, the better.
Note #3: We do not have AnTuTu scores for the Xiaomi 10T Pro, in part due to difficulties in obtaining a copy of the app.
Geekbench 5
Geekbench CPU is a cross-platform processor benchmark that tests both single-core and multi-core performance with workloads that simulate real-world usage. Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000, which is the score of an Intel Core i3-8100.
3DMark Sling Shot Extreme
3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features, including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback.
The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. The test's Unlimited mode ignores screen resolutions.
We're also collecting scores with 3DMark's new benchmark, Wild Life. Below are the test's Unlimited Mode scores. We do not have Wild Life scores for the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE, as the review was completed before the benchmark was released.
Performance benchmark remarks
The Xiaomi 11T Pro is capable of pulling flagship-grade burst benchmark numbers, but it was unable to sustain them consistently during repeated tests. We chalk that up to its cooling management.
Past the initial burst of high performance, the phone throttles its power even when it's not hot to the touch. As such, for the most part, the Xiaomi 11T Pro trailed behind the compared devices, some of which were using processors from last year.
In real-world use, such aggressive power and cooling management might impact users who need to use the 11T Pro beyond an extended period of time - e.g. filming and video recording, longer streaming binges, and gaming. During regular browsing, the 11T Pro is nothing short of smooth and fluid.
Battery life
Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parametres:
- Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100 per cent
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
- Constant data streaming through email and Twitter
Xiaomi 11T Pro packs a generous 5,000mAh total capacity and offered 737 minutes of non-stop uptime during our benchmark, conking out only after 12 hours. In our day-to-day moderate use, the phone doesn't ache for a battery top-off in the middle of a workday.
The phone has 120W Xiaomi HyperCharge fast-charging, and 120W is achievable if you use the included charging adapter that comes with the phone. Of course, safety measures meant that the 11T Pro doesn't charge at 120W all the way. In our multiple attempts, the phone consistently took an hour or less to charge from 0 per cent to 100 per cent - it's easily the fastest charging we've seen on a phone this year.
All in all, the 11T Pro feels like a phone can be left untethered during waking hours, and you can get a full charge in before a good night's sleep. Not having to hunt for power plugs, power banks, or any emergency top-offs in the middle of the day is a nice touch. Now if only it had wireless charging for added convenience.
Conclusion
Xiaomi 11T Pro feels like phone with high-quality features and parts, with a general user experience that feels good throughout the handset. While it's UI leaves room for improvement, it has a great display and audio quality.
The excessively fast charging is consistent and its uptime is sufficiently long, making it a standout feature that can compete against other premium flagship devices out there.
11T Pro still falls a little short when it comes to the phone's attention to UI detail, which prevents the Xiaomi 11T Pro from being a truly great flagship handset. It's also IP53-certified, which is a little less resistant to the elements compared to flagship mobiles with IP68 resistance. Finally, it pushes out a lot of raw power, but it's not able to sustain its performance in extended use.
That said, at $799 (12GB RAM + 256GB storage), the 11T Pro has great value for money. Your alternatives in Singapore are the Vivo X60 Pro (S$1,199, but not using Snapdragon 888), the Asus ZenFone 8 ($999, but tiny display) or the Samsung Galaxy S21 series that officially start from $1,248 (but you'll have to pay more for the larger screen variants).
Xiaomi's Mi 11 might be your next best value-for-money choice, but that's provided that Xiaomi still stocks these units here. And, dont forget that these alternatives are about $200 more than the 11T Pro.
That makes the Xiaomi 11T Pro the rare few 5G-capable, flagship-grade phone below $800. Taking into account its good display and audio, rapid-fast charging, while checking all the other flagship boxes, we're comfortable with awarding it Best Value, putting the Xiaomi 11T Pro in a strong running against other $1,000 alternatives.
To beat the 11T Pro, the next sub-$1,000 flagship phone needs to have everything Xiaomi has, but better UI, more consistent performance, and proper IP68 resistance - at the bare minimum.
This article was first published in Hardware Zone.