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Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro review: Simply terrific!
Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro
Xiaomi stepped a tad far out of its comfort zone earlier this year by launching a fully decked-out flagship – the Mi 10 Pro. However, the uncharacteristically high (for a Xiaomi phone) asking price put it squarely into a tier where the likes of Samsung and OnePlus reign supreme. Taking a step back, the Chinese giant launched the Mi 10T Pro a few weeks ago. The device is a specs monster, and despite making concessions in a few areas and shaving a big chunk off the price vis-a-vis the Mi 10 pair, it still sounds like a great package. In this review, we assess if the Mi 10T Pro is a return to form for Xiaomi as the company again raises its war cry for an all-out budget flagship contest.
Design
Mi 10T Pro is one big device, and there is no other way to put it.
Even for a person with fairly large hands, this phone will be quite a handful. And oh, it weighs 218 grams, so you’ll definitely feel the heft in your denim pockets. The front, back as well as the rear camera module are all protected by a layer of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5. A glance down the specs sheet reveals that there is no IP-certification for dust and water resistance, which is worrisome.
The rear panel slopes alongside the edges and meets the frame without creating any sharp edges, and so does the front glass panel. The curvy profile provides a comfortable in-hand feel, but I found myself adjusting the phone every now and then in my hands as I tried reaching the upper half of the display. Despite its heft and generous dimensions, the build quality is top-notch through and through.
However, we have a couple of qualms, one of which you can see in the image below. The glossy rear panel, especially on the Cosmic Black variant we had for review, is a fingerprint magnet and quickly becomes a party venue for dust particles as well. I found myself obsessively cleaning the rear panel every time I chanced to look upon it. However, the almost mirror-like finish is quite an eye-candy.
If you are not a fan of all that shine and gloss, you will be better served by the Lunar Silver variant that flaunts a more understated matte finish on the rear panel. Xiaomi also sells an Aurora Blue trim that rocks a beautiful gradient finish, but it is only up for grabs in a few overseas markets. The second qualm I had with the device is its huge camera bump. It makes the device wobble and had me constantly worrying about scratching the camera lenses. Xiaomi bundles an anti-bacterial case in the retail package, which you should definitely put to use.
Overall, I think that the Mi 10T Pro is built well and doesn’t look half bad either. But you should definitely visit a nearby Xiaomi store in person and check if the size and heft of the Mi 10T Pro are manageable for you.
Display
The large size of the Mi 10T Pro is somewhat of a red flag, but it also brings a perk too – a large display that is tailor-made for multimedia consumption. The added screen space ensures that on-screen controls in games are not cramped and watching a couple of Supernatural episodes was also a pleasing experience. And now that we’re talking about the experience part, there is both good and bad news.
Let’s address the elephant in the room here – the LCD panel on the Mi 10T Pro. With an asking price of €549 (~ £549.99 / ₹39,999), the Mi 10T Pro falls straight into the premium segment – a bracket where you likely won’t find a smartphone packing ‘an inferior LCD’ display as they all rock AMOLED panels. In its defense, Xiaomi noted that it chose an LCD panel since some users face visual issues while using an AMOLED display, which sounds like a reasonably inclusive move.
But from an average smartphone buyer’s perspective who is willing to fork that amount, the ‘AMOLED is better than LCD’ concept will play a major deciding factor in actually buying the phone. But that’s only half the story when it comes to the Mi 10T Pro’s display attributes. Let’s first see what the display has to offer:
Display quality is impressive
The color reproduction was good, viewing angles were satisfactory and thanks to a pixel density of almost 400ppi, on-screen content was sharp. Sunlight legibility was also up to the mark, but the colors definitely look a bit dimmer compared to an AMOLED display. This is, of course, due to the lower brightness output of the LCD panel compared to an AMOLED screen. I noticed that at low brightness levels, there was minimal backlight bleeding in the darker areas of the screen or subdued color contrast while playing games or watching videos.
Compared to an AMOLED display, I found out that the Mi 10T Pro’s LCD panel offered a satisfactorily good contrast. The difference between the Mi 10T Pro’s LCD panel vs the OnePlus 8’s AMOLED display truly widened while viewing HDR content though. Additionally, the gap between brightness output becomes evident when using the Mi 10T Pro under direct sunlight. But as I mentioned earlier, you will only notice the trade-offs of an LCD display when you compare it against a well-tuned AMOLED display.
Among the best LCD screens on a phone out there
It goes without saying that colors on an AMOLED display are punchier and look more pleasing to the eyes. However, that doesn’t always mean you see the natural colors, and the color separation can also be underwhelming if not tuned properly. I performed a few synthetic quality comparison tests and noticed that color separation in the banding and contrast tests was slightly better on the Mi 10T Pro’s AMOLED display compared to a run-of-the-mill AMOLED panel. You can check more Mi 10T Pro display tests in this excellent XDA-Developers article to understand how good it actually is.
But the real ace here is the refresh rate, as the Mi 10T Pro’s display offers a refresh rate of 144Hz, which is the highest you can get out there. Needless to say, everything from navigating the UI to doom-scrolling my Twitter feed appeared silky smooth. While the jump from 90Hz to 120Hz is claimed to be barely noticeable, I did notice a tangible difference in smoothness when I switched from using the Realme 7’s 90Hz panel to the Mi 10T Pro’s 144Hz display.
The smoothest screen I've used so far
When it comes to gaming, the high refresh rate is always a good thing to have for high fps gameplay. But there are not many games that support high fps gameplay, so you can’t really take full advantage of the Mi 10T Pro’s 144Hz screen. However, the device will be up to the job if the on-screen content’s frame rate stands above the 60fps mark, thanks to a technology called AdaptiveSync.
Unlike the fixed refresh rate values (60Hz / 90Hz / 120Hz) on a lot of smartphones with an AMOLED panel, AdaptiveSync on the Mi 10T Pro allows the screen to automatically adjust the refresh rate (30Hz / 48Hz / 50Hz / 60Hz / 90Hz / 120Hz / 144Hz) based on the content you’re watching. So, if you are watching a 60fps video, the screen refresh rate automatically goes into 120Hz mode to minimize any instances of tearing or artifacts, providing an eye-pleasing smooth visual experience.
However, there is certainly a crowd of potential buyers out there that would have appreciated an OLED panel with a lower 90Hz refresh rate compared to a ‘sub-par’ 144Hz LCD panel. I did compare the Mi 10T Pro’s display against the 90Hz AMOLED panel on the pricier Mi 10, and it does look more vibrant and pleasing to the eyes. But on its own, the Mi 10T Pro’s LCD display is fantastic.
Performance
The Mi 10T Pro draws its firepower from Qualcomm’s top-of-the-line Snapdragon 865 SoC that is paired with 8 gigs of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB of fast UFS 3.1 storage. Here at Pocketnow, we aren’t big fans of synthetic benchmarking scores, but it goes without saying that the Xiaomi offering sits right at the peak of the performance hill alongside other Snapdragon 865-powered phones.
Blazing fast performance
There is RAM aplenty, which means you can run a lot of apps without worrying about the device killing tasks in the background. There is no microSD card expansion slot, so you have to make do with the onboard 128GB space.
In day-to-day usage, I found the app launch experience to be zippy, and there was no aggressive resource optimization in the background. Coming to the gaming part, the Mi 10T Pro absolutely crushes it, which is to be expected from a device that packs Qualcomm’s flagship processor. But I was impressed to see that even after gaming sessions that lasted up to 30-40 minutes, there was almost no tangible throttling despite some heating in the upper region of the device.
The most enjoyable aspect of having a 144Hz display is that you can fully enjoy its perks in certain games that support high fps output. I played Vainglory, and using Gamebench, I recorded a steady frame rate of 144fps for almost 96 percent of my gaming sessions (with fps drops only happening on the load screen or animation in the middle of the actual gaming session).
On PUBG Mobile, I recorded a stable 60fps frame rate with even higher stability, which is quite impressive considering the fact that I played a few battle royale matches at Ultra HD graphics settings and frame rate set to Ultra. The only drawback is that there are not enough games to take advantage of that 144Hz display.
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