The Xiaomi 12T Pro is a new mid-range smartphone from the Chinese brand that aims to deliver a high-end camera experience on a phone that doesn’t break the bank. For the most part, this phone offers incredible value for money thanks to its vibrant 6.67-inch AMOLED display and its 200MP main lens. However, it is hard to ignore the corners that have been cut here to get all of this value packed into a phone that costs just shy of R15,000. For starters, this phone doesn’t have any wireless charging which is basic these days. It also lacks an official IP rating meaning unlike mostly every other phone on the market, this isn’t waterproof and dustproof.
Watch the Xiaomi 12T Pro review in video form below
Instead of focusing on some key features, Xiaomi has instead packed this phone with a 200MP camera lens and 120W charging. Both of these could have been half the spec in order to budget for some waterproofing at least.
Apart from that, the Xiaomi 12T Pro is a great device and the main selling point here, its 200MP camera, does a good job. It is one of the highest megapixel camera sensors you can get on a phone and it produces incredible shots. Sadly, the secondary camera lenses aren’t even half as good so you’ll likely never use them.
Other specs on this Xiaomi 12T Pro include a 5,000mAh battery, 5G support and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. This means that everything I threw at the phone worked smoothly and flawlessly, except for water of course because you know… a touchy subject.
The Xiaomi 12T Pro doesn’t look very fancy at all. It boasts a large screen in the front with a punch-hole front-facing camera. The back is glass and the frame is made from plastic. There’s the giant camera sensor on the back that boasts the following camera array:
- 200 MP, f/1.7, (wide), 1/1.22″, 0.64µm, PDAF, OIS
- 8 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide), 1/4″, 1.12µm
- 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro)
- 8K@24fps, 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240fps, HDR10+
On the top you’ll find a Harmon Kardon logo because the speakers are powered by the brand. More on that in a bit. There’s also an IR blaster which is another strange addition. There’s the USB C charging port at the bottom, no buttons on the left hand side and the volume rocker and power button on the right.
The Xiaomi 12T Pro is 8.6mm thick and weighs over 200g. It includes an under-screen fingerprint scanner too and facial recognition but it isn’t as sure as say, Apple’s FaceID. The overall design is pretty mediocre, to say the least. The black model is especially a snorefest but I have seen it in blue and it looks a lot better. Be wise when shopping around for your ideal model.
The display is quite impressive on this phone. It packs a 120Hz 6.67 inch AMOLED with a pixel per inch of 446. It gets very bright with a peak brightness of 900 nits for HDR and Dolby Vision content and runs at around 500 nits on daily use. The display’s refresh rate is adaptive meaning it changes depending on what you’re doing. I could also manually set it to lower to save battery. The display doesn’t have the highest resolution. It is only 1220 x 2712 but things are still sharp and clear.
The general performance of the Xiaomi 12T Pro is decent. I played some games and while the phone did get hot, it was manageable. The in-game overlay also helped me boost the performance of my games to take advantage of the display’s refresh rate. I also ran some benchmarks and got the following scores:
- Geekbench
- Single-Core – 1340
- Multi-Core – 4028
Xiaomi 12T Pro Camera System
Xiaomi has once again proven that you can pump all the megapixels into a camera possible but that doesn’t make it a good camera. While the 200MP sensor is decent, it isn’t any better than a camera lens with say 50MP. That is to say, this camera sensor isn’t bad but you really don’t need 200MP to pull off what you get on this 12T Pro.
200MP Main Lens
By default, the camera shoots a 12.5MP photo. You can choose to use all 200MP in one shot but those photos will likely take up close to 100MB of space per shot. The 200MP shots also take a few seconds to shoot which isn’t ideal for most photography either. You can choose a 50MP shot mode which results in smaller photos and quicker shooting though.
The 200MP shot mode comes in handy for two reasons. Firstly, if you ever need to print giant billboards using the photos you take, you can with these large files. Secondly, you can crop these photos quite nicely and still end up with a detailed shot.
200MP Main Lens
Generally speaking, the 200MP lens does a decent job of taking photos and filming content. The AI on the phone does over-sharpen stuff a bit too much for my liking though. Some shots looked a bit noisy as a result.
I was very impressed with the main lens’ low-light capabilities. The phone just naturally shoots night time shots without even switching to a manual night mode. These photos also came out a lot brighter than I expected.
2MP Macro Lens
Sadly, the other two lenses are just horrible. The 2MP macro lens doesn’t work well in even medium light and shots are blurry and ugly. The 8MP wide lens is also too low of a megapixel to produce anything close to the main lens. You’ll likely avoid using these two after mastering the main lens just because of the drastic difference between them.
I was also impressed by the general video quality of the phone. It records at up to 8K 30fps but you’ll likely stick to a 4K video to benefit from some stabilization.
200MP Night Shot
When it comes to the battery life, the Xiaomi 12T Pro does a decent job carrying through the day. I was able to use the phone for the whole day and still have 20% left at night at times. That’s about 10-12 hours of general use in one charge. It is great.
The 120W charger also means this phone can charge to around 70% in just 15 minutes and to full in under 30 minutes. I get that this is convenient but I can’t help but worry about the battery health and lifespan with 120W charging heating but the cell so drastically. I would honestly opt for a lower watt charger just to save the damage to the battery.
Other than that, the general use of the Xiaomi 12T Pro was pleasant. I hated the bloatware in the phone’s MIUI 13 OS but getting around and using the phone wasn’t a problem at all. The control panel is especially a lot cleaner than most Android phones and the general look and feel is somewhat clean and sleek.
Xiaomi says this phone will get three years of Android updates and four years of security patches which is good news too.
Overall, I wish Xiaomi added things like wireless charging and waterproofing to this phone. The 200MP is also overkill and that could have been 150MP in favour of wireless charging. However, it is still a generally decent phone at a competitive price tag.
Xiaomi 12T Pro Review
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Design - 7/10
7/10
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Performance - 8.5/10
8.5/10
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Camera - 8.5/10
8.5/10
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Value - 8/10
8/10
Summary
The Xiaomi 12T Pro packs a hefty 200MP camera which doesn’t really get utilized to its full potential and the phone lacks some basics but it is still great value for money.
Overall
8/10Pros
200MP camera is great
General decent performance
Cons
Other cameras aren’t great
No wireless charging
No IP rating