Xiaomi Mi 11 review: A worthy alternative to Android flagships
Our Verdict
The best deal in Android flagships right now, the Xiaomi Mi 11 offers an amazing platform for streaming video and running demanding apps and games, tied together with an enjoyable software experience. Merely yous lose out on photographic camera ability — assuming yous tin can get it in the first place.
For
- Good macro photography
- Above-boilerplate specs for cost
- Awesome curved QHD brandish with variable refresh rate
- Powerful chipset
Against
- Not bachelor in U.S.
- Underwhelming general camera functioning
Tom'south Guide Verdict
The best bargain in Android flagships right now, the Xiaomi Mi 11 offers an amazing platform for streaming video and running demanding apps and games, tied together with an enjoyable software experience. Just y'all lose out on camera power — assuming you lot can get it in the kickoff place.
Pros
- +
Proficient macro photography
- +
Above-average specs for price
- +
Awesome curved QHD display with variable refresh charge per unit
- +
Powerful chipset
Cons
- -
Not available in U.S.
- -
Underwhelming general camera performance
Xiaomi Mi eleven: Specs
Starting cost: £749
Display: 6.81-inch QHD AMOLED (3200 x 1440)
Refresh rate: xxx - 120Hz
Rear cameras: 108MP main (f1.8), 13MP ultrawide (f2.iv), 5MP telemacro (f2.4)
Forepart camera: 20MP (f2.2)
Chipset: Snapdragon 888
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 128GB/256GB
microSD: Non available
Operating system: Android eleven with MUI 12
Battery: 4,600 mAh
Charging: 55W wired, 50W wireless, 10W reverse wireless
Colors: Midnight Gray (pictured), White, Horizon Blue
Size: vi.v x 2.ix ten 0.3 inches (164.3 ten 74.half-dozen x 8.1mm)
Weight: 6.9 ounces (196g)
IP rating: north/a
With a cost lower than the Samsung Galaxy S21 and the offer of superior specs in several areas, the Mi xi volition delight anyone who fancies picking ane up with only how much it packs into the telephone.
In fact, the Mi xi is i of my favorite phones I've tested.
Throughout this Xiaomi Mi xi review, you'll come across that this phone isn't lacking when it comes to hardware. Its display and functioning specs together make this a dandy telephone for gaming, streaming or using CPU-intensive apps.
Its user feel is besides enjoyable, the software adding smart enhancements to the basic Android experience and its battery offering an effective mix of long life and speedy charging. Plus it'due south a pretty handsome slice of glass and circuitry to boot.
Just while U.Grand. shoppers can observe the Xiaomi Mi xi, U.Due south users won't be able to. And when it comes to cameras, the Mi eleven starts to stumble a bit.
Xiaomi Mi 11 review: Price and availability
Xiaomi brought the Mi xi to the U.K. on March 16, where it retails for either £749 for the 128GB storage version, or £799 for 256GB.
As a comparison, a Galaxy S21 with 128GB storage sells for £769, while a 128GB iPhone 12 goes for £849. It's not as big a price difference as nosotros were hoping earlier the announcement, simply the Mi 11, particularly the 256GB version, is quite the bargain compared to its rivals.
There'south no U.S. availability for Xiaomi, with the company currently in dispute with the U.S. government. (Non that Xiaomi phones were readily bachelor in the U.Southward. before that.) You'll probably be able to detect it available for import if y'all've got your mind prepare on a Mi 11, just given the additional cost and potential trouble with 4G/5G band compatibility, you're probably amend off ownership a phone that's already sold in your country. Our guide to the best Android phones is a good place to start if you need alternative ideas.
Xiaomi Mi eleven review: Pattern
From the front, the Xiaomi Mi 11 resembles many other Android flagships, but information technology'southward nonetheless a looker. It'south ready apart by its quad-curve display, which gives the phone a stylish contour that catches the light attractively.
I can't make up my listen on the look of the Mi eleven's back though. The camera crash-land in the top-left corner throws me off, since its 3-function structure looks muddled, even if the rounded square shape and silver ring effectually the primary lens look the business organisation from a distance.
It doesn't help that the rest of the back is patently bated from logos and regulatory text toward the bottom, which only makes it easier for your eye to settle on the cameras.
The Xiaomi Mi 11 screen's fabricated of Gorilla Glass Victus, the same drinking glass constitute on the Galaxy S21, so you shouldn't take to worry too much about small scratches actualization by accident. You'll need to be more careful almost exposing the Mi 11 to water and dust though; while Xiaomi says the telephone is h2o-resistant, it doesn't have an official IP rating.
U.One thousand. shoppers have a choice of three bones colors: a plain white, Midnight Gray and Horizon Blue. The greyness of my review unit looks classy with its satin-style finish (aside from all the fingerprints it picks up), although I similar how the bluish and white add a little more than visual interest to the phone.
Xiaomi Mi 11 review: Display
With a 6.viii inch-AMOLED panel, the Xiaomi Mi 11 is on the larger side of this twelvemonth'due south Android flagship phones. However a QHD resolution, i,500-nit maximum brightness and a variable 120Hz refresh rate mean this isn't merely another large screen telephone.
Those impressive features don't cause battery life to suffer excessively, either. The Mi 11 offers both a variable resolution and variable refresh rate, and so nether certain conditions, the phone will scale down to FHD, while opting for a 90Hz, 60Hz or 30Hz refresh speed to salve you power. The arroyo isn't every bit versatile as the LTPO brandish on the identically-sized Galaxy S21 Ultra, which can vary anywhere between 10Hz and 120Hz. But Xiaomi's approach with the Mi 10 is notwithstanding effective.
I loved watching video on the Mi 11. Poring over the trailer for the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, the bright colors, be it the green of the four testudine protagonists or the purple of their enemies' jumpsuits, were positively glowing. Ironically, the high-resolution display let me really appreciate the grainy, retro animation manner that the game'south cinematic uses to telephone call dorsum to the original cartoon.
Technically the Mi xi display curves effectually the side of the telephone on all four edges, merely this is only noticeable on the left and correct, and even then the curved portion is mostly bezel. The top and bottom curves are very subtle, with a particularly obvious bottom bezel. Yet the phone does feel nice to concur horizontally as a result.
Xiaomi's added a "hardware-level mistouch sensor" to avoid yous accidentally swiping the screen just by holding the curved edges. I didn't notice the phone being particularly sensitive to accidental touches, so this organisation seems to do its job. If you want, y'all tin alter the settings then the expressionless zone around the edges is larger or smaller if the automated system isn't to your liking.
Xiaomi Mi eleven review: Audio
Evidently quite proud of its Harman/Kardon- tuned stereo speakers, Xiaomi emblazons the speaker visitor'due south proper noun on the peak edge of the Mi 11.
Listening to British rap creative person Dave's "Location", I was impressed with the phone'south depiction of his vocals and the mid-range instrumentation behind him. But as is often the case with phone speakers, the bass frequencies were defective power.
Still, listening to the same song on an iPhone 12 Pro, information technology became clear that percussion is a lot more than prominent on the Mi 11, which if anything made the listening experience a chip worse. However, I also noticed an impressive sense of width from the Xiaomi's speakers too. Whether or not the speakers deserve the Harman/Kardon badge for quality, they deserve them for the mini soundstage consequence they conjure.
Xiaomi Mi 11 review: Cameras
Although not the most powerful or diverse camera array bachelor, the Xiaomi Mi eleven covers the basics. The dorsum three cameras consist of a 108MP main camera, a 13MP ultrawide camera and a 5MP macro camera, plus a flash. On the front, you take a single 20MP selfie cam.
While yous tin set the main photographic camera to take 108MP photos via the Pro mode in the Mi eleven'due south camera app, the phone takes 27MP photos by default. The Mi xi manages this by combining sensor data from four pixels into one virtual pixel, a process called pixel binning. This saves you infinite in your phone'south storage, plus it'southward ideal for low-light shots, at least in theory.
That doesn't seem to have helped the Mi eleven capture this view over an inner London park. It's much darker than the iPhone 12 Pro's image I'm using for comparison, which makes it hard to detect any additional item the 27MP shot gets over the 12MP iPhone photo.
Switching to 108MP mode on the Xiaomi Mi 11 goes some way to addressing this trouble. The direct lines and brilliant colors of the playground apparatus stand out much more, and makes it a far better rival for the iPhone shot. That's fine, except 108MP images can take up to nine times equally much storage space equally 12MP shots. That will fill up upwardly any phone's onboard storage pretty quick.
The ultrawide camera on the Mi 11 has a magnification of 0.6x — common for Android phones but less extreme than the 0.5x camera on the iPhone 12 Pro, hence the different look of these two images of Entrance. Either way, this round belongs to the iPhone thanks to its much richer colors.
The simply matter missing from a typical flagship camera set-upward on the Mi 11 is a telephoto sensor, but these tend to appear on more than expensive models of flagships, such every bit the expected Xiaomi Mi xi Pro. What you lot become instead with the Mi 11 is a "telemacro" photographic camera. A lot of cheaper Android phones include macro cameras, merely the Mi 11'due south version offers variable magnification to better achieve good shut-upwards shots.
The result is the best macro shot I've taken with a dedicated macro lens on a smartphone. I tried taking the same shot of this daffodil with the chief camera besides, and while I was able to get a better focus on the stigma in the center, I couldn't focus on the petals at the same time, and the colors are far less vivid. Information technology's convincing plenty proof of the photographic camera's inclusion is worth your time, rather than information technology being a contemptuous endeavor past the phone maker to crash-land up the lens count.
It's still very hard to take these macro photos without any stabilization. The i you see hither was from a pick of 17 attempts. Ordinarily, it takes me five at virtually to detect a shot I'm happy with.
I have to hand it to Xiaomi when it comes to the selfie cam. Normally I enjoy the more vivid colors you meet in an iPhone 12 Pro selfie, but here I simply look sunburnt. The Xiaomi has supplied a much more natural-looking selfie, plus does a slightly better job of cutting my head out from the copse in the groundwork. The tradeoff is a much smoother epitome, which looks more bogus despite the colors improve reflecting those I saw in the viewfinder.
Xiaomi Mi xi review: Operation
Under the hood, the Xiaomi Mi 11 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. While you get the latest chipset Qualcomm has to offering, you but take 8GB RAM, which pales in comparison to the 12GB yous can now find on top performing Androids like the Galaxy S21 Ultra or Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
Information technology'due south still enough for the Xiaomi to really impress. On the Geekbench v general benchmark, the Mi eleven scored 1,112 on the single core section and 3,379 on the multi-core department. The basic Galaxy S21 only manages 1,048 and iii,302 respectively.
The Galaxy S21 Plus, which uses the same flake and RAM capacity, beat the Mi 11'southward unmarried core score with ane,116, but the Mi 11 edged out the S21 Plus' multicore score of iii,300. The S21 Ultra hands beats the Mi 11 on both tests, but has an easy advantage thank you to 12GB of RAM.
In 3D Mark'due south Wild Life graphics test, the Mi xi achieved a score of 5,676, which averages to 34 frames per second. That tops the Milky way S21's 5,504 point/33 FPS result while finishing in line with the Galaxy S21 Plus (5,650/34 FPS).
Trying out Curiosity Contest of Champions proved that these scores are reflected by real-world performance. Watching Spider-Human being vanquish up rival superheroes looked great and displayed smoothly on the Xiaomi Mi 11. The Mi 11's 480Hz touch sampling rate allows the display to react faster to taps than the average phone's.
There'south also a vapor cooling bedchamber built into the Mi eleven, which is likely why I didn't notice the phone heat up even after trying out all the games I downloaded, or during the benchmark tests. Even charging upward the telephone didn't noticeably increase the temperature of the casing.
Xiaomi Mi eleven review: 5G
The badge on the back of the Mi xi tells you it's a 5G-ready telephone. However making sure you'll really be able to use it on a faster network is a little more than complicated.
5G networks work on i or more signal bands, which some phones can pick upwardly and others tin can't. This is why if you're adamant to bring a Mi xi over to the U.S., it's crucial yous check which bands your mobile carrier offers and which the Mi 11 volition work with.
U.G. customers shouldn't take to worry though. There's much greater unity between the 5G carriers over here, and all of them should offer 5G back up with the Mi 11 according to Xiaomi's specs.
Xiaomi Mi 11 review: Bombardment life and charging
The 4,500 mAh battery in the Xiaomi Mi 11 is smaller than average for a phone of this size. The Samsung Milky way S21 Ultra has a 6.8-inch screen like the Mi 11, but gets a 5,000 mAh cell.
Notwithstanding, the Mi eleven's battery does a practiced job at keeping the phone powered up. Subsequently watching an hour of YouTube in full screen mode (the principal battery-intensive activity I use my phones for), the Mi 11 lost eight% of its full accuse. That equates to a full day of binge-watching the remakes of Hamilton songs in Beast Crossing: New Horizons, which ways the Mi eleven will probably handle a day of bodily piece of work capably without needing an emergency trip to a charging plug.
The Mi eleven also gets points by not just including a charger in the box, but by offering yous a 55W cake to match the phone's maximum charging speed.
At that place are a few faster charging standards out there, for instance, the 65W one used by the OnePlus 8T. But filling your phone to 45% in 15 minutes, 80% in 30 and 100% in 48 minutes as you can with the Xiaomi Mi 11 is still respectably fast. It certainly beats the 25W charging offered past the Galaxy S21, which doesn't come with an included charger in the box.
The 50W wireless charging on the Mi xi ways you should achieve almost identical speeds to those above without cables. However you'll demand i of Xiaomi'south own charging pads to hitting that speed and since we don't take one we couldn't check the speed for ourselves.
Finally, the Mi xi offers contrary wireless charging upwardly to 10W to give a friend's phone a heave of power or to go on your wearables and wireless earbuds topped up.
Xiaomi Mi 11 review: Software
The typical Android 11 features come wrapped in Xiaomi'south MIUI 12 on the Mi eleven. Information technology balances the super clean look of stock Android seen on phones like the Google Pixel 5 with the more modified feature fix of something similar the Galaxy S21'due south I UI, which is an overall positive.
Among the unique enhancements in MIUI 12 are floating windows, which let y'all open up a fully functional resizable window of one app over another, either from a notification or via the recent apps screen. All modern Android phones can open two apps in dissever screen, but this gives you more than liberty to await at the areas of the apps that you want, quickly taking notes from a browser window or even copy and pasting between them simply equally one case.
Other handy only less notable features include an always-on display, an optional app drawer, and security offerings similar blurring app previews and removing location data from shared photos. MIUI also offers an iOS-way choice to divide the notification shade and quick settings menu into two, accessed separately by swiping down from either the left or right side of the top edge of the screen.
The telephone ships with a fair number of bundled-in Xiaomi and third-political party apps. But the Mi 11 is thoughtful enough to pack these abroad into a scattering of folders for a less messy home screen, assuming you don't want to just delete them all.
Xiaomi Mi 11 review: Verdict
Our Xiaomi Mi 11 review finds an impressive phone, with very few omissions. It would have been prissy to have a telephoto photographic camera on the back instead of the telemacro lens, and a bigger battery would accept been welcome, too. Just fifty-fifty without those features, this phone withal comes with premium capabilities comparable to more than expensive phones.
Nosotros have trivial hesitation in recommending this to an Android fan looking for an culling to Samsung, particularly if y'all prioritize streaming videos or playing games over capturing photos. Still photography addicts, and particularly U.S. shoppers, should look elsewhere for the time beingness.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/xiaomi-mi-11
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