Xiaomi 13 Lite: The cheapest Xiaomi 13 sports the new Snapdragon 7 Gen 1

At an official price of US$469.00, the 6.55-inch Xiaomi 13 Lite is not exactly cheap, but the middle-class lightweight can occasionally be found online for less than US$400. With its curved screen, glass back and classy design, the Xiaomi 13 Lite clearly sets itself apart visually and haptically from its predecessor, the Xiaomi 12 Lite, which had to make do with a plastic back.

Takes much better photos than the predecessor

Under the hood, the Xiaomi 13 Lite differs from the Xiaomi 12 Lite only in a few details. The camera setup is new, because the 108 MP main camera of the predecessor has been replaced by a 50 MP camera, the heart of which is the Sony IMX766. Although this gives the smartphone nominally less than half the megapixel count, it takes significantly better photos than the Xiaomi 12 Lite equipped with the Samsung HM2 image sensor.

The dual selfie camera of the Xiaomi 13 Lite is literally an eye-catcher, because next to the actual 32 MP selfie lens sits another 8 MP depth sensor, which is said to ensure better bokeh effects. However, the camera notch is quite large, which may not please everyone.

There has also been a change of SoC, which turned out to be rather unspectacular in our tests: The new Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 replaces the Snapdragon 778G 5G of the Xiaomi 12 Lite, but is not much faster. At least the Xiaomi 13 Lite gets a slightly larger performance advantage in terms of graphics acceleration, as its Adreno 644 GPU is around 20 percent faster than the Adreno 642L in the Snapdragon 778 5G.

120Hz AMOLED with 1000 nits

Thanks to its 120 Hz AMOLED display, the Xiaomi 13 Lite can be operated comfortably and smoothly and is also well suited for games thanks to its touch sampling rate of 240 Hz. For example, the smartphone achieves a largely stable 40 frames per second in PUBG Mobile at HDR/Ultra.

The AMOLED panel scores additional plus points with its high luminosity. At a peak value of 1036 cd/m², it shines a little more brightly than the bright screen of the predecessor, which achieved up to 917 cd/m².

Read the full review of the Xiaomi 13 Lite here.