Xiaomi 14T Pro smartphone review: Amazing value, amazing screen brightness

With the 14T Pro, Xiaomi succeeded in creating a very good high-class smartphone that is prone to become a flagship killer. Some smaller gaps in the equipment were closed compared to the predecessor (no wireless charging, no UHD option for the front camera) and the photo quality of the 14T Pro has also visibly improved – particularly in zoom recordings. The combination of flagship hardware (120-Watt quick charging, UFS 4.0 storage, DDR5x RAM, IP68, etc.) with one of the potentially brightest displays on the market is available for less than 800 Euros (~$867). The MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ processor used here also plays in the same league as those of the current high-end smartphones. 

It is hard to understand why Xiaomi continues to use a lame USB 2.0 connection in its high-end smartphone. Those who value image output or fast data transfer will find suitable alternatives in the Galaxy S24+ or Pixel 9. In addition, Samsung and Google also offer slightly longer periods of software support, although with 5 years, the support of the 14T Pro isn't bad at all. It is a bit unfortunate that a corresponding fast charger wasn't included in the box of the smartphone, since there will be hardly anybody who already owns a HyperCharge capable charger.   

As soon as the price of the 14T Pro will come closer to that of a Xiaomi 14, the T model will get our clear purchase recommendation. Those for whom premium features such as wireless charging and 120W HyperCharge or a flagship SoC aren't that important could also take a look at our review of the 14T sibling model. 

The global version of the Xiaomi 14T Pro is available for example from Amazon starting from $720 in the US. In the UK, you can also purchase it directly from the manufacturer for £649.

Xiaomi's T series traditionally focusses on a good price-performance ratio, and the 14T Pro with its extra bright 144-Hz AMOLED panel together with its HDR top brightness of more than 4,000 Nits and the new MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ is no exception here. In addition, AI is of course also a focus of the successor to the 13T Pro. 

One of highlights of the new flagship killer is also supposed to be the new Leica Summilux lens with the Light Fusion 900 image sensor that we already encountered in the Xiaomi 14. But with its 120-Watt HyperCharge fast charging, 3D IceLoop cooling, and intelligent AI communications system, the 14T Pro also has several more aces up its sleeve.

In Germany, the Xiaomi high-end smartphone starts from an MSRP of around 800 Euros (~$867). Our test will find out whether this makes a purchase decision for the 14T Pro a no-brainer.   

Xiaomi doesn't offer any detailed specifics on the materials used and their recycling quota, but the manufacturer says that recycled materials, including aluminum, gold, and copper, are increasingly used for all its smartphones. Using bio-based high-polymer materials in smartphones and accessories as well as recycled plastic from discarded fishing nets is also supposed to keep the ecological footprint as small as possible. The packaging of the 14T Pro appears to be free from plastic, although the device itself is wrapped in a foil. The rest of the packaging is made of cardboard. Xiaomi also announced a sustainability report for the 14T series, which will probably contain some more details.  

With WiFi 7, the 14T Pro not only supports the modern "be" standard, but also the fast 6-GHz band. A look at the Mix Flip shows that the latter is not a given. In the test with our Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 reference router, we measure a lightning-fast top speed of almost 1,900 Mbit/s. The high data rates also remain mostly stable.

The 14T Pro contains the Xiaomi Surge T1 Tuner developed by Xiaomi itself. In addition to WLAN and GPS, it handles mobile communication signals and is supposed to improve them. The high-end smartphone is able to access the mobile data net with the 5G standard, if available, together with many frequencies and four channels each for receiving and sending (4x4 MIMO). The frequency band support is also very good in the 4G network and all the frequencies that are relevant for the areas of German-speaking countries are supported. With 22 LTE bands, the 14T Pro is also well-equipped for travel to foreign countries.

Although the sensor in the 1/1.31-inch format is significantly smaller than the Sony LYT 900 in the Ultra model, we still find the pictures very attractive. Particularly the dynamic and good depth sharpness stand out positively in comparison to a OnePlus 12. We should also mention the beautiful white balance and richness in detail of the pictures taken in daylight. The color reproduction is to a large extent accurate and natural, and we only see room for improvement in the green color tones, as you can see in our picture of the lake and meadow.

In low-light conditions, the quality of the 14T Pro reaches upper-class level, but not more than that. The fairly small 1/1.31-inch sensor results in a lack of light, which also leads to grainy images. The therefore noticeable noise reduction also reduces the amount of detail in the low light photos. 

For zoom and ultrawide-angle recordings, the Xiaomi 14T Pro uses a 50-MP tele lens and a 15-mm lens with a 12 MP resolution respectively. The pictures with lossless 2x and 2.6x zoom offer some detail and a satisfactory image sharpness up to 5x. Unfortunately, Xiaomi doesn't use its inhouse Liquid Lens design with the floating lens group, so that you cannot take macro pictures with the 14T Pro. The ultrawide-angle camera also doesn't allow taking closeups but delivers a solid photo quality. However, there are still some image artifacts and some visible blurring around the edges. The lack of OIS also leads to easier blurring here than when using the main camera. 

We also analyze the color reproduction of the 50 MP main camera compared to the actual reference colors under controlled light conditions. The 14T Pro shows the smartphone-typical brightening here, as well as some deviations in the gray tones that become noticeable in everyday operation as overly bright color reproduction. However, the accuracy of the color reproduction overall calculated by the camera software is satisfactory, and the deviations in the ColorChecker Passport are to a large extent tolerable. There are no gross outliers in the color accuracy (>15).

Xiaomi uses PWM to control the display brightness, which results in some display flickering. The 14T Pro uses a very high frequency (3,840 Hz), which is also confirmed by our display measurements. This means that any visually noticeable variations in the brightness should appear as eye friendly even to sensitive users, although the panel shows a low basic flickering at 120 Hz. This is probably due to BFI for burn-in protection. Using an oscilloscope, we see that the amplitude remains even across the whole brightness, even though at 19%, the depth isn't particularly flat.

While the Immortalis G720 MP12 in the 14T Pro isn't quite able to reach the values of an Adreno 750 or Xclipse 940 in the tests of 3DMark, the values in GFXBench are really good. Particularly in the low-level tests (T-Rex, Manhattan), the graphics unit in the 14T Pro impresses with high fps values. A Vivo X100 Pro with the Immortalis GPU also does slightly better in the 3DMark.  

The performance of the Xiaomi smartphone turns out very weak in the browser test. We are unable to determine the reason for that, but the results don't correspond to the surf speeds in everyday operation, where the 14T Pro loads contents of demanding websites with a similar speed as a Galaxy S24 Ultra. The Xiaomi smartphone also appears to have a better performance in the direct comparison with a Pixel 9. 

The UFS 4.0 storage used is very vast. Particularly the write rates are at an excellent level.   

The 14T Pro is the first Xiaomi smartphone with the new 3D IceLoop system, which not only separates the gas from the liquid cooling substance, but also offers a 3D bulge for the CPU. This heat transfer via separate channels ensures lower surface temperatures in everyday operation, and even under load, the case doesn't really get hot at 43 ºC (109 ºF) in our Burnout benchmark scenario.

In the Wild Life stress tests of 3DMark, however, the heat development still leads to throttling of the system performance by about 20 to 40%. Our gaming test shows, that this also leads to a reduction in performance during everyday operation.  

The 14T Pro uses a dual-speaker system with Dolby Atmos that can produce a high volume. We measure a maximum volume above 92 dB. Our Pink Noise measurement shows a similar frequency curve as in the predecessor. While the mids could be more even, the T series still doesn't produce any low frequencies with bass. But the sound quality is absolutely okay overall.

Those who want to output the sound to external devices can either use a wired USB connection or wireless Bluetooth 5.4 with Auracast, for which the 14T Pro supports many codec options.

The integrated battery offers a capacity of 5,000 mAh and can be recharged very quickly at up to 120 watts. The inhouse Xiaomi P2 and Xiaomi G1 chips are supposed to ensure a long life of the battery, despite the high charging performance. The manufacturer specifies that more an 80% of the capacity are still available after 1,600 charging cycles. With a value below that, a battery is usually considered to have gone bad. If you don't order the HyperCharge charger together with the phone, you can still take advantage of the usual other quick-charge protocols (QC3+, PD3.0). In our test, it takes about 29 minutes to completely recharge the 14T Pro using a Powerbank (PD 3.0, 100W). Otherwise, Xiaomi specifies a charging period of 23 minutes (using HyperCharge). If you are in a particular hurry, you can also activate the Boost mode to recharge the battery blazingly fast. Wireless charging is also supported at 50 watts. 

The power consumption of the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ is rather inconspicuous in both idle operation and under load. However, at more than 1 Watt during idle operation, we still see some room for optimizations.