Xiaomi 14T smartphone review - Flagship tech at a low price, but with a few small flaws

With the release of the Xiaomi 14T, Xiaomi has put together a good overall smartphone package that is just below the upper-class level in terms of performance. The Xiaomi 14T takes beautiful photos with its Leica-optimized camera, scores points with its sharp and bright AMOLED panel that now features a refresh rate of 144 Hz, and boasts a good battery life. A solid update timeframe also speaks in favor of the Xiaomi 14T—there will be 4 OS upgrades up to Android 18 and 5 years of Android security updates.

All-in-all, there are only a few negative aspects of the Xiaomi 14T. Its USB-C port works at a leisurely USB-2.0 speed, it doesn't support wireless charging and a corresponding 67-watt power supply isn't included in the phone's scope of delivery. Alternatives to the Xiaomi 14T include the Samsung Galaxy S24 and the Xiaomi Poco X6 Pro 5G. The Samsung phone is slightly faster than our test candidate thanks to its Exynos 2400 SoC and at 6.2 inches, it is a bit more compact. The Xiaomi Poco X6 Pro's connectivity and performance are pretty similar, but it is a lot cheaper.

You can purchase the Xiaomi 14T via online retailers such as Amazon, where it currently costs $548. In the United States, the phone isn't available to order directly from the manufacturer's website.

Xiaomi's T-series, which is always released just in time for the end of each year, proves to be an interesting offer for potential buyers. The T-series smartphones combine lots of performance and connectivity with comparatively moderate prices. The Xiaomi 14T makes no exception to this. With an official introductory price of just under $700, the 6.67-inch smartphone is by no means a bargain but at the time of writing, you can already find it for less than $600 online.

Buyers get a lot for their money: The phone features 12 GB of RAM and up to 512 GB of storage, the speedy eight-core MediaTek Dimensity 8300-Ultra SoC, an AMOLED panel with a 144 Hz refresh rate, fast charging at up to 67 watts, HyperOS based on Android 14 including AI features such as Google Circle to Search, and last but not least, a triple-camera with a 50-MP resolution.

Compared to the Xiaomi 13T, the manufacturer has made quite a few changes to the design language of its budget smartphone. What has remained are narrow bezels, a punch-hole selfie camera and a first-class finish that also ensures a premium feel. However, the rounded corners and edges on the front and back have been removed—the Xiaomi 14T is now completely flat. An IP68 certification makes sure that the smartphone is protected against dust and water.

Xiaomi has equipped the Xiaomi 14T with a matte aluminum frame whose look depends on the selected color variant, and it features Gorilla Glass 5 to protect its 6.67-inch display. A protective film is also applied to the screen straight out of the box. The triple camera has a new design and now consists of four symmetrically arranged rings that frame the three lenses and the LED flash. Like its display, the phone's camera unit is protected by Gorilla Glass 5.

The Xiaomi smartphone comes with two different back covers. In the three titanium colorways Titan Black, Titan Gray and Titan Blue (the latter being our test device's color), it comes with a glass cover that, thanks to its matte surface finish, isn't all too susceptible to collecting fingerprint marks.

If you decide to go for the fourth color variant called Lemon Green, then the back cover is made from faux leather. The choice of back cover only has a small influence on the device's weight. With a matte glass back, the Xiaomi 14T weighs 195 grams and the faux leather variant—which is 0.15 millimeters thicker—weighs 193 grams.

Xiaomi hasn't released any precise information about the proportion of recycled materials used in its smartphones. However, according to the manufacturer, the amount of recycled aluminum, gold and copper used for smartphone components has been increased. The company also wants to keep its own ecological footprint as small as possible through measures such as producing plastic material from discarded fishing nets and offering trade-in programs.

Xiaomi supposedly aims to recycle a total of 38,000 tons of electronic waste by 2026. So far, 44% of this target has been reached. The company also follows the provisions of the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas and the RBA Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), which regulate the procurement of conflict materials such as tin, tungsten, tantalum, gold and cobalt.

While the Xiaomi 14T Pro relies on WiFi 7, the Xiaomi 14T has to settle for WiFi 6E. What reads like an unequal battle on paper, however, actually turned out to be a duel of equals in practice. The other comparison devices had no say in terms of speed.

In combination with our Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 reference router, the Xiaomi 14T achieved a data throughput rate of over 1800 MBit/s within the 6 GHz network, while we noted almost 1000 MBit/s using the 5 GHz band. The Xiaomi 14T Pro barely managed any better in these two instances. Its transfer rates were only significantly lower for a short time at the beginning of the data transfer, but this is due to the router "waking up". Apart from that, its data rates were largely stable.

We have nothing to complain about when it comes to the phone's cellular frequency coverage. The Xiaomi 14T supports a wide range of 5G and 4G bands (17 and 22 bands respectively), so it should have no problems catching a wireless signal abroad. It also works with four receiving and four transmitting channels (4x4 MIMO). The Xiaomi 14T Pro is only marginally better equipped, as the top model's wireless modem additionally supports the 4G bands 25 and 39 as well as the 5G bands 25 and 75.

The Xiaomi 14T comes with all of the features you'd expect from a modern smartphone when it comes to making telephone calls. Aside from dual-SIM support using two nano-SIM cards, you can also activate one eSIM. It also supports VoLTE and WLAN calls.

In terms of call quality, the Xiaomi 14T did well during our test. Voices were reproduced clearly on both ends of the line. Using hands-free mode, voices sounded a little dampened and tinny but all-in-all, there were no intelligibility issues.

We took a closer look at the phone's main camera in controlled lighting conditions. Overall, it reproduced colors accurately, but struggled a bit with lighter blue tones. All-in-all, however, it didn't show any major outliers compared to the reference colors (Delta-E > 15).

The Xiaomi 14T comes with a USB-C cable, a protective cover, a SIM tool, a quick-start guide and another leaflet with safety instructions. A matching 67-watt power adapter is not included. The phone is covered by a standard 12-month warranty.

In addition to the Xiaomi 14T itself, buyers also gain access to some exclusive services in countries where the phone can be purchased directly from the manufacturer. For example, they are entitled to an out-of-warranty repair and can use YouTube Premium for 3 months and Spotify Premium for 4 months free of charge.

Although the MediaTek Dimensity 8300-Ultra's ARM Mali-G615 MP6 graphics unit didn't quite come close to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3's Adreno 735 or the Samsung Exynos 2400's Xclipse 940, it did still deliver strong performance—enough to make even complex games run smoothly. One example of this was the Aztec Ruins High Tier Offscreen test from GFXBench, which uses a similar resolution of 2,560 x 1,440 pixels as the Xiaomi 14T's AMOLED panel (2,712 x 1,220 pixels) and was mastered by the ARM GPU at 75 frames per second.

The MediaTek Dimensity 8300-Ultra's mediocre browser performance (we tested Firefox and Edge as well as Chrome) doesn't match its otherwise strong performance. The reason for this is unclear. We also noticed the same discrepancy with the Xiaomi 14T Pro. On the other hand, its benchmark results, which were average at best, have nothing in common with the actual browsing experience, as web pages are opened quickly and can be scrolled through swiftly.

UFS 4.0 storage gives the Xiaomi 14T a high data throughput, ensuring that loading times are kept short. Even large apps such as the PUBG Mobile APK file (2 GB) were installed super quickly during our test.

Even under load, the Xiaomi 14T never feels uncomfortably warm to hold in your hand. We only measured a maximum of 41.3 °C on the smartphone's surface after the extreme scenario, which consisted of one hour of full CPU and GPU load using the Burnout benchmark.

On the other hand, the 3DMark stress test scenarios—which simulate typical game scenes—showed that an internal reduction in the system performance did happen at times. When the SoC got too hot under load, then its performance was throttled by 25-33%. In 3DMark, this mostly already happened after the first stress test run.