Xiaomi 12T Pro Review – 200MP Camera But Is It Enough?

The Xiaomi 12T Pro is a smartphone in the upper mid-range price range. It packs flagship Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 power, a seamless 120Hz AMOLED display, a big 5,000mAh battery, and 120W fast charging. All this is great, but the highlight is taken away by the 200MP primary camera.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro is available globally in three different variants. The base variant costs EUR 749 for 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. There are two other variants, one with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage while the other with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage.

The phone is available in three colour options: Black, Blue and Silver. The phone is yet to launch in India.

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The Xiaomi 12T Pro packs the following items inside the box:

• Phone
• 120W Adapter
• USB Type-C Cable
• SIM Ejector Tool
• Protective Case
• Documentation

Before we talk in detail about the Xiaomi 12T Pro, let’s see what the on-paper specs look like:

• Display: 6.67 inches AMOLED
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1
• RAM & ROM: 8GB RAM 128GB Storage, 8GB RAM 256GB Storage, 12GB RAM 256GB Storage
• Software: Android v12
• Rear camera: 200MP + 8MP + 2MP
• Selfie camera: 20MP
• Battery: 5000 mAh
• Weight: 205 grams
• Dimensions: 163.1 x 75.9 x 8.6 mm

The Xiaomi 12T Pro comes with a very traditional design that occasionally focuses on being monotonous. The overall look is simple and subtle. The pack panel has been curved in a natural, palm-friendly way. It has a strong grip and a stiff, well-balanced feel.

There is no doubt that the Xiaomi 12T Pro is a big smartphone. It has a large footprint, is rather thick, and is quite bulky at 205g. The phone comes in three colours: black, blue, and silver. I have the blue model for the review, and it looks pretty good.

The rear panel has a faintly frosted finish that effectively resists fingerprints and other smudges. Xiaomi has applied an anti-glare remedy to the back glass, which effectively foils most of the fingerprints and isn’t as slippery as other glass smartphones.

The back has a large camera island that appears to be seen in many recent Xiaomi smartphones. I really like the big rectangular primary sensor as well as the overall look of the island that surrounds it.

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Talking about buttons and ports, the right side holds the power button and volume rockers. The left side is clean, while the top has an IR blaster with a secondary speaker. The bottom houses the type-C port, primary speakers, SIM card slot and mic.

Despite the fact that it appears to be a flagship from the back, the 12T Pro’s plastic frame and flat display immediately pulls it back to a mid-range looking device. On the other hand, it feels solid and well-made. Everything is neatly packed together. Not to forget, the front side has Gorilla Glass 5 protection to save it from minor scratches.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro review would be incomplete without talking about the real highlight of the phone – its 200MP main camera. It features a triple camera setup on the back. The other two lenses are an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 2MP macro sensor. On the front, you get a 20MP selfie camera.

The 200MP sensor captures excellent daytime images. The colours are vibrant, the white balance is superb, there is a good contrast, and the dynamic range is wide. To avoid oversaturation, I recommend that you only use the AI when totally necessary.

The camera’s ability to capture details from far-off subjects both in sunny outdoors and low-light indoor conditions is a major selling point. The main camera also takes excellent nighttime photos.

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Talking about the portrait shots, the camera does an excellent job of identifying the subject. The background bokeh is smooth and tends to make the subject stand out very well. In general, the portrait shots were quite appealing to me. However, the blur effect was a little too aggressive at times.

Images captured with the 8MP ultrawide lens had decent visual quality, but images captured at night had some noise in them. In comparison to the main camera, I believe the colour accuracy is a little off. You might want to look somewhere else for better ultrawide shots.

A low-resolution 2MP lens handles the macro mode. With very little detail and a narrow dynamic range, the results are, as expected, poor.

The 20Mp front-facing selfie camera performs admirably, taking lovely, sharp selfies and adding a good bokeh effect while taking portrait shots.

The 12T Pro can record videos in 8K at 24FPS and 4K at 30FPS and 60FPS, respectively. While the front camera can only record up to 1080p videos at 60FPS. The daylight videos recorded with the main camera were crisp and clear, and the OIS worked well.

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The Xiaomi 12T Pro packs a big 5000 mAh battery which is pretty much the norm now. However, what makes it really special is the 120W fast charging support. The phone can easily last a full day of heavy use. If you are someone who sticks to their phone for the most part of the day, the 12T Pro can be your good companion.

A casual user like me can expect a day and a half of battery life from this phone. I got about 6-7 hours of screen on time, which was expected from this battery size. My usage involved some intense gaming, watching videos on YouTube, scrolling through my social media apps and making some calls.

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Now, if you are a gaming freak and grind all day, 12T Pro won’t let you take long breaks. The 120W fast charger can fully charge the phone from 0 to 100 per cent in under 30 minutes. A quick charge of just 15 minutes takes the battery to about 65 per cent. In simple words, it is crazy fast.

On top of that, I appreciate Xiaomi for providing the charger in the box. Not everyone does this these days if you know what I mean. Moving on, the only thing that disappoints me is that the phone lacks wireless charging support. For a phone costing this much and packing so much, wireless charging was something Xiaomi should have added.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro packs a flat 6.67-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2712×1220 pixels. It features a refresh rate of 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 480Hz. The panel has a peak brightness of 900 nits which is good.

I used the phone both indoors and outdoors and faced no issues at all. The display was bright enough to be used under direct sunlight with clear text. Games, videos, apps, and web pages are visually appealing and scroll smoothly. The colours are vibrant, the blacks are deep, and the viewing angles are superb.

It can automatically refresh between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz. Although, you can also manually select 60 or 120Hz. There are three colour modes to choose from: Saturated, Vivid, and Original, or you can choose the Advanced mode to select a specific colour gamut.

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The bezels are pretty thin on all the sides and there’s a small punch hole cutout on the top centre. It does not distract much during content consumption. Talking about content consumption, it comes with HDR10+ and Widevine L1 support, so you can stream high-quality content on OTT platforms like Netflix.

I watched a couple of videos on YouTube, along with some new movies on Netflix, and my viewing experience was great. Combine it with the stereo speakers and you get a best-in-class phone for multimedia consumption.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro makes sure not to be behind anyone when it comes to performance. It packs a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset which is paired with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

It is a beast when it comes to performance. The 12T Pro can handle all the tasks you throw at it, be it casual or heavy. The phone worked flawlessly for social media, content consumption, and photography. RAM management was good as well. The apps stayed in the background for a longer duration without refreshing when I opened them later.

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Multitasking was not an issue at all. I was able to quickly switch between different apps. Moreover, the 120Hz refresh rate makes everything smooth and snappy.

Of course, you can play the most graphic demanding games without any worries. I tested Apex Legends, Call of Duty Mobile and Gneshin Impact. All three games could run at their highest settings, as I expected.

Xiaomi claims that the cooling system has been improved with a vapour cooling chamber that is 65 per cent larger than the 11T Pro’s. Unfortunately, when playing heavy games or using other demanding apps, the 12T Pro continues to heat up noticeably.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro runs on MIUI 13 skin which is based on Android 12. Anyone who has used a Redmi, Xiaomi or Poco phone recently will be familiar with the software UI on the 12T Pro. The UI is quick, the animations are fluid, and the majority of features work properly.

Swiping down from the right side of the home screen will reveal the control centre with various shortcuts to features as well as some smart home controls. Whereas swiping down on the left brings up the notification shade.

There are still far too many preinstalled apps on the phone, but many of them can be uninstalled. Some, however, cannot, including Xiaomi’s own security, theme, music, and video apps.

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Game Turbo is a nice extra that provides shortcuts to different features while playing games, such as a voice changer. Other features include whimsical animations and an impressive multi-tasking feature that allows me to open applications in floating windows.

The system Security app for MIUI is already pre-installed, which brings us to privacy and security. In addition to offering an additional layer of malware protection, the app also centralises many privacy settings. It can control the permissions granted to your installed apps, specify how certain apps behave when the battery is low, and put restrictions only on specific apps.

The good thing is that Xiaomi has promised three years of major software updates and four years of security updates.

The Xiaomi 12T Pro packs a stereo speaker setup, one located at the top while the other at the bottom. Additionally, the earpiece also pushes out audio, adding to the overall stereo sound effect. You get Dolby Atmos support along with full equaliser settings.

Talking about the audio quality, the speakers get pretty loud. The output was clear and crisp and the overall experience was good.

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The Xiaomi 12T Pro comes with 5G connectivity and support for 14 5G bands. These include: n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n40/n41/n66/n77/n78/n75. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS and NFC.

Talking about biometrics, the phone comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner which is fast in unlocking the phone. It was pretty accurate as well as reliable for most of the time. Alternatively, you can also use the face unlock feature which also works well.