Xiaomi restricted itself to budget and mid-range smartphones in India’s price conscious market for a long time. This year, however, the Chinese electronics maker took the leap and launched its premier smartphones in India. Fresh in the line-up is the Mi 10T Pro, which epitomises the company’s efforts in display technology and imaging. Priced at Rs 39,999, the Mi 10T Pro is one of the smartphones that seems to offer sheer value-for-money, at least on paper. Is it as good in real life usage? Let’s find out:
Mi 10T Pro: Design
The Mi 10T Pro is huge, bulky and heavy. Look elsewhere if you need a compact smartphone because this one is a brick not meant for single hand operations. The smartphone boasts premium glass-metal construction with Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the front and back, and on the rear camera module. Though the phone has a premium built, its glossy rear profile makes it susceptible to accidental slips from hands. Moreover, the phone’s back cover attracts fingerprints and smudges, and requires regular efforts to keep it clean and shining. The protruding rear camera module puts another dent to the uninspiring design; the phone wobbles on flat surfaces like table top.
Mi 10T Pro: Display
The Mi 10T Pro may not have the best design, but it has an impressive screen that works great for most content one consumes on a mobile device. It is a 6.67-inch LCD screen of fullHD+ resolution with adaptive refresh rate that goes all the way up to 144Hz. While adaptive refresh rate is not new to smartphones, Xiaomi’s iteration of it seems to work in most scenarios and the difference is apparent in user interface, apps and everything else you do on the Mi 10T Pro. Besides, the screen is touted to support motion smoothing (MEMC) but there is no mention of it in display settings. It seems like a display feature added for novelty but with minimal or no real advantage in relative terms.
As for the quality, the screen is bright and sharp. It is a good LCD unit with decent contrast and satisfactory viewing angles. The phone’s on-screen content looks sharp, transition flow is smooth, scrolling does not show stutters and multimedia content looks immersive. People with liking for natural colours would appreciate the Mi 10T Pro screen’s default calibration. For those who like saturated colours like those of AMOLED, there are tons of built-in colour profiles to tinker the screen colours in tune to one liking.
Complementing the screen are the phone’s stereo speakers, which are loud and clear. The phone’s big screen and stereo speakers make it a suitable device to watch and stream video content on the go. Speaking of content, the Mi 10T Pro supports HDR10 high dynamic range and it works fine across commonly used over-the-top apps like Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos.
Mi 10T Pro: Camera
Along with impressive display, the Mi 10T Pro brings solid imaging capabilities. It sports a triple-camera array on the rear, featuring a 108-megapixel primary sensor of an f/1.69 aperture with optical image stabilisation, a 13MP ultra-wide sensor of an f/2.4 aperture and 123-degree field-of-view (FoV), and a 5MP macro sensor with autofocus. On the front, the phone has a 20MP sensor of an f/2.2 aperture incorporated in a display punch-hole.
Details aside, the Mi 10T Pro is one of the few smartphones in its segment with 108MP primary rear camera. It is true that megapixels alone do not result in better imaging experience but the photos taken with the Mi 10T Pro primary camera justify its pixel-rich sensor’s performance. The sensor uses pixel-binning technology by default to take detailed pictures without compromising storage space. There is a dedicated 108MP mode, which disables pixel-binning and lets you capture frames in sensor’s native resolution. The photos taken in this mode are more detailed compared to ones taken in default mode.
The 13MP ultra-wide sensor is a decent performer too. It captures good amount of details but vivid colours in bright environment get washed out in post-processing for some reasons. The 5MP macro sensor is a capable camera too and it takes detailed close-up shots, but only in good lighting conditions.
Complementing the Mi 10T Pro’s overall imaging are the easy-to-use value-added features such as vlogs, front and back, long exposure, etc. Vlogs makes it easy to create a social media ready 15 seconds short video with background music and multiple frames; the front and back allows the phone to use both front and rear camera simultaneously to capture a combined shot in a single frame; and the long exposure makes it easy to take artistic shots like moving crowd, light painting, etc. without tinkering with camera settings or using manual controls. Speaking of manual controls, the phone has them for both still images and videos and it works with all camera sensors available on the rear.
The Mi 10T Pro’s camera is good for video recording too. It supports up to 8K videos but there is a time limit of 6-minutes for recording. Besides 8K, the camera also does 4K at 60 frames per second (fps) and 30 fps. There is a video stabilisation feature but its utility is restricted to 1080p videos at 30 fps.
Speaking of front camera, it seems lacking compared to how good the rear cameras are. Nonetheless, it is a decent performer and takes good portraits with impressive contours. There are several studio lighting effects that add zing to otherwise regular front camera experience.
Mi 10T Pro: Performance
Despite its midrange pricing, the Mi 10T Pro offers flagship specifications, including Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 system-on-chip (SoC) with 5G network support, 8GB LPDDR5 RAM, and 128GB UFS 3.1 on-board storage. The phone boots Android 10 operating system-based Xiaomi’s MIUI 12 custom user interface. Details aside, the phone is a sleek performer. It delivers smooth performance in handling day-to-day operations or running heavy-duty tasks like gaming or multimedia editing.
Complementing the swift performance is the phone’s 5,000 mAh battery, which keeps the show going for a day and more on a single charge. It supports 33W fast-charging, which takes around two hours to replenish a completely drained battery.
Mi 10T Pro review: Verdict
The Mi 10T Pro is a capable mid-range smartphone that ticks all the boxes, save design. That said, look elsewhere if you prefer compact, lightweight handsets because this one isn't as much a design marvel as it is a performer. If you aren't averse to size and weight, the Mi 10T Pro should be the first choice among any other midrange smartphone because there is not one parameter on which it or falters. Moreover, there are tons of value-added features that makes it an easy-to-use smartphone – something that can't be said for most others in its segment.
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