Xiaomi 11T Pro Review - SD888 experience for under PHP 30K!

We share our thoughts and experiences with the Xiaomi 11T Pro after more than two weeks of use.

Xiaomi 11T Pro

Xiaomi Philippines has once again challenged the competition with the recently released Xiaomi 11T Pro. It is the most affordable smartphone with the flagship 5nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 octa-core processor and Adreno 660 at a starting price of PHP 27,990.

To recap, it also features a large 6.67-inch flat AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass Victus protection, 120Hz refresh rate, 480Hz touch sampling rate, MEMC & HDR10+ support and with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 resolution.

Does it live up to the hype tho?

Let's find out!

For our review part 1: Xiaomi 11T Pro Unboxing and First Impression!

Multimedia Experience

Display with slim bezels

As mentioned above, the display is a 6.67-inch AMOLED Gorilla Glass Victus protected panel with a resolution of 2400 x 1080, a 120Hz refresh rate, a 480Hz touch sampling rate, and with MEMC and HDR10+ support.

The panel is bright while the image produced is sharp, detailed and vibrant. Because of the high brightness and deep blacks, the contrast is great. 

The 120Hz refresh rate makes the animations look even smoother!

It also supports 10-points of multitouch that are responsive, accurate, and quickly most of the time. However, we kept experiencing ghost touch on our first unit. We mentioned this to Xiaomi Philippines and they sent us a replacement unit. The second unit performed better. We haven't experienced ghost touch in our replacement unit.

Harman/Kardon stereo speakers

At the top and the bottom of the phone are the Harman/Kardon stereo speakers.

Both speakers have a decently high maximum volume. However, we recommend toning the volume down to 80 percent as the sound at the highest volume is very distorted with a lot of tingyness. For the best clarity, separation and sound quality, we recommend having the volume at 70 to 80 percent.

There is no 3.5mm audio jack, no earphones, and no included adapter in the box.

The two microphones can pick up audio from under a meter away. The noise cancellation is good enough that our callers never complained about voice quality. One is at the bottom while the other is on the camera module. These locations are preferred for better call and video recording quality.

Cameras

rear cameras

At the back is a triple camera made up of a 108MP f/1.75 main camera, 8MP f/2.2 120-degree ultra-wide-angle camera, 5MP f/2.4 telemacro 3-7cm, and a dual-tone LED flash.

The stock camera app includes the following modes: Photo, Video, Night, Portrait, Pro, and 108MP. Other modes like Panorama, Documents, VLOG, Short Video, Slow Motion, Time-Lapse, Movie Effects, Long Exposure, Dual Video and Clone all have to be downloaded separately.

The Pro mode allows for controls of ISO (50-6400), Shutter speed (1/4000s to 30 seconds), White Balance, EV (+-4) and for controls to switch between the main camera, macro camera and ultra-wide camera.

Rear Camera Samples

rear 1x camera daylight

Rear 2x camera daylight

Rear ultra-wide camera daylight

The Xiaomi 11T Pro can switch between the three cameras in the stock camera apps. In daylight, all three cameras produce sharp and detailed images with vibrant color and strong contrast. The ultra-wide camera and the telephoto look great when seeing the photo at first glance but when you zoom in to full size, you will see that the details and sharpness aren't as good as the main. 

In short, daylight images are the strength of the cameras.

1x camera close-up

2x telemacro close-up

Both the 1x camera and the 2x telemacro can take great macro shots provided that the subject has good lighting.

We also love the natural bokeh it produced!

The image is sharp, detailed and vibrant. We also love the natural bokeh produced by being up-close with the subject.

1x camera indoors

2x camera indoors

Ultra-wide-angle indoors

Indoors, the story remains the same, the images produced have sharp, detailed images with vibrant color and good contrast. In darker situations, some noise is introduced but it is negligible.

1x camera low light

2x camera low light

Ultra-wide-camera low light

In low light, all three cameras struggled. Sharpness and detail were less than in daylight and indoors. What is impressive is that the low light images remain somewhat colour-accurate even with all the noise in the images.

We also noticed that the light sources are overexposed and moving objects are out of focus. This means that the shutter speed is longer to compensate for the lack of light.

1x Night mode

2x Night mode

Ultra-wide-angle camera Night mode

The Night Mode was able to clean up most of the noise and dramatically improved the overexposed light sources. We can now see what's inside the buildings with the light on them. What is also impressive is that the color and contrast have been recovered too.

We recommend using the Night mode when the subject is not moving.

Overall, the Xiaomi 11T Pro's rear cameras performed well in most situations. It struggles a little in low light, but the images it produced are still better than most smartphones in its price range.

Selfie camera

While on the punch hole is the 16MP f/2.45 selfie camera. The stock camera app that uses the selfie camera includes Photo, Video, Portrait, Night, and Panorama. Dual Video, Short Video, and VLOG need to be downloaded first.

Selfie Camera Samples

Daylight selfie

Daylight selfie portrait

In daylight, the selfie camera produces sharp and detailed selfies with vibrant color and good contrast. It did however struggle with the skin tone accuracy where it made the skin warmer and redder than in real life. 

The artificial bokeh created is also impressive, it did not struggle a ton with the hair fibers.

Indoor selfie

Indoors, the selfie is still sharp, detailed, and vibrant with good contrast. The skin tones are still not that accurate as well.

Low light selfie

In low light, the phone struggled to keep sharpness and detail because of the build-up of noise and grain. Like the rest of the selfie shots, it struggled with skin color.

Night Mode selfie

The Night Mode was able to recover the sharpness, detail, contrast, and noise of the low light images. If you look at the hair fibers, they are well defined along with the stones on the ground. We recommend using the Night mode selfie in low light especially when there is almost no movement.

The rear cameras can capture up to 8K at 30fps without stabilization and up to 4K at 60fps with image stabilization. While the Selfie camera can capture up to 1080p 60fps with Image stabilization. 

The footage from both the selfie and rear cameras is sharp and detailed. The stabilization keeps the movement smooth but there is a persistent pulsing in the background as well as a rolling shutter when panning.

Performance

AnTuTu and GeekBench

Inside the phone is the aforementioned flagship 5nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 octa-core processor, Adreno 660 GPU, LPDDR5 RAM, and UFS 3.1 storage. These components managed to score over 643,733 in AnTuTu while only raising the temperature of the phone by 3 degrees and losing 3 percent battery during the test.

While in GeekBench 5, the Xiaomi 11T scored 807 in single-core tests and 3255 in multi-core tests. 

These scores are good but We've seen some Snapdragon 888 devices reach more than 700K in AnTuTu 9 and score more than 1000 in single-core and more than 3500 in GeekBench 5.

3DMark and CPDT

While in 3DMark, the Xiaomi 11T Pro scored over 5,895 with an average of 35.3 fps. These are better performance than the Snapdragon 888 variant of the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G.

In the CPDT disk speed test, the phone's internal storage managed to reach 520.95 MB/s in sequential write speeds and 849.37 MB/s in sequential write speeds.

In terms of synthetic benchmarks, the Xiaomi 11T Pro 5G performs better in 3DMark and CPDT but performs underwhelmingly in AnTuTu and GeekBench.

Genshin Impact

The flagship 5nm SoC managed to unlock the Medium Graphics settings of Genshin Impact as the default. This is the same with the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G and the ROG Phone 5.

Gameplay with Genshin Impact with these settings is the best balance between smoothness and graphics quality. If the user can compromise with graphics quality, we recommend lowering the graphics to low or lowest and maxing out the frame rate to 60fps for the smoothest experience even when the screen is full of enemies and animations.

Call of Duty: Mobile

In the latest version of Call of Duty: Mobile, the phone managed to unlock the highest graphics settings of Very High and Max frame rate. What is even more impressive is that you can set both at the same time. This is again in line with other flagships like the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G and the ROG Phone 5.

Playing Call of Duty: Mobile with the best settings and maintaining it for an extended play session is impressive. In fact, this may be one of the best Call of Duty: Mobile experiences for under PHP 30K.

The side-mounted fingerprint scanner is quick to set up and it detects and scans the fingerprint right away. Unlocking the phone is instantaneous and is accurate. It struggles when our fingerprint is dirty. 

While the Face Unlock with the selfie camera is also easy to set up and works just as fast as the fingerprint scanner as long as you are looking at the camera. It detects our faces and unlocks the phone instantaneously in both well-lit and poorly lit environments. The screen brightens up when in a darker environment too. 

The phone works with OTG when the feature is enabled manually. The WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 5G, LTE and NFC connections are fast, stable, and reliable. The GPS acquires our location immediately and accurately.

PCMark Battery Benchmark

Inside the phone is a large 5000mAh battery with 120W fast charging thru USB-C. In our usual PCMark battery test, the phone managed to endure over 12 hours and 6 minutes. This is an expected performance with similar smartphones with the same chipset and the same 5000mAh battery capacity. 

We ended our 10-hour workday with 15 to 20 percent battery left. This means that it will last a typical 8-hour workday and you can expect it to last thru a normal workday. You may need to charge it in between during a long workday.

It takes the phone under 30 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 percent. This is one of the most ridiculously fast charging in the market today. It still blows our mind when we find our phone nearly done charging after taking a 20 minute shower in the morning.

MIUI

For software, it is running on the latest Android 11-based MIUI. MIUI has improved once again with a unique but eye-catching design while being functional. It is a different design and UI language as other skins that may be daunting at first, but when you get used to it, it is actually good. 

Our main concern is that there is a ton of pre-installed apps. This can easily be remedied by uninstalling the bloatware one by one. It takes extra time upon initial set-up but that's it.

Performance-wise, navigating thru the UI and launching apps is quick and instantaneous. We have no complaints about the overall performance phone. Our only concern is that we did experience some ghost touch during our time with the phone. We hope it can be fixed thru software

Pros - Powerful specs, value for money pick, super fast charging, good camera performance, fast 120Hz variable refresh rate

Cons - Speaker could be better, bloatware, ghost touch can be fixed thru software, video footage has a distracting pulsing and rolling shutter

Xiaomi 11T Pro 5G Specs

Display: 6.67-inch flat Gorilla Glass Victus protected AMOLED screen with 120Hz refresh rate, 480Hz touch sampling rate, MEMC, HDR10+, FHD+ 2400 x 1080 resolution at 395 ppi

CPU: 2.84GHz 5nm Snapdragon 888 octa-core processor

GPU: Adreno 660

RAM: 8GB/12GB LPDDR5

ROM: 128GB/256GB UFS 3.1

Back Camera: 108MP f/1.75 w/ PDAF + 8MP f/2.2 120-degree ultra-wide-angle + 5MP f/2.4 telemacro 3-7cm + dual-tone LED flash

Selfie Camera: 16MP f/2.45

Battery: 5,000mAh w/ 120W HyperCharge

OS: Android 11 w/ MIUI 12.5

Connectivity: WiFi 6, 5G SA/NSA, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 5.2, OTG, NFC, GPS (L1+L5), A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo (E1+E5a), dual SIM

Sensors: Accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, gyroscope, sound, magnetic

Others: Side-mounted fingerprint sensor, face unlock, IR Blaster, stereo speakers, Harman Kardon audio, Dolby Atmos, Hi-Res Audio Certification, X-axis linear vibration motor, Vapor chamber cooling system, USB-C, Colors: Meteorite Gray, Moonlight White, Celestial Blue

Dimensions: 164.1 x 76.9 x 8.8 mm

Weight: 204 g

Price: PHP 27,990 (8GB/256GB), PHP 29,990 (12GB/256GB)

Verdict

An immersive web browsing experience

The Xiaomi 11T Pro 5G reaches its super affordable pricepoint with minor compromises but those comprises doesn't stop the phone from being the best value pick of 2021.

We love the design, the build quality, and the powerful specs of the Xiaomi 11T Pro. It manages to offer flagship specs and performance for under PHP 30K.

To reach that price point, Xiaomi had to compromise in polishing some areas. The speakers produce great sound at 80 percent volume but are super distorted at the maximum volume. Though the display can produce stunningly bright, sharp and detailed, and vibrant images, we experienced ghost touch with our first unit (our replacement unit didn't have ghost touch). This could be a quality control issue. Video footage from both the selfie and rear cameras are sharp and detailed but produce pulsing in the background and a rolling shutter is present.

We expect more from a smartphone with these specs but because of the price point, we can accept these minor nitpicks.

Overall, we cannot deny that this smartphone is for people who want the best specs for the most affordable price and it delivers in areas where it matters.

The phone isn't perfect but at its price, it is unbeatable.

What do you guys think?

Build/Design - 4.25
Multimedia Experience - 4.25
Cameras - 4.25
Performance - 4.5
Average - 4.31/5