Xiaomi 12 Pro Review: Premium flagship at the right price

Xiaomi’s Mi 11 Ultra (Review) was launched with only big numbers and boasts, but the phone still managed to deliver a good Android experience with some shortcomings. In the form of Xiaomi 12 Pro, the company has introduced its most premium handset of 2022. Instead of showing big numbers for specifications, the company has tried to make the phone durable, as well as tried to give features according to the price. Its quad speaker setup is quite unique and such a setup is not seen in flagship phones in India.

The Xiaomi 12 Pro is also cheaper than the Mi 11 Ultra, presumably because it’s not a direct replacement for that phone. An even more premium device called the 12 Ultra is rumored to come with a faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ SoC. For now, I’ve used the Xiaomi 12 Pro for a week and found it to be a really good phone. But is it better than flagship phones from OnePlus and iQoo?

Xiaomi 12 Pro price in India

The Xiaomi 12 Pro comes in 8GB RAM + 256GB storage model at Rs 62,999. Its 12GB RAM + 256GB storage model is available at Rs 66,999. I had its 12GB RAM variant for review. The phone comes in three finishes, including Couture Blue, Noir Black, and Opera Mauve.

Xiaomi 12 Pro design

The Xiaomi 12 Pro looks quite glossy and premium. On the right and left sides of the phone, where the front and back glass meet, it is quite thin. The frame and rear Corning Gorilla Glass 5 panel come with a matte finish which makes the phone quite smooth. The camera module at the back is made of metal and looks modern. Some fine lines separate the sensors from the module. The ports and cutouts in the metal frame are well sculpted, with no sharp corners etc. visible.

The Xiaomi 12 Pro is a top-end smartphone, yet it does not have any IP rating for protection against dust and water. Gadgets 360 confirmed with the company that it has all the necessary seals compared to the IP rating which is equivalent to the IP53 rating. Still, this seems less because at this price, a phone is expected to have an IP rating, at least an IP68 rating. Companies have started doing this nowadays to save on cost. If you look at budget phones like the Redmi Note 11S (Review), then it also has an IP53 rating.

The phone has a 6.73 inch AMOLED display with Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus protection. Fingerprints do not fall easily on it. Speaker grills are provided on the top and bottom and an infrared emitter is also installed on the top.

Xiaomi 12 Pro specifications and software

Xiaomi 12 Pro has Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC. Internal storage is not expandable. Two nano SIMs can be used in the phone. The phone supports dual 5G standby. For connectivity, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC and multiple satellite navigation system are available in it.

The display has a refresh rate of 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 480Hz. It supports LTPO 2.0 which brings the refresh rate down to 1Hz to save power. The phone has an embedded fingerprint scanner. The resolution of the display is WQHD+ (3200 x 1400 pixels) with a pixel density of 522ppi.

The phone comes with a 4,600mAh battery and a 120W charger in the box. Apart from this, it has support for 50W wireless charging and there is also 10W reverse wireless charging.

Xiaomi 12 Pro runs on Android 12 based Xiaomi MIUI 13. The phone has features like new widgets, permission manager and privacy dashboard. MIUI 13 has the usual bloatware, which includes Xiaomi apps and some third-party apps. I kept getting notifications to update apps from the GetApps store.

The interface for widgets now looks different and is visible on the entire screen. Widgets can be added to the home screen by long pressing, after which there are three options at the bottom for wallpaper, widget and home screen settings. Re-sizing the widgets is a bit awkward as it requires sliding the widget slightly, which adds one step. Like other manufacturers, the company has provided a theme engine that changes the color of the interface, widgets, and keyboard based on the color of the wallpaper.

Xiaomi 12 Pro performance

The Xiaomi 12 Pro performed as expected in benchmark tests. The phone scored 9,82,727 points in AnTuTu and 1,237 and 3,654 points in Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests respectively, which is at par with the market competition. The phone performed smoothly with daily usage.

The display looks quite bright outdoors and shows accurate colours in the ‘Original Colour’ mode. There is also an ‘Adaptive Colours’ toggle in the Settings app that adjusts the colours of the display based on ambient light. Content looks sharp on the display, which is also Dolby Vision and HDR10+ certified. Supported content on Netflix looked good. HDR videos streamed on Amazon Prime Video looked a bit dim. Dolby Vision HDR support is not something we see on many Android phones.

The in-display fingerprint reader is fast and reliable to unlock the phone. During the test, the screen refresh rate of the Xiaomi 12 Pro kept changing as expected while using different content. It was generally running at 60Hz while playing games, 120Hz while scrolling through feeds in apps or the interface. It remained locked at 10Hz when I wasn’t doing any activity. I expected the refresh rate to drop to 1Hz while using the Kindle app, but that didn’t happen.

My gaming experience on the Xiaomi 12 Pro was pretty good. The phone did get warm when playing games for long periods of time, but the performance didn’t drop. I played Call of Duty: Mobile which ran smoothly on the highest settings. Asphalt 9: Legends was almost console-like and ran at 60fps by default, but the phone did get warm after a while. After tweaking the phone’s Game Space app, the touch sampling rate was found to be on.

Xiaomi has done a great job of delivering immersive sound with the 12 Pro’s new quad-speaker setup. The speakers are tuned by Harman Kardon and you get a tweeter and a woofer on each end of the phone. Audio quality was great as all four speakers delivered balanced sound with a focus on bass and mid-range. The phone supports multiple Dolby Atmos audio presets and an equalizer so you can get the sound you want.

The speakers are pretty good, but the placement of the speaker grille on the top of the phone is awkward. It is in the bottom left corner of the frame which becomes a problem while playing games as holding the phone horizontally covers the speakers and muffles the sound. The bottom grille also falls diagonally in the opposite direction. So no matter how you hold the phone horizontally, one of the grilles gets blocked.

Battery life on the Xiaomi 12 Pro proved to be quite good. However, it did not give a very good backup in the HD video loop test. It lasted for 12 hours and 18 minutes in this. The phone easily lasted a day and a half with my regular usage, which included an hour of gaming and some camera use and video streaming. The 120W charger fully charged the 12 Pro in just 27 minutes using Boost mode. The phone does get heated up when charging in this mode, and it also shows a notification on the screen to alert you that this will happen and it is normal.

Xiaomi 12 Pro cameras

The Xiaomi 12 Pro features three rear-facing cameras and all have a 50-megapixel resolution. The primary camera has OIS, the ultra-wide-angle camera has a 115-degree field of view, and the telephoto camera comes with 2X optical zoom (48 mm). There is a front-facing 32-megapixel camera for selfies. The primary camera is equipped with Sony’s new 1/1.28-inch IMX707 sensor. This is much larger than the Sony IMX766 (1/1.56-inch) sensor, which we have seen in many Android flagships of 2022.

If you have used a Xiaomi phone recently, the camera app is easy to understand. The phone can record HDR videos up to 4K 30fps with its main and telephoto cameras. At the same time, HDR10 + videos can be recorded only with the main and selfie cameras. The primary camera can shoot videos up to 8K 24fps.

The Xiaomi 12 Pro also has some “pro” features that are quite useful. It can record video with the screen turned off for power saving. It also has a live in-ear monitor feature that you can use to listen to the sound being recorded. The Pro Video mode lets you shoot video in Log format (flat color profile) so that it can be color graded in post-production. Focus peaking and exposure verification can be useful for professionals.

Daylight photos taken with the primary camera had a lot of detail and good dynamic range. The telephoto camera was able to take detailed close-up shots of most subjects, and photos were sharp and detailed even in auto or portrait mode. Edge detection in portrait mode was also very good. If you get the subject placement right, the primary camera’s large sensor gives you a soft, natural background blur that only a DSLR can provide. Skin tones could have been better, which look quite red.

The ultra-wide camera shoots landscapes well and has a lot of details. However, it is not as good as the primary camera. The software correction works well to correct barrel distortion but things look stretched towards the edges. The difference between the photos taken by the main camera and the ultra-wide camera can be easily detected.

Like the iQoo 9 Pro (Review), the ultra-wide camera on the Xiaomi 12 Pro doesn’t get autofocus, which means it can’t work as a macro camera. With the help of the primary and telephoto cameras, I took some good close-up shots.

In low light, the auto mode takes a little more time for exposure as seen in the Xiaomi 11T Pro. But, it took good shots in low light with the primary camera. The ultrawide and telephoto cameras also gave decent results. The noise was reduced a bit in the night mode and the photos came out clear.

In low light, the primary camera did a great job in colors as well as detail and dynamic range. Apart from reducing noise, it did not do as well for the ultrawide. The telephoto camera had trouble focusing in low light. Photos were quite blurry and soft.

The selfie camera worked well in daylight. However, the background became too bright in portrait mode in brightly lit areas. The photo quality was average in low light.

Talking about the video, the camera performed well in all the resolutions. Stabilization is good, autofocus is also good and exposure is maintained even during panning. However, I noticed a bit of yellowness in the video footage during the day and the exposure seemed a bit overdone. The HDR mode was correcting the exposure in bright areas and creating darkness in shadow areas. Overall the output did not look very real.

HDR10+ videos came out quite well. Colours looked rich and dynamic range was also good. But these will not look as good on a display without HDR10+. Motion tracking, eye tracking and motion capture focus worked as expected. The phone gets quite hot while shooting videos outdoors, but the camera app never let the recording stop. In low light, the phone captures good quality videos, which have less noise and good dynamic range.

Verdict

With Xiaomi 12 Pro, the company has focused on performance and quality. The phone still has some room for improvement in terms of rear camera, which I think will be fixed with software updates. Additionally, its image quality and video quality are quite good which make the phone a strong contender in the premium smartphone segment. At a starting price of Rs 62,999, the phone offers quite good value. It only lacks IP rating.

Those who don’t want a heavily skinned Android OS can check out the Moto Edge 30 Pro which comes at a lower price (Rs 49,999). The iQoo 9 Pro is also a good option with a unique design and a good gimbal camera system. Apart from this, there is the OnePlus 10 Pro (Review) which has a good camera system, a big battery but charging is slow. If you don’t need wireless charging, you can check out the Realme GT 2 Pro (Review) which comes at Rs 49,999. It has the same core hardware as the Xiaomi 12 Pro and also has a special micro lens.