Xiaomi 12 Pro Review: Premium flagship at the right price

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

Compared to Mi 11 Ultra, Xiaomi 12 Pro is also lower in price, because perhaps it is not a direct replacement of that phone. Rumors are that an even more premium device may be launched with the name 12 Ultra which will have a faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ SoC. Currently, I used Xiaomi 12 Pro for a week and found that this phone is really quite good. But, is it better than the flagship phones of OnePlus and iQoo?

Xiaomi 12 Pro price in India

Xiaomi 12 Pro The 8GB RAM + 256GB storage model comes at Rs 62,999. Its 12GB RAM + 256GB storage model is available for 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

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 rear camera module 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-crafted, with no sharp corners visible.

Xiaomi 12 Pro is a top end smartphone, yet it does not have any IP rating for dust and water protection. Gadgets 360 confirmed from the company that it has all the required seals as compared to the IP rating which is equivalent to IP53 rating. Still, this seems low as one would expect an IP rating for a phone at this price, at least an IP68 rating. Companies have started doing this these days to save on costs. If we look at a budget phone like Redmi Note 11S (Review), it also has IP53 rating.

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

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

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 also 10W reverse wireless charging.

Xiaomi 12 Pro runs on Xiaomi MIUI 13 based on Android 12. Features like new widgets, permission manager and privacy dashboard have been provided in the phone. MIUI 13 comes with the usual bloatware, including Xiaomi apps and some third-party apps. From the GetApps store, I constantly received notifications to update the apps.

The interface for widgets now looks different and takes up the entire screen. Widgets can be added to the home screen by long press, after which three options are available at the bottom for wallpaper, widgets and home screen settings. Re-sizing widgets is a bit awkward because it requires moving 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

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 on par with the market competition. The phone performed smoothly with daily usage.

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

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

My gaming experience on Xiaomi 12 Pro was quite good. The phone got hot while playing games for a long time, but the performance did not decrease. I played Call of Duty: Mobile which was running smoothly at the highest settings. Asphalt 9: Legends played almost like it did on console and was running at 60fps by default, but the phone did overheat after a while. After making changes in the game space app of the phone, touch sampling rate was found to be on.

Xiaomi has done a great job of delivering immersive sound with the new quad-speaker setup of the 12 Pro. The speakers are tuned by Harman Kardon and you get a tweeter and a woofer at each end of the phone. The audio quality was amazing as all four speakers delivered balanced sound focusing on the bass and mid-range. The phone supports several Dolby Atmos audio presets and equalizers so that you can get the sound of your choice.

The speakers of the phone are very good, but the placement of the speaker grill on top of the phone seemed quite strange. These are in the bottom left corner of the frame, which becomes a problem while playing games, because when holding the phone horizontally, the speakers get covered by the hand and the sound gets muffled. The bottom grill also falls on the opposite side diagonally. So no matter how you hold the phone horizontally, a grill gets blocked.

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

Xiaomi 12 Pro cameras

Xiaomi 12 Pro has three rear-facing cameras and all have 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). A front-facing 32-megapixel camera has been provided for selfie. 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 that we have seen in many 2022 Android flagships.

If you have recently used any Xiaomi phone then the camera app is easily understood. The phone can record HDR videos at up to 4K 30fps with its main and telephoto cameras. At the same time, HDR10+ videos can be recorded only from 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 by turning off the screen for power saving. It also has a live in-ear monitor feature that you can use to listen to the sound being recorded. Pro Video mode lets you shoot video in Log format (flat color profile) so it can be color graded in post-production. Focus peaking and exposure verification can be useful for professionals.

Photos taken in daylight with the primary camera had plenty of detail and good dynamic range. The telephoto camera was mostly taking detailed close shots of the subjects, even in auto or portrait mode the photos were sharp and detailed. Edge detection in portrait mode was also very good. If you can get the subject placement right, the primary camera’s large sensor gives you a soft, natural background blur that can only be achieved with a DSLR. The skin tone could have been better, which looks quite red.

The ultra wide camera shoots landscapes well and the details are also ample. However, it is not as good as the primary camera. Software correction does a good job of correcting barrel distortion but things look a bit stretched towards the edges. The difference between the photos of main camera and ultrawide camera can be easily detected.

Like the iQoo 9 Pro (Review), the ultra-wide camera on the Xiaomi 12 Pro does not have autofocus, which means it cannot function 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 longer for exposure as seen on the Xiaomi 11T Pro. But, it took good shots in low-light with the primary camera. Ultrawide and telephoto cameras also gave decent results. In night mode, the noise reduced a bit and the photos came out clear.

In low-light, the primary camera did a great job in terms of colors, detail and dynamic range. Apart from noise reduction, it didn’t do that well for ultrawide. The telephoto camera had trouble focusing in low-light. The photos were quite blurry and soft.

The selfie camera worked well in daylight. However, the background became brighter in portrait mode in brightly lit areas. Photo quality in low-light was average.

Talking about videos, the camera performed well in all resolutions. Stabilization is good, autofocus is also good and exposure is maintained even during panning. However, I did notice a slight yellowness in the video footage during the day and the exposure seemed a bit high. The HDR mode was correcting the exposure in brightly lit areas and creating darkness in shadowy areas. Overall the output did not look very real.

HDR 10 Plus videos came out much better. Colors looked rich and the dynamic range was also better. But these will not look so good on displays 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 get interrupted. In low light, the phone captures good quality videos, which have low 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 the rear camera, which I think will be fixed with a software update. Additionally, its image quality and video quality are quite good making the phone a strong contender in the premium smartphone segment. At a starting price of Rs 62,999, the phone offers very good value. The only thing it lacks is the IP rating.

Those who do not want heavy skin Android OS Moto Edge 30 Pro You can see which comes at a lower price (Rs 49,999). iQoo 9 Pro It is also a good option which has a unique design and a good gimbal camera system. Other than this, OnePlus 10 Pro (Review) which has a good camera system, big battery but charging is slow. If you do not need wireless charging then you Realme GT 2 Pro (Review) which comes for Rs 49,999. It has the same core hardware as Xiaomi 12 Pro and also has a special type of micro lens.