[REVIEW] Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X 15 ranks among the best laptops in the world thanks to its 3.5K OLED display and Nvidia RTX 3050Ti

The Chinese version is no problem

Unfortunately, Xiaomi officially sells its laptops only in China, so the global version is not available. However, thanks to international resellers such as TradingShenzhen, we also have the opportunity to access Chinese versions of individual products.

This is how we also bought the Xiaomi Mi 11, Mi 11 Pro or Mi 11 Ultra, which arrived with the Chinese ROM, but they can still be fully used in our country. If you need Slovak, just reinstall the ROM, or order a smartphone with an additional service, where the ROM will be installed by the seller. It is similar with the laptop that came to us with the Chinese Windows 10 Home.

We don't know Chinese, but Windows can be easily reinstalled to get support for multiple languages, including Slovak and Czech. If you don't know how, we've described the reinstallation in our article.

The principle is to create a bootable USB using the Media Creation Tool, which is available directly on the Microsoft website. All you need is a USB key and a computer on which to create the installation media. After running the tool, you select the desired version of Windows, language and architecture (64-bit) and the program will automatically create a bootable USB for you, with which you will install Windows on the Mi Notebook.

As we have already mentioned, you will find detailed instructions, including pictures, in our article. We are also preparing a video tutorial, as this process must be completed when purchasing any laptop with Chinese Windows.

Quality packaging

Before ordering expensive products with delivery from China, many of you must have some concerns about delivery. Can I get the product undamaged? What if not? At the seller TradingShenzhen these concerns are out of place. TradingShenzhen packs products probably the best of all our international partners.

The notebook arrived in a blue package with dimensions of about 45 x 35 x 14 cm, under which was hidden a box with the Xiaomi logo with a practical carrying handle, wrapped in bubble wrap. In this protective box was placed a laptop wrapped in another, hard product box protected by a soft foam reinforcement. It measures 36.5 x 26.5 x 6.5 cm. The notebook is also protected by foil and also by thin paper between the display and the keyboard.

The packaging is really perfect and the notebook is perfectly protected by several layers of different materials, which guarantee you absolute safety against any damage during transport from distant China. Just look at the difference between the dimensions of the laptop box compared to the dimensions of the whole package. The protective layer is really thick.

In addition to the laptop, the box also includes a charging adapter with a cable with a Chinese plug. Since this is a standard cable that plugs into the adapter, if you do not want to use a reducer, you can, like us, buy your own cable with an EU connector for example via this link.

In the package you will also find a brief manual in Chinese and a black cloth for wiping the display. As usual, the seller has added a small bonus in the form of a propeller, which connects to USB.

Design, processing and connectivity

The first impression after unpacking the laptop is excellent. The construction is made of so-called aluminum. CNC technology and the whole surface is matt, dark gray. The design is subtly similar to the competition in the form of the Macbook Pro.

The Xiaomi logo can be found in the back and also under the display, which is framed in glossy black. The notebook can also be opened with one hand. The hinges are strong enough to hold the display perfectly. The maximum tilt is not up to the horizontal position, but it is sufficient for normal purposes.

The keyboard is surrounded on two sides by speakers and is complemented by a large touch pad. It measures up to 12.5 x 8 cm, so it provides a really large area. It responds well to the touch and movement of the fingers and is also pressed comfortably with an adequate response, which is not disturbing at all.

The so-called The full-size keyboard is also among the best. The keys have a matte finish, unwanted keystrokes are eliminated due to the spacing between the keys and its use is extremely quiet. There is also a backlight that can be adjusted in three levels using the appropriate key, including automatic adjustment.

At the same time, the keyboard itself is strong enough and when pressed hard in various places, it hardly bends at all. The numeric part is missing, but it would be at the expense of the dimensions of the keyboard or laptop.

The power button has a sleek glossy bezel and is located in the upper right corner, outside the keyboard. A fingerprint reader is also integrated in this button, which works very well. There is a delay of less than 1 second, but it is not annoying at all. The reader is very reliable and it never happened to us that it did not recognize the fingerprint on the first try.

Beautiful OLED display

A huge pride of the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X is its 15.6 ″ display with OLED technology. It has an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a 3.5K resolution of 3456 x 2160 px.

It is an E4 panel from Samsung with a response of only 1 ms, a contrast ratio of 1: 000, a brightness of up to 000 rivets and a fineness of 1 ppi. It covers 600% of the area of ​​the top of the notebook, so the frames around it are very thin.

The display has received several certifications such as TÜV Rheinland Hardware Low blue light or True HDR 500 Display, which testifies to its quality. It covers up to 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which has a 25% larger range than sRGB.

The display is also at the very top. The colors are beautiful, rich and contrasting, and black is really black, not dark gray as we know it from IPS displays. This display is a pleasure to look at, and thanks to its specifications, even those who work with graphics or edit photos would not be ashamed of it.

Above the display is a webcam, which is very inconspicuous due to its compact size. Its resolution, 720p, may not be among the best, but it is enough for a normal video call.

Great performance even for demanding games

The performance is taken care of by the eleventh generation of the Intel i7 processor - Tiger Lake, specifically the Intel Core i7-11370H, which is manufactured using 10 nm technology. Its clock frequency is at the level of 3.3 GHz, but it supports the so-called turbo boost, which can reach a maximum of 4.8 GHz.

It is a quad-core processor with 8 threadsnami intended for notebooks, the sale of which was launched in the first quarter of 2021. It has 12 MB of Intel Smart Cache (L3) and an integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics graphics chip with a frequency of 1.35 GHz.

However, the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X also has a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti gaming graphics card with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, which is based on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture. The graphics card is also suitable for playing the latest titles or working with video or 3D graphics. It was launched in May 2021.

In our configuration, the LPDDR4x RAM has a capacity of 32 GB with a frequency of 4266 MHz. A version with 16 GB RAM, Intel i5-11300H processor, 512 GB SSD and the same graphics card is also available.

We tried several games on the laptop, including PUBG Battlegrounds, which was even free on Steam at the time of writing, Counter Strike: GO and World of Tanks. All of the above went as expected, flowed beautifully without any hesitation. The newer title in the form of PUBG ran at higher details at 40 - 55 fps, Counter Strike and World of Tanks at more than 100 fps.

We also tested the performance using the well-known, freely available benchmark Cinebench R23. You can see the results below.

In our configuration, we received a 1 TB SSD, which we tested using the CrystalDiskMark tool. This tool measures the speed of sequential and random reading and writing. The measured speeds were as follows:

Endurance and charging

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X has an 80 Wh battery with support for 130 W charging via USB-C port. The manufacturer states a maximum endurance of up to 11.5 h per charge. However, the durability greatly depends on how you use it and the brightness level of the display. With normal office work with half the brightness level, Wi-Fi turned on, and power set to save battery power, the system displays up to 22 hours, which is not realistic.

In 30 minutes of playing PUBG, our battery capacity dropped from 100% to 57%. We had the power mode set to the highest power. On the other hand, during normal office work, when we had the power mode set to save battery with Wi-Fi turned on, our capacity decreased by only 10% per hour.

We started the charging test at 15% capacity while writing this review. The laptop always had the display switched on while charging. The course was as follows:

• 50% in 20 minutes
• 75% in 37 minutes
• 90% in 55 minutes
• 100% in 1h and 25 minutes

Charging a closed laptop without using it takes only a few minutes less, there is no significant difference.

Cooling, noise

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X has a so-called hurricane cooling system, which consists of a pair of fans and also two copper cooling pipes.

Air is drawn in from the bottom of the notebook, where there are two grilles along the entire surface. The warm air is then led backwards, so the laptop user does not notice it at all, as it does not blow from the side.

During normal work, do not hear the cooling at all and the laptop is completely cold. However, while playing or under another load, it is completely different. The fans start and definitely hear them. The noise level is around 55 dB.

The notebook heats up the most over the keyboard, in the middle. This part is really hot to the touch during play. As for the processor, graphics card and disk temperatures, we measured them using the CPUID HWMonitor application before and during playing PUBG.

As you can see, the maximum temperature of the processor cores climbed up to 96 - 98 ° C during play, which is quite a high value.

Sound and connectivity

Similar to Xiaomi's flagship smartphones, we also find speakers from the Harman Kardon brand. These are a pair of 2 W speakers and another pair of 1 W speakers that produce stereo sound. They are located on both sides of the keyboard and play quite well. The bass is slightly missing, but the sound is clear and the maximum volume is high enough.

Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 are not missing from wireless connectivity. 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac / ax standards are supported. With a connection speed of 1 Gbit / s, we downloaded the game World of Tanks with a size of 29 GB in 10 minutes or PUBG with a size of 38 GB in 14 minutes via Wi-Fi.

As we mentioned in the introduction, the notebook has the following ports: HDMI 2.1, 2x USB-A gen 3.2, Thunderbolt 4, USB-C and 3.5 mm audio jack. Thunderbolt 4 is especially pleasing, with which you can also connect a 4K monitor with a frequency of 60 Hz to your laptop. Supports dual 4K video output or single 8K.

Final evaluation

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro X 15 is a great notebook for versatile use. It is suitable not only for everyday work, but also for games, video editing or creating graphics. It offers great performance in the form of an Intel Core i7-11370H processor with a maximum frequency of up to 4.8 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD and a dedicated GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics card with 4 GB GDDR6.

You will also enjoy the beautiful OLED display with 3.5K resolution and excellent color rendering, aluminum workmanship and an overall successful design. A less negative is the weaker cooling at increased load, when the processor core temperatures reach high temperatures.