[REVIEW] Xiaomi 12T Pro: A bloated smartphone with a 200 MPx camera, 120 W charging and support for eSIM

Contents of the package

The new Xiaomi 12T Pro comes in a standard smartphone box with complete accessories. This time we borrowed the smartphone directly from the Slovak representative office of the Xiaomi brand from the day of the official presentation.

In addition to the smartphone itself, the package also includes a silicone case, a charging adapter and a USB-A to USB-C cable. This is the usual smartphone packaging that we all know well.

Quality of workmanship and design

We borrowed the blue version of the Xiaomi 12T Pro, but gray and black are also available. The back cover is plastic, matte, and thanks to the rounded edges, it is comfortable to hold in the hand. Its weight only slightly exceeds the 200 g mark with a total weight of 205 g.

The overall design maintains the lines of other models from the twelfth series of smartphones from Xiaomi, including the design of the main camera module on the back.

As for the layout of the individual elements, the underside has a USB-C charging port, a slot for SIM card, microphone and speaker. The top edge comes with a second speaker, microphone and sensor.

The button for lighting the display and together with the buttons for volume control are in the traditional place on the right side.

The first smartphone from Xiaomi with support for eSIM

The first change you will notice after buying this smartphone during the initial settings after turning it on is the option to set eSIM. The Xiaomi 12T Pro is the first smartphone from Xiaomi that comes with electronic support SIM card.

Electronic SIM the card has several advantages. Since it is a chip built directly into the motherboard of the device, after possible theft you SIM the card is not taken by the thief. This makes it easier to find the smartphone.

The use consists in uploading your own profile on eSIM card, which, for example, your operator's application will guide you through. Activation is carried out using a code from the operator, which you use to upload your profile to eSIM. You can also upload multiple profiles from different operators, so you don't have to deal with whether your smartphone only has one slot for SIM a card or two.

Top performance

The pro version of the new Xiaomi 12T series received the most powerful processor from the American Qualcomm, which you can also find in models such as Xiaomi 12s Ultra or Xiaomi MIX Fold 2. It is an eight-core Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which is manufactured using 4 nm technology. Its maximum clock frequency is 3.2 GHz, and since it is no longer a novelty, there is no need to present it in more detail.

In our case, the processor is helped by 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and the fast UFS 3.1 storage with a capacity of 256 GB will also please you. This version is surprisingly the highest, since the Xiaomi 12T model range does not offer 512 GB of storage. You can only buy the lower variants 8/128 GB or 8/256 GB.

Since the smartphone comes with the best hardware you can find on the market, performance is not an issue. You can play any game on this smartphone without any worries. Traditionally, we also installed the popular AnTuTu benchmark, in which it received a score of 1 points. Although he is not at the very top of the ranking, he is currently enjoying sixth place.

6.67″ AMOLED display with shot

Xiaomi 12T Pro has the so-called CrystalRes AMOLED display with a diagonal of 6.67″. The display is not rounded at the edges and has a traditional cutout for the selfie camera in the center of the upper part.

In this case, Xiaomi focuses on a clean and clear image of the display, on which you can perfectly enjoy photos and other content. The display has a resolution of 2712 x 1220 px, a maximum brightness of 900 nits and a high refresh rate of 120 Hz. Of course, it can automatically adapt to current needs. The high sampling frequency of 480 Hz, 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color profile and support for HDR10+ or ​​DolbyVision will also please you.

The display is excellent, although it is a bit strange that Xiaomi claims in its promotional materials that it focuses mainly on the brightness and clarity of the display, but its brightness is significantly lower compared to the flagship 12S Ultra (max 900 vs 1500 nits). On the other hand, the brightness is sufficient to look at and the display is easily visible even in direct sunlight.

Ultra fast 120W charging

Following the example of last year's Xiaomi 11T Pro model, this year's 12T Pro model also receives very fast, up to 120 W cable charging. Using the included charger, the smartphone can be charged in approximately 20 minutes. The battery has a capacity of 5000 mAh.

In the settings, we can turn on even more charging acceleration, during which "120 W MAX" will appear on the display. You can see the overall progress of this charging in the table below:

If we turn off accelerated charging, we only see "120 W" on the display during charging and the entire charging takes 3-4 minutes longer. Wireless charging is missing.

As for the endurance per charge, it is very good thanks to the 5000 mAh battery. Although we did not achieve two days on one charge, the battery almost always lasted longer than one full day.

Attractive photo equipment

The main attraction on which the entire campaign around the Xiaomi 12T Pro is built is its main camera. It has a resolution of up to 200 Mpx thanks to the new Samsung ISOCELL HP1 sensor. Whether it's just marketing or not, we'll look at the individual photos together.

But let's take a closer look at the specifications of all the cameras that the new model has.

As you can see, the remaining two cameras have only a weak 8 and 2 Mpx, which is a huge disproportion compared to the main camera. We don't have high expectations from these two cameras and consider them rather as complementary.

200 Mpx main camera with ProCut function

The main camera with a record-breaking 200 Mpx camera comes with a new sensor from Samsung called HP1. Apart from the Xiaomi 12T Pro, we can only find it in the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra.

A large sensor with a low aperture bears fruit, so the photos from the main camera are very good. The images offer bright, contrasting and saturated colors, but to a quite acceptable degree. An excellent dy will also pleasenamiwide range, lots of detail and high sharpness.

The main camera has really succeeded, thanks to which you can look forward to beautiful shots. The quality is also very good indoors or in low light, or even in strong backlighting.

An interesting variation is the ProCut function. This is available after taking a 50 Mpx photo using the Ultra HD mode. In the gallery, there is a small icon with tiles for such a photo, which activates this function. It will offer 5 different cutouts from a large photo, thus demonstrating that high resolution is also sufficient for creating cutouts.

Ultra HD mode takes 50 Mpx photos, combining several pixels into one. A full, 200 Mpx photo can be achieved by switching to 200 Mpx mode in Ultra HD mode using one of the buttons in the camera application. Classic photos are around 6 MB, 50 Mpx around 16 MB and 200 Mpx up to around 60 MB and a resolution of 12 x 288 px.

Ultra-wide-angle lens, zoom and macro

Unfortunately, the remaining two cameras are not as good as the main one. It is already clear from looking at the parameters, which indicate that the sensors are small in this case, even if the brightness is not bad.

The ultra-wide-angle camera has a noticeably warmer color rendering with a hint of yellow, which is less pronounced overall. There are also noticeably fewer details, which is natural given the significantly lower resolution. On the other hand, it will please a very decent guynamirange.

The macro lens has only a weak 2 Mpx, which of course affects the overall quality. Interesting shots can be taken with this camera too, but their quality is visibly poor. The photo is not very sharp and we could probably achieve better quality with a cutout from the main camera.

The telephoto lens is missing in this case, but its function is partly replaced by a 200 Mpx camera. As we have already mentioned above, the 200 Mpx main camera provides sufficient resolution for making cutouts and zooming, which gives us a 2x zoom function, which is very good from a quality point of view.

Night mode

Night mode, like in other smartphones from Xiaomi, is activated automatically when the conditions require it. However, the automatic night mode can be turned off, and we turned it off mainly to show you the difference between photos with and without night mode.

Photos from the main camera are quite decent, but the quality is significantly worse than during the day. Sharpness deteriorates and noise appears in images, especially when photographing poorly lit objects. The night mode will increase the contrast and sharpness, but it is still not at a very good level.

When using an ultra-wide-angle lens, photos without night mode are significantly noisy and the sharpness is very poor. Night mode improves the photo, but the overall output is still quite poor.

In the case of the close-up shot, which is created by the cutout from the main camera, the quality is quite good and significantly better than compared to the ultra-wide-angle lens.

Video

The Xiaomi 12T Pro can record up to 8K resolution, but again only at 24 fps, which is not a win. A better choice is 4K resolution, where we have 60 or 30 fps and also image stabilization. Better stabilization is then only available at an even lower resolution, which is 1080p at 30 fps.

Xiaomi is also appealing to the function of focusing on moving people, dogs and cats. Your smartphonenamicky refocuses so that the moving person is always sharp, which can also be seen on the camera application screen. However, this function is only available at 4K, 1080p or 720p resolutions, but always only at 30 fps.

Video quality at 4K/60 fps, which in our opinion is the best resolution, is surprisingly very good. Although the colors are a bit oversaturated with high contrast, overall the video is nice and well stabilized, even if there are some shortcomings in the stabilization. But the overall impression is excellent.

Speakers, connectivity and fingerprint sensor

For this model, Xiaomi once again cooperates with Harman Kardon, whose logo can also be seen on the top edge next to the speaker grille. The sound from the speakers is good, clear and loud enough. We can definitely rank them among the better ones, although we would personally like stronger bass.

As for connectivity, especially wireless, we can find support for WiFi 6 or Bluetooth 5.2, and there is also NFC for contactless payments in stores.

This time the fingerprint reader is in the display, but for the first time it is placed unusually lower compared to other smartphones from Xiaomi. This location is less practical for us and it took us a long time to get used to it. But we must point out that the reader is very reliable and works faster than most readers in the display, even if it still does not have the ultrasonic reader, which is the top of the market.

MIUI 13 and Android 12

The Xiaomi 12T Pro comes with the Android operating system in version 12 along with the well-known graphic superstructure MIUI 13. The environment offers a clean and clear design with a lot of customization. Overall, it works well, the environment is smooth, but there are occasional hesitations in the form of stuck applications. However, it is difficult to say whether this is a problem of the application itself or of the environment.

There are also special functions such as dark mode, floating windows or even heart rate measurement using the fingerprint reader in the display. It works reliably and quickly.

Xiaomi 12T Pro: Final evaluation

If we had to summarize everything in the form of a few words, we would say that it is an excellent smartphone with a surprisingly good camera. The Xiaomi 12T Pro is indeed a very interesting and well-built smartphone. Xiaomi managed to tame the 200 Mpx camera to an excellent level, thanks to which you can expect beautiful shots with lots of details and excellentnamitechnical scope.

You will also be pleased with the fast 120 W charging, 6.67″ AMOLED display, good speakers from Harman Kardon and, last but not least, decent endurance thanks to the 5000 mAh battery.

Current coupons for Xiaomi 12T Pro (by 200 € cheaper than in SK!)

Perhaps only the absence of wireless charging, a weaker ultra-wide-angle lens and the absence of a telescopic camera will freeze.