Xiaomi 13T Pro Review: Big upgrades and Leica cameras under $1,000

Note: This article was first published on 17th October 2023.

The most feature-rich Xiaomi T-series phone yet

Xiaomi's phone updates aren't the easiest to follow, with their Xiaomi 13 series lineup spreading across normal, Pro, Lite, Ultra, and the latest to the family, the Xiaomi 13T series.

To complicate matters, they debuted at various times throughout the year and with differing price points. It's no surprise that we get questions in our community about the Xiaomi 13T phone and how it compares to the other options Xiaomi offer.

What is the Xiaomi 13T series about?

In a nutshell, Xiaomi’s T-series is known for bringing flagship-level features to the masses at a slightly more affordable price point, but the Xiaomi 13T Pro takes this to a whole new level. Indeed, the previously launched Xiaomi 13 is priced at S$1,199 while the Pro edition is pegged at S$1,599, making them some of the most expensive Xiaomi phones launched. By contrast, the newly launched Xiaomi 13T Pro starts from just  S$949, which is a lower starting price than its most expensive T-series phone till date, Xiaomi 12T Pro.

Equipped and Priced to Impress

With a big jump to IP68 dust and water resistance from IP53 previously (check this article on what it means), a new CrystalRes AMOLED display that goes up to 144Hz refresh rate and 2,600 nits peak brightness, Leica lenses for the first time ever on a T-class product and more, the Xiaomi 13T Pro looks like a beast of an affordable flagship phone, on paper at least. 

The TLDR version:



Leica-branded camera lenses finally come to the T-series, and Xiaomi isn't even charging extra for some newly added features, making this excellent value for money.

Xiaomi is definitely leaning hard towards camera upgrades for the 13T Pro, with professional features like 10-bit RAW image support to assist photographers in post-processing, as well as 10-bit Log recording for the videographers out there.

Paired with Xiaomi’s Imaging Engine, the Leica Summicron lenses and photographic styles, it’s not far-fetched that most people would be excited about what the 13T Pro’s cameras can do. 

Equipped with the MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ processor under the hood, it's MediaTek's fastest ever to take on the popular Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The Xiaomi 13T Pro comes with either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM while storage is at 512GB or 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage, respectively. 

With all those exciting new specs, it’s rather promising that Xiaomi has managed to keep the price to just S$949 while the 16GB with 1TB storage edition comes in at just S$1,099. Let’s take a closer look at what it has and how it feels before we look at the rest of the phone.

Premium look and feel

The Xiaomi 13T Pro takes after its predecessor, the 12T Pro, aside from the larger camera bump. There are three colour options:  Meadow Green and Black (both of which come with glass backs) and Alpine Blue (pictured), which comes with Xiaomi’s BioComfort vegan leather on the back of the phone. The leather feels smooth and soft in the hand, giving the 13T Pro a nice, premium feel that’s a little more unique compared to the standard glass rears.

As a by-product of this finish, the Alpine Blue edition is also a little lighter at 200g, which is six grams less than the other two colours.

You also get a large camera housing that resembles the large camera bump of the 13 Pro, although Xiaomi's version sees tapered sides for a touch more flair.

The rails are matte aluminium, so if you opt for the Alpine Blue option, there’s no need to worry at all about the sides and back being a fingerprint magnet.  

The 6.67-inch FHD+ (2,712 x 1,220 pixels) CrystalRes AMOLED display is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 and supports up to 144Hz refresh rate as well as AdaptiveSync for a touch sampling rate of up to 480Hz.

The screen is also much brighter now, with a High Brightness Mode of 1,200 nits and a peak brightness of 2,600 nits. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ profiles are also supported on this screen.

Watching content on the phone is a pleasure thanks to the vibrant colours, though the colours seem more saturated than expected.

You get stereo speakers, which get very loud while offering decent accuracy and detail. It’s good enough to watch YouTube videos or indulge in gaming bouts. However, you’ll still want to get a good pair of true wireless earbuds (better yet, ANC headphones) for better audio appreciation.

User Interface

Similar to the Xiaomi 13 Pro, which we reviewed earlier this year, the Xiaomi 13T Pro is running on Android 13 with Xiaomi’s MIUI 14 software. Unlike our experience with the Xiaomi 13 Pro, however, the MIUI 14.0.11.0 version our Xiaomi 13T Pro is running is definitely more polished than before, with the UI quirks we mentioned previously, like the occasional unbolded headlines gone. 

Some bloatware apps come pre-installed in the "More Apps" folder, like Amazon Shopping, WPS Office and Booking.com, but they're not egregious and easily removable.

With the improved UI, we didn't encounter any issues during our regular use and the OS generally ran smoothly.

Both the under-display optical fingerprint sensor and face recognition responded incredibly fast (under half a second) and are accurate. It seems that the change to a MediaTek processor (from Qualcomm's Snapdragon flagship processors) proved capable; the phone handling regular usage needs effortlessly.

Let's kick things up a notch by assessing the phone's imaging credentials and the Leica lenses.

Imaging Quality

Let's talk about the cameras.

Xiaomi has brought the company’s collaboration with Leica to the T-series for the first time, with the inclusion of three Leica Vario-Summicron lenses:-

• 24mm 50MP main wide-angle camera (1/1.28-inch sensor, 1.22μm, f/1.9 aperture)
• 50mm 50MP telephoto camera (f/1.9)
• 15mm 12MP ultra-wide camera (f/2.2).

Don't be fooled by the megapixel downgrade when you compare 13T Pro to the 200MP camera that was on the Xiaomi 12T Pro. Megapixel count isn’t everything, and good mobile imaging depends on a combination of your lenses and processing chops.

In the case of the Xiaomi 13T Pro, Leica has gone above and beyond with its input on optical design, hardware component evaluation, software development, and much more. You can read more about the Leica partnership in our earlier news report.

Time for photo samples!

Xiaomi 13T Pro's main camera photos are fantastic when taken under ideal lighting conditions. You can easily attain punchy, vibrant colours and plenty of detail in each shot.

Since this is a Leica-tuned smartphone, it also offers two exclusive photographic style modes utilising the DCI-P3 wide colour gamut format to preserve more colour out of your shot - Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant. As per their namesake, the first preserves a balanced and accurate output, while the latter tunes the image for vibrancy respectively.

The distinction between both Leica photo style outputs is clear as night and day, and either will work well based on your personal preferences and mood. 

Personally, I preferred the Leica Authentic mode, so I shot in that style predominantly as I loved the way colours were rendered more true to Leica's signature look and feel.

Take note that there’s no way to shoot in the native camera app without choosing either the Leica Authentic or Leica Vibrant mode, so that’s something to keep in mind. That said, the modes are easily switched via a small "Leica" icon on the top right of the camera app's UI.

Night mode photos also turned out nicely. The software algorithms do impressive work to brighten up the image. Unfortunately, darker patches of foliage get a bit smudged and lose some detail, but it's hard to nitpick unless you're zoomed in. 

The Portrait mode is great, too, with a Master Lens System that provides 35mm, 50mm and 90mm focal lengths for portrait photography.

There’s plenty of detail retained, while the background has a gorgeous soft bokeh that’s incredibly well separated from the subject. It’s not always 100% perfect: check out the blurred hanger's hook in one of the portraits above.  In the same photo, the amount of detail captured in the lace trim is excellent.

If you prefer a bit more control over your photos, there’s the Pro Mode all the way to the left of the user interface. Pro Mode options let you control your shutter speed, ISO, EV, white balance and even a manual focus ring-esque feature.

I’ve noticed that the 2x zoom-in Photo mode might sometimes use a cropped-in image from the main camera instead of the telephoto camera. There’s no rhyme or reason as to why the phone decides to do that, but it happens whether I turn features like HDR on or off. But in Pro Mode, we note that the T button is always only using the telephoto lens, which is good.

A new feature that Xiaomi has introduced is Leica Custom Photographic Styles. While it sounds like photo presets to apply as and when wanted, it's actually focused on three specific adjustments to Tone, Tonality and Texture. Tone adjusts the gamma curve to affect the contrast and dynamic range, while Tonality adjusts the colour temperature and cyan/magenta hues. Texture adjusts the level of sharpness. 

Technically, it sounds good, and it’s tucked away in the Pro Mode, which means it’s made for people who know what they’re doing to their photography. Unfortunately, you can’t save multiple presets: just one. This means you’ll have to fiddle with the adjustments whenever you want to make a creative change.

So if you alternate between wanting to shoot cooler images and something warmer, or more contrasty versus less, there’s no way to choose between two custom quickly presets. To Xiaomi and Leica, we'd say a software update to address this might be quite helpful.

Photos can also be shot in 10-bit RAW DNG, and videographers might be pleased to know there’s 10-bit 4:2:0 H.265 4K 30fps LOG recording for the Xiaomi 13T Pro. My one quibble with the cameras might be that it takes a bit longer than usual between pressing the shutter button and when the photo is taken, so you can’t just snap carefree quick shots.

This is the same issue encountered when reviewing the Xiaomi 13 Pro, so it's not really the MediaTek processor's fault for the Xiaomi 13T Pro either. If you need to snap animals or kids, it could get a little frustrating to nail the right shot. Thankfully, you won't encounter this concern while shooting videos.

The telephoto lens included is also on the shorter side compared to other phones these days that can shoot up to 5x or 10x optical, but it’s not that big a deal if you’re not typically shooting photos from a distance.

Benchmark Performance

Inside the Xiaomi 13T Pro is MediaTek's newest and fastest offering, the Dimensity 9200+, a 4nm chip that comes paired with the Arm Immortalis-G715 GPU. When the chip was first announced, it was supposed to be as powerful as (if not more) than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Having the latest LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage results in a very fluid and smooth experience using the phone in most conditions.

Note that the unit we have on hand is the model with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Xiaomi also has a 16GB RAM variant of the 13T Pro available in Singapore that comes with double the onboard storage.

Putting it to the test

To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.

For this review, we've picked up formidable opponents such as Nothing Phone 2, Oppo Reno 10 Pro+, Poco F5 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S23, Xiaomi 13 Pro and not to forget, its predecessor, the Xiaomi 12T Pro.

To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we've jotted them down here.

Benchmark Performance remarks

Although the 9200+ is MediaTek’s best Dimensity chip at the moment, the benchmark results aren’t quite up to par with the numbers put out by phones with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip like the Samsung Galaxy S23. However, despite the lower numbers, the phone is still perfectly fine for normal usage without any stuttering or lagging as mentioned earlier. It also performs excellently when you pit it against other 2023 Android smartphones within its price range, like Oppo Reno10 Pro+ 5G and Nothing Phone (2).

One other trait you'll notice is that the phone's faster-than-usual UFS 4.0 storage (most phones are still on UFS 3.0 and 3.1 standards) helped it cope better than expected, such as in the older Geekbench 5 and in PCMark.

Battery Life

Our new battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more. 

In real-world use, the battery life isn’t fantastic. The Xiaomi 13T Pro uses up about 13% for an hour of photography, 20% for an hour of 60Hz gaming at max brightness. It consumes roughly 70% of its battery throughout a normal day with moderate use.

Thankfully, the Xiaomi 13T Pro offers 120W wired fast charging with the adapter in the box, which juices the phone up quickly. Wireless charging is missing here, which is typical of Xiaomi T-series handsets. It took 14 minutes for the Xiaomi 13T Pro to get up to 50% from zero, and 38 minutes total for a 0-100% charge. But before you can enjoy this, be sure to find a suitable adapter as the supplied charging head is a 2-pin electrical type-C wall plug, so that won't fit into your home readily.

Conclusion

With the new 16GB with +1TB model coming in at just S$1,099, Xiaomi’s offering is incredibly value-for-money if you also consider the fact that the base 12GB+512GB model is starting at just S$949. You'll be hard-pressed to find 1TB storage on a fairly powerful phone at this price point. Meanwhile, 512GB is still plenty for most people. At this price point, you would often only get 256GB of storage.

MIUI 14 is now more polished compared to when we reviewed the Xiaomi 13 Pro. Also, the Leica cameras and image processing offer a huge advantage that the 13T Pro has over other budget flagship offerings. 

The Xiaomi 13T Pro is an excellent successor to the Xiaomi 12T Pro. In some ways, it even exceeds the traditional T-series expectations.

The higher asking price of the Xiaomi 13 Pro was its Achilles' heel, with our previous review claiming that “there’s a slight suspicion that Xiaomi wants to ride on Leica’s coattails to drive up the Xiaomi 13 Pro’s asking price”. That’s absolutely no longer the case with the Xiaomi 13T Pro we've reviewed here, and we commend Xiaomi for its clever pricing strategy. 

Don't forget that long-time T-series fans are also getting plenty of juicy upgrades, so users are getting more for less money. In fact, we'd feel a little sorry for Xiaomi 12T Pro users now, since the prices came down (they got less for the starting price of S$1,099) and the new T-series phones offer so much more than its predecessor.

The Xiaomi 13T Pro might not be the best-performing budget flagship on paper, but it has most of the features you’d expect out of one. You get a large and vibrant 144Hz display, up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, up to 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage, IP68 resistance and those excellent Leica cameras all make the phone a very enticing option to consider.

Xiaomi 13T Pro comes in Alpine Blue, Meadow Green and Black. The official prices are:

• Xiaomi 13T Pro: S$949 (12GB RAM, 512GB storage)
• Xiaomi 13T Pro: S$1,099 (16GB RAM, 1TB storage)

You can get it at authorised Xiaomi retail stores island-wide, and the phone is also available on Xiaomi's official Shopee store.

 

Tip to save even more $$

If you don't need 512GB of storage, the regular Xiaomi 13T is even better value for money at just S$699 for the 12GB+256GB model with almost exactly the same specs, including the same Leica cameras, the same 6.67-inch FHD+ display and more.

The major differences are the drop-down to a MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra processor, the slower (but still fast) 67W wired charging, Wi-Fi 6 support and a slight downgrade to LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage. For S$250 of savings, that's a pretty good trade-off, and it still sounds good.

Warranty and Support matters

According to Xiaomi Singapore, each Xiaomi 13T purchase enjoys the following (with more details listed here):-

• 24-month warranty (with spare phone provision if repair isn't possible within the same day)
• 1x limited broken-screen warranty
• 1x out-of-warranty repair with free labour costs within 12 months