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Xiaomi has a new high-end phone on the market. It's the Xiaomi 17T Pro, and though it's not quite a top flagship, it packs some great specs plus solid triple cameras. But at launch, this phone is far from cheap. Let's run the Xiaomi 17T Pro through our test and see if it's really worth your cash. The Xiaomi 17T Pro comes out just 8 months after its predecessor, the 15T Pro. But even with this short turnaround, we get upgrades like a much larger battery, improved charging capability, and a new chipset. And unlike the previous generation, which had a fiber reinforced plastic back, this one has Gorilla Glass 7i on the back and the front. The phone is just slightly heavier this time around due to the bigger battery, and you have
a frame made of aluminum. There's also IP68 rating for protection against water and dust, just like before. Xiaomi has brought back the same screen, too. A 6.83-in OLED with a high resolution and a 144-Hz refresh rate. The screen delivers when it comes to brightness. We measured a little over 1,000 nits maximum in automatic brightness mode, and this gets even higher, nearly 3,500 nits on a smaller portion of the screen. And this display has a lot of bells and whistles. It's quite sharp and has support for 12-bit color depth and both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ video playback. Even though on paper this refresh rate is extra high, it maxes out at 120 Hz when swiping around the screen.
And it dials down to a minimum of 60 Hz to save energy. You would only get the maximum 144 Hz in certain scenarios, like specific supported games. And under the screen, there's an optical fingerprint scanner, which is fast and reliable, but the placement could stand to be a bit higher up. The Xiaomi 17T Pro has stereo speakers, and they earned a loudness score of very good. We weren't impressed with the sound quality, though. There's not much bass, and the highs are a bit harsh. You can have a listen with our comparison tool linked below. Like other Xiaomi devices, the 17T Pro has an IR blaster for controlling appliances with. And you can get the phone with 256 or 512 gigs or a terabyte of storage on board.
The software experience here is Xiaomi's latest HyperOS 3 running on top of Android 16. As is popular these days, you get a black bar around the selfie cutout to hold certain shortcuts. Xiaomi has recently improved the connectivity to include devices from other manufacturers. And there are plenty of AI-based features here as well. For support, Xiaomi promises five major OS updates and six years of security patches. The Xiaomi 17T Pro is powered by a flagship chipset from MediaTek, a Dimensity 9500. It's a significant upgrade over the 9400 plus that was found in the previous model. And as expected in benchmarks, the 17T Pro does an excellent job earning scores
near the top of the charts. So, there's no shortage of power here for gaming and heavy tasks. The thermal behavior isn't great, but it's expected for a high-powered flagship. In our prolonged CPU stress test, we observed swift and heavy throttling down to around 50% of maximum. The Xiaomi 17T Pro is powered by a 7000 mA power battery. That's a big increase over the 5500 mA hours of the previous model. As a result, the battery life is a huge improvement. In our test, the 17T Pro earned an active use score in the ballpark of 22 hours. That's an excellent score and very competitive. Xiaomi has bumped up the charging from 90 watts to 100, but there's also a larger battery to fill up. So, it makes
sense that charging is actually a little slower than before. A full charge takes about 45 minutes, which is still respectable considering the size of this power pack. There's support for wireless charging, too, and it's fast, rated up to 50 watts. And a new feature There fast 22.5 watt reverse wire charging, which can quickly top up other devices. And now the cameras, which haven't really changed since the previous model. Overall, you have a 50 megapixel large sensor main camera, a 50 megapixel five times telephoto zoom, and a 12 megapixel fixed focus ultra wide.
During the day, the main camera captures photos with excellent naturally rendered detail and vibrant saturated colors. It's a very good performance overall. People shots turn out great as well with lively skin tones and good rendition of facial details. The natural subject separation is quite all right, but the dedicated portrait mode does a good job, too. Two times digital zoom from the main camera is praiseworthy. The shots come out nicely sharp and detailed, almost as well defined as the native one times photos.
The telephoto camera's five times zoom shots are flagship grade with great sharpness and natural detail. The shots come out a bit more contrasty than the main cameras, and the vividness of the colors also seems slightly toned down. With the help of a digital crop, 10 times zoom shots are very good. They can have a slightly dreamy look to brighter areas in certain scenes, and random foliage may not always be pin sharp, but all things considered, it's a nice job. The ultra wide camera's hardware might not be that impressive, but it still takes very good shots. Sharpness is great for this sort of camera. Colors are pleasing, and dynamic range is nice and wide.
The lack of auto focus does limit its usefulness for close-up shooting, though. However, for macro style close-ups, you can get pretty solid results using either the main or the zoom camera. Selfies come from a 32 megapixel camera at the full resolution, and the quality is just okay. While they have good colors and dynamic range, they don't have 32 megapixels worth of detail. In the dark, the 17T Pro's main camera delivers great results. Detail is excellent, even in the darkest of scenes. There can be some extra sharpening in the shadows, but it's all well executed. Dynamic range is nicely wide, and the colors are well saturated and accurate.
The telephoto camera's processing continues to be slightly different from the main cam, delivering deeper shadows and somewhat less saturated colors. Sharpness and detail are great with no excessive sharpening. The ultra wide doesn't blow you away at night, but it's not too shabby. Photos are decently sharp with wide dynamic range and good colors. The Xiaomi 17T Pro can record videos in 4K with all of its cameras, and the main cam can do 4K 120 FPS slow-mo and 8K recording as well.
4K videos from the main camera are very good. They're sharp and detailed, contrasty, and with pleasant colors that aren't quite as punchy as the stills. And when zooming in with a telephoto camera, five-time zoom clips are nicely detailed. The ultra wide's 4K clips are more in the average territory, but they're not bad, either. Video stabilization is good overall with some little imperfections. For example, the footage remains stable while walking, but not as stable as it could be. In the dark, the main camera has a tendency to overexpose the scene. Still, detail is good and white balance is on point.
The telephoto's nighttime clips don't really impress with a mix of noise and softness, but we call these usable. And the ultra wide's low-light footage is pretty bad. So, there you have it, the Xiaomi 17T Pro. It's overall a very good phone with great battery life, a powerful chipset, and good camera performance. However, the price is not so far behind a true flagship. At launch, this phone's base model is starting at around 900 bucks, and a flagship could bring upgrades like nicer speakers, LTPO on the display, and a better ultra wide and selfie cam. So, while the Xiaomi 17T Pro is a nice high-end phone, if you're not in a hurry, it might be better to wait for the price to go down before hitting that buy button.
Thanks for watching, guys. Here are a couple of alternatives you might find interesting: the Poco F8 Ultra and the Honor 600 Pro. Let us know what you think down below, and I'll see you on the next one.
