Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro Review: The Flagship Phone You NEED To Consider

This phone has really impressed us. Let’s talk about the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro.

The design is very reminiscent of other Android phones out there; there’s the waterfall display on the sides, aluminium bezels and a glass back, but there have been some changes. The Solstice Gray colour is beautiful, changing from a blueish-grey to a dark grey depending on the lighting. It’s almost like frosted glass on the back, and it’s not a fingerprint magnet.

The metal bezel around the phone matches the colour on the back, and the front of the phone is a large Super AMOLED display at 6.67-inches. It does have a slight back bezel, and Xiaomi did a good job of making the waterfall display not too extreme that false presses register.

The phone runs on a Snapdragon 865 and Adreno 650 GPU, with a 4,500mAh battery which is definitely necessary to support the power consumption of the HDR10+ supported, 60/90Hz refresh rate on the screen.

There’s also a 65W fast charger included in the box, although the phone only has the capacity to charge at 50w. There’s also 30w wireless charging, and reverse wireless charging. Battery life lasts a full day to a day and a half, with 0-100 charge in under an hour.

The speed of the phone is great, the Snapdragon 865 is a beast and apps run smoothly. The Adreno 650 GPU works really well too, and there’s a gaming mode on the phone as well.

The phone feels good in the hand, very ergonomic and balanced. It’s not the lightest phone, but it feels really premium. While setting up the phone, we realised it was very Google-centric.

Looking at the side of the box, we noticed a line right under the “Mi 10 Pro” name that says “with easy access to the Google apps you use most”. And that’s true enough, with all the Google apps like Google One, Podcasts, YouTube Music and more available right off the bat. The standard keyboard is also the Google keyboard, which we like.

The reason some Android phones can be hit and miss with their displays is because of the colour. Back then, a lot of people wanted saturated displays. It’s hard for content creators to work with those types of displays because if you’re trying to edit a photo or video, you want it to look good across as many devices as possible.

Xiaomi has addressed this issue with P3 and sRGB colour gamut options as well as the ability to tweak the colour space to your individual preference.

The stereo speakers on the phone are really loud and pack a punch. You get two variants, either 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage or 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Even the baseline 8GB of RAM model runs really smoothly.

It’s a quad-camera array on the back with the 108MP main camera, a 12MP 50mm lens which is quite rare on smartphones, an 8MP telephoto lens and a 20MP ultrawide lens at 16mm. The front selfie camera is a 20MP lens.

There’s also optical image stabilisation, but it’s only on the 108MP and 8MP telephoto lenses. It does make it a bit challenging at times, but it’s not a deal-breaker.

The 108MP camera does provide excellent detail and colours, even when being pixel-binned. There’s also HDR which provides great dynamic range, but you’re not able to turn it off in the 108MP mode. The speed of the camera isn’t as fast as snapping a photo with a proper camera, so don’t use it to take photos of fast-moving subjects.

The 12MP 50mm has a lot of sharpness and does match the 108MP in this regard. You can turn off the HDR which is good, but the downside is that there’s no OIS.

Portrait mode works relatively well, but some detail can be lost occasionally. The way to combat this is by dialling back the strength of the bokeh so that you can retain a bit more detail on the face.

The front-facing camera is a 20MP lens, so you might think you’re going to get super sharp images, but the issue is that there’s no image stabilisation on that camera. There might be some camera shake, and that results in a blurry photo. It would be nice to have at least electronic image stabilisation.

There’s also a cool feature where you can edit photos to replace skies. You can choose skies that have more clouds, fewer clouds and such.

There’s also 8K video on the Mi 10 Pro. Will you use it a lot? Probably not, but it’s sharp, has great colours and focus is relatively fast. There is also the ability to capture 15-second clips, which is targeted towards creating content for Instagram Stories or TikTok videos.

There’s also a Vlog option where you can record short clips and the phone will automatically add transitions, colour grading and music. It’s fun, something a little different for social media.

There are other flagship phones out there that have a lot of the same features and you might be considering them because of the brand, but we think you should give this phone a shot. The Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro has put the brand in a different place in the market now, and they’re trying to push the boundaries a little bit.

More information and purchase options for the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro (S$1,399) can be found on Xiaomi’s Lazada shop.