Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro 5G Review: The Flagship Killer of 2020!

Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro 5G Review: The Flagship Killer of 2020!

Verdict: Xiaomi devices are always easy to recommend due to the price to performance ratios of their devices and that certainly hasn’t changed with the Mi10T Pro 5G. For Php 24,990, it certainly deserves to be on top of your shortlist if you’re looking for flagship performance without the price tag associated with it.

The camera performance still falls short especially in low-light and from what we’ve experienced so far, that’s its biggest downside. There’s definitely more to love about this device to make up for that.

Xiaomi has pretty much been the go-to brand when people look for a solid performer in a smartphone at very aggressive price points. With the inclusion of their new flagship killers to the Philippine market, that hasn’t changed but what should you expect out of the Mi 10T Pro before you decide to buy it? Hopefully, we help you out in this review.

Pros

  • Solid Processing Package
  • High Refresh Rate Display
  • Surprising Battery Life
  • Aggressive Pricing

Cons

  • OLED > IPS
  • Low-light Camera Performance
  • Availability

Design

Apart from giving us great price to performance ratios in their devices, Xiaomi has also given us devices that are built well and pretty darn good too. With the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro, you’re getting Gorilla Glass 5 for both the front and back of the device plus an aluminum frame to check all the boxes; giving you the flagship look and feel.

The colorway you’re seeing in this article and our videos is Cosmic Black and, no doubt, you’ve heard many reviewers say that its mirror finish is a fingerprint magnet. For that reason, we do recommend getting the Lunar Silver variant that has a matte finish and it’s what the team generally prefers.

One thing to note is that the Mi 10T Pro does have a bit of weight to it — mostly due to its construction — but it feels nice in the hands. The curves along its sides make it easier to grip despite it being slightly slippery due to the finish of the Black variant.

There’s still no official IP rating on these flagship killers from Xiaomi but we’ve seen videos online where they have survived a thorough soaking in the shower. We wouldn’t advise that you get this wet but that’s good to know.

Display and Audio

A key highlight for the Xiaomi Mi 10T series is its display. Just to recap, we’re getting a 6.67-inch Full HD+ LTPS IPS Display with a refresh rate of 144Hz that also supports HDR10+.

While we generally prefer and have been spoiled by AMOLED displays, the color reproduction on the display of this phone ain’t half bad. You’re also getting a ton of options in the settings to tweak it to your liking and we do recommend using it on sRGB as it did produce the best results in our opinion.

Xiaomi has also outfitted the Mi 10T Pro with pretty great speakers too. There’s one at the bottom and the other one is in the earpiece with an echo chamber on top to help it out. You’ll mostly want to keep it around the 70 to 80-percent mark to avoid distortion but we think that’s all you’ll need unless you’re in an extremely noisy area.

We would usually suggest that you use earphones but, sadly, there’s no headphone jack to be found on this phone but they do include an adapter for the USB-C port out of the box.

Cameras

You might have seen our video on YouTube wherein the thumbnail, we called the Mi 10T Pro an Ultra Killer and part of the reason for that is its camera setup. On the back, you’re getting a 108-megapixel main shooter to go along with its 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and 5-megapixel macro lens. The output from the cameras are generally great even if you factor in that most of our sample shots were taken while it was overcast.

There’s a good amount of detail and the colors do look really good too. You can expect to fall off with the ultra-wide-angle that produces softer images when you pixel peep but not bad at all for posting on social media.

It’s when the lights go low where the Mi 10T Pro struggles and that has mostly been the case for Xiaomi’s phones in general. They’ll do but you’ll really see the finer details get muddled up and you do see a lot of noise as well.

It’s pretty much the same story for the 20-megapixel camera as well. It produces great snaps overall but make sure you’re lit well.

Xiaomi has equipped their cameras with a few tricks on the software side of things with our favorite one being the clone features and we can imagine all the creative shots you can get using it.

Performance and Battery

There’s no doubt that in terms of price to performance, this is one of the best phones you can get right now. In case you missed all the talk about this phone, you have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 that’s paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

It should go without saying that the Mi 10T and Mi 10T Pro handled all the tasks we threw at it with no problems whatsoever and multitasking wasn’t much of an issue either

In terms of gaming, this new crop of flagship killers won’t disappoint either. Genshin Impact runs smoothly on this device and, when the servers cooperate, I’ve had stutter-free matches in League of Legends: Wild Rift on the Ultra High Definition preset.


The Mi 10T Pro is equipped with a 5000mAh battery and we were pleasantly surprised about its endurance. Our battery drain test had it clock in a time of 17 hours and 37 minutes, while real world use gave me a day and a half, which means Xiaomi’s adaptive refresh rate actually works to prolong battery life.

Charging was also pretty fast since it does support 33W and we got the phone to top up from 0 to 100% in about an hour give or take a few minutes.

Xiaomi has also done a lot to trim down on this iteration of MIUI. There’s still some bloatware on board but it’s significantly less and most of it can be uninstalled if you don’t want them. It does look iOS-ish now and we’re still kinda on the fence about the look.

Wrap Up and Conclusion

It seems like we say this time and time again when Xiaomi releases their flagship killer of flagship killers every year, but this one of the bang-for-your-buck devices you can get right now — alongside the vanilla version of the Mi 10T; also a good choice if you want to save more money.

Yes, it’s not perfect and we do want to see if the Sony IMX sensor on the non-Pro version performs better than the Samsung sensor on this device but, as I said at the top of this review, the benefits outweigh everything else.

The biggest drawback here is that their devices are so popular that they’re kinda hard to get a hold of since they sell out incredibly fast.

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