Xiaomi 12 Review

Compact power flagship in your hands

Just earlier this week, Xiaomi sent us a unit for review which is the Xiaomi 12, which marks their start of year 2022 flagship of lineup landed to our Malaysian markets. Alongside Xiaomi 12 there is also Xiaomi 12 Pro released the same time as of this writing.

Specifically we will review the Xiaomi 12, a compact size flagship, but comes with a formidable flagship class processor and specifications that accompanied with it.

Unboxing Contents

The Xiaomi 12 come with the following :

• Xiaomi 12 Phone
• Translucent Casing
• Pre-Applied Screen Protector
• 67w Xiaomi fast Charger
• USB A to C Cable
• User Manual/Warranty Statement

Design

The Xiaomi 12 design is built with a very slim candy bar form factor. The slimness is only measured at 8.1mm and looks slightly taller compared to last year’s Xiaomi 11T which is so fresh looking at the back of the phone’s body with a very smooth touch and colors that does shines under the light without leaving smudges or stains. It looks fashionable yet durable the same time. While it’s tall and thin, no flex so far on the overall body as well and the curves are real classy on all rounded corners.

The camera portion is an island of bump consisting of 3 camera sensors and a flash with silver color accent surrounding it. While we it is not the slimmest of all, for a flagship phone, it is definitely a phone that shines up when place on any surface.

Continuing on the sides, on the right hand side, there is a volume up and down button and a power button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, while the top houses an IR blaster for remote control, a top speaker, microphone, while the bottom portion has a speaker, mic, 3.5mm headphone jack, Dual SIM card/MicroSD Card slot and a USB C port. All of the phone sides are made of aluminum. Over to the camera design, the brighter shining color applies to the side of the phone and the bottom/top part as well with glacier smooth touch to it. Audio wise, this ensures good call quality and clear stereo speaker enjoyment at anytime with Dolby Atmos and Harmon Kardon.

The Xiaomi 12 comes in three colors, Grey, Blue and Purple which carries the weight of 179 Grams. Personally the weight is at average level with overall device to body ratio that is still a demand with the tall slimline device.

Display

Over to the display and audio portion, the Xiaomi 12 is powered by a 6.28 Inch QHD+ 120Hz AMOLED screen with Gorilla Glass Victus. Display is vibrant on colors with great contrast level that look amazing with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support. Most of the applications do take advantage of high refresh rates with rising of many games adapting it as well. Surely streaming will not be an issue as well especially if you love 60FPS HDR video enjoyment combined with a pair of stereo speakers that is quite loud and it does support Dolby Atmos & Harmon Kardon out of the box and proper Full HD certification to be used on apps such as Netflix.

Camera

When it comes to the camera portion, the Xiaomi 12 rear camera consists of one Sony IMX766 50MP Wide PDAF with OIS camera, one 13MP ultra-wide camera, and one 5MP Telephoto Macro lens followed by a Dual LED tone flash. Pictures taken were clear as crystal during day with good amount of light captured produced on each picture. During night shots, as long you can get even small amount of light, the picture quality will come out excellent as well with contrast and shadows visible at great clarity. The selfie images are bright and good during day time as well which is powered by a 32MP wide angle lens.

Different modes are tested with sets of 10x zoom, normal, 50MP, HDR and automatic shots taken with minimal noise so far. Other modes such as movie effects, long exposure are also available and these features are carried over from the previous Xiaomi 11 series of lineups.

On video recording you get support up to 8K at 24FPS, with minor stutters visible during recording however details are still captured with playback test over good recording bitrate. An example of above is captured with 4K at 60FPS which is still stunning and stable thanks to it’s hardware OIS.

Performance

Performance wise, the Xiaomi 12 is powered by the flagship premium Qualcomm 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 5G Octa Core Processor, 128/256GB of internal storage and 8/12GB RAM.

Operating system is on Android 12 with the brand new MIUI 13 on top that brings in improvement on battery life, performance tweaks and a new Game Turbo mode with performance tweaks, sound changer and monitoring profiles. The phone does come with 5G connectivity support if you are looking for a 5G phone with WiFi AX, Bluetooth 5 and NFC. Testing over WiFi 6 connection gets up to an average of 1200MBPS transfer speeds, ensuring good fast speed for multimedia, streaming and online gaming. If you have a WiFi 5/6 router, you will be able to make use of the hardware features without issues.

Over to the gaming side, basically this phone will perform well on games such as Mobile Legends, Genshin Impact and Call Of Duty with medium to high settings applied.

Above is the Benchmark performance, which delivers a very good scores on each of the test between its graphics, and processor performance. Xiaomi 12 is suitable for those seeking for a top of the line flagship phones. Xiaomi 12 does cool down fast with its 2600mm extra-large VC liquid cooling to keep the phone from throttling.

Battery performance wise, you will get around 11 hours of it with the built in 5000mAH battery, a mix of calls, surfing, email, streaming, and a few game matches. Turning on the battery saving mode under 20% will get you around extra 3 hours of conservative usage. Xiaomi 12 comes with a 67W turbo fast charger, which will charge up the phone to 100% from 10% in around 40min average. 

Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion 

The Xiaomi 12 is a phone that packs power, beauty from the back to front that shows smaller flagship device does gives all the performance for your everyday usage. This could be the phone for you if you wish something so compact in your pocket that entertain you, game and work with battery life that last for the whole day. And if you are a heavy user, the included 67w fast charger can fill up till full in less than an hour, and you can use it the rest of the day.

Pros

• 120Hz Refresh Rate Display
• AMOLED display with 360Hz touch sampling rate

Cons

• I wish to have the SuperMoon camera mode.

Pricing and availability

Starting from now, the Xiaomi 12 will be available in two variants at RM 2899 for the 8GB+128GB variant and RM 2999 for the 8GB+256GB variant, and can be purchased from Lazada