Xiaomi 13 Pro Review – Has everything you need for a premium phone

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is one of the flagships that Xiaomi pushes to bring every latest that user will get in terms of internals and exteriors, and we did the Xiaomi 13 review also which you can check it HERE, and this one is the slightly bigger version of it with some changes that makes it differ from the Xiaomi 13.

Who is this for ?

Those who wanted to have a great photo snapper and a higher end video recording in your hands, and besides that it still have plenty of power as a premium flagship which you can do all you want while retaining a socialable phone that practically matches and carry with you as it retains what a phone classically should be.

Design

The Xiaomi 13 Pro comes in at about a nice weight of 210 grams and fitted into a 6.73 inch form factor with 8.4mm slimess, a size that is still easily pocketable or in your handbag which still have some weight in it but in comparison, it is still reasonably nice and to us, it is not that bulky due to the nicely crammed in hardware design with rounded edges that makes it easy to hold at the same time. The Xiaomi 13 pro is built with Gorilla Glass Victus protection in front with aluminum body all around as a frame and of course, the back of the phone is also made with a durable ceramic like material that comes in different colors, namely the white, black and flora green.

My experience towards holding the device is quite similar to the Xiaomi 13 and honestly its just slightly bigger but however it did not compromise anything else as it still retain a good balance of ergonomics of the phone. USB C port, dual speakers, infrared ports, button positioning all remains the same as the Xiaomi 13 as well as certain previous Xiaomi models which makes things even more familiar if you are planning to upgrade from your existing Mi phone.

Display and Audio 

For a standard size phone, this also means that the Xiaomi 13 Pro is a great fit when it comes to display, fitted with a 6.73 inch curved LTPO AMOLED 1 billion color display, a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and a screen to body ratio of almost close to 90%, and thats the overall screen use which basically means just a little bit of bezel left, bringing it like a mobile cinema viewing experience if you love to stream movies, since it does have Widewine L1 certification, enabling HD compatibility thru apps like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. Despite all the good things it has, the brightness peaks quite well in most situation whether it is bright or dark and by normal usage, it is around 1400nits average, which is excellent in my opinion and I am still be able to get a good view angle over what I am interacting with the phone. Dolby Vision is there as well bringing in more immersive streams altogether.

In terms of audio, it has a pair of stereo speakers, one on the earpiece and another on the bottom, which when combined give a quite loud audio that covers a small room range, and it’s also quite clear when we tested it with a few genres of music and vocals, don’t expect bombastic bass but overall it’s a pleasant one. HiRes Audio and HiRes Audio Wireless are supported by Dolby Audio, which adds equalization choices and upgrades. I am confident that there is a setting for everyone, therefore your mileage may vary based on the listening settings that fit your ears.

Cameras

Rear Camera : 50.3 MP, f/1.9, 23mm (wide), 1.0″-type, Dual Pixel PDAF, Laser AF, OIS
50 MP, f/2.0, 75mm (telephoto), PDAF, 3.2x optical zoom
50 MP, f/2.2, 14mm, 115˚ (ultrawide), AF

Front Camera : 32 MP, f/2.0, 22mm (wide), 0.7µm

The Xiaomi 13 Pro marks a slight difference when compare to the Xiaomi 13, this goes quite obvious when it comes to the rear camera configurations a triple 50MP lens with laser AF, OIS, telephoto and ultrawide, such combinations will give a much balance details over which lens you are particularly shooting on, in return that you are getting richer details, especially post images where it is highly editable and minimal losses in details after that, our test shooting shows that the Xiaomi 13 Pro does go head to head with most of the higher end premium flagship and with the combination of Leica Co-Engineered technology optimised inside, the Xiaomi 13 pro is a worthy strong contender when it comes to color detailing, dynamic range and contrast level. In other words whatever Xiaomi 13 can do, the Xiaomi 13 Pro does it better in all ways with the inclusion of the 1 inch main sensor. The front 32 MP camera works well even during night time, which is crucial for a front snapper these days especially in low light situations where I might just wanna take a selfie.

Hence we have compiled a small collection shots mixed in with day and night photos taken with the Xiaomi 13 Pro, the photo that you are about to view is not compressed and extracted directly from the phone.

Here’s another example of a Leica Authentic and a Leica Vibrant. Simply described, Authentic mode provides a traditional tone to acquired images, whilst brilliant adds deeper but brighter colors that are more brilliant with slight sharpening. This also works for video recording.

Lastly, we also attach a sample of 4K 60FPS video here, overall this is one formidable candidate should you wish to capture high quality recordings, and in fact it can even shoot up to 8K at 24FPS.

Performance, Benchmarks, Experience

This is similar to other flagship gadgets in 2023 in that it is packed with the well-known Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Octa Core CPU with all of the bells and whistles you can imagine. Xiaomi starts the new line up with a minimum of 12GB LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 4 internal storage, which is fit enough for a flagship smartphone and for the most part, it is up to the user to go for a higher end storage, though one must keep in mind that there is no expandable storage option across all Xiaomi 13 models, including the Xiaomi 13.

It comes with Android 13 and MIUI 14, with some of the improvements over loading times and faster app switching, in a nutshell it does look similar to MIUI 13, just the processes and outlook is much more streamlined compared to the previous iteration. To put it over the experience basis, especially if you are a seasonal Xiaomi or POCO user, nothing much is changed, but much smoother, and as my daily driver, you can expect that it will last you about 14 hours straight no issues without turning on Power Saver. Not mentioning much on what I usually do, as it is pretty much how a moderate user uses over a premium phone, opening about 25 apps and juggle with it seems excellent on this portion. Now its gaming time. Genshin Impact holds well over 35 minutes before it starts throttling, but so, that is just a tiny bit and not much of a serious stutter over domain hunting and daily missions. If you play alot of eSports title, this phone is definitely for you too, games like CoD Mobile will just run fine with good framerate pacing, and thats not enough, Game Turbo mode will give you more by toggling the Performance mode. Viewing some movies in this phone will keep thing phone going, even FullHD movies for a couple of rounds totaling about 3 hours should still leave you plenty of power for you to do other things like keep on browsing your social media or just replying a couple of messages. If you are out of power soon, the included 120W fast charger will get you back within an hour or so and you can keep on going.

Towards benchmark, not to far away from the current flagships tested and definitely outperforms any mid range class phones equipped with a mid tier SOC.

Technical Specifications

Conclusion and Verdict

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is what we call one of the ticks most of the checkmarks right straightaway from the get go, I mean at first the screen is excellent with satisfying viewing angles, with loud sounded speakers that delivers most quality out of it and most importantly a combination of good connectivity provided that is up to date coupled by an array of camera sensors that able to produce high quality shots with different modes you can play on it, giving it more creative ways of your usage daily. Of course since this is another flagship device, Xiaomi is delivering Android Security and OS updates for at least years to come in order to enhance and fix issues to even make this phone better as you are enjoying it, hence if you are planning to change your device from your old one, or if you are feeling that you wanted a phone that keeps you entertain further, this is one suitable candidate you can consider.