Display Performance Software Camera Battery The Mi 11 Ultra is the ultimate Xiaomi flagship and the Mi 11x Pro 5G and Mi 11x 5G are almost identical phones that serve as accessible flagship killers. The Mi 11x Pro 5G, which we will be talking about here, gets the best-in-class Snapdragon 888 octa-core chipset and a 108MP primary camera. It also has a lot to look forward to including a 120Hz AMOLED display, Android 11-based software, and 33W fast charging. However, can the practical experience match expectations? Let’s talk about what works and what doesn’t in our Mi 11x Pro 5G review. The Xiaomi Mi 11x Pro is a plain and simple phone, and by simple we don’t necessarily mean sober. Our Celestial Silver review unit is essentially silver with a smudge-resistant finish that glows in different colors depending on the angle of the light it reflects. The other two color options – Lunar white and Cosmic Black – should be more appealing to people with understated taste.
Handset with pre-applied screen protectorTransparent protective case with frosted side edges33W Fast charging adaptorUSB Cable for charging and data transfer3.5mm Audio jack to USB Type-C dongleDocumentation and SIM ejector PIN
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Contents
Mi 11x Pro 5G Review: Design and BuildMi 11x Pro Review: DisplayMi 11x Pro Review: Performance and SoftwareMi 11x Pro Camera ReviewMi 11x Pro Review: Battery and AudioShould you buy Mi 11x Pro 5G?
The rounded rectangle camera module makes the phone distinct, but it juts out quite a bit and also makes the phone wobble on a flat surface. This is perhaps an acceptable compromise for the otherwise slim profile that facilitates comfortable handling. The edges are still polycarbonate. Even with an AMOLED display on board, Xiaomi sides with a side-mounted fingerprint reader – which proved fast and reliable. The area around this combined button isn’t chamfered flat, but it still registered our digits very reliably. Another peculiarity is that there are speaker grills at the top that also conceals the IR blaster. There is no SD card slot or audio jack, but I guess these are omissions that we are used to by now. Xiaomi does bundle a USB Type-C to Audio Jack connector in the box. Overall, Xiaomi has done a fabulous job with the design that we quite appreciate. This is a slim, good-looking phone that’s comfortable to hold and operate. We really loved the display on the Mi 11x Pro. Xiaomi uses a 120Hz high refresh rate AMOLED panel with a 360Hz touch sampling rate and a centrally aligned circular punch hole notch. The display is HDR10 compliant and gets bright enough for occasional usage under the direct sun to not be a problem. The Mi 11x Pro doesn’t support adaptive refresh rate like some other Xiaomi phones we ran into this year, but the display can still switch between 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz. When selected, the phone mostly sticks to 120Hz, but the refresh rate drops to 60Hz when you open multimedia apps like Prime Videos and Netflix, in the camera app, and also when the phone gets heated (which is quite often). On the software side of things, the MIUI has abundant options to customize the display to your liking. These include different color profiles, color temperature wheel and presets, and a customizable reading mode. Having said that, the default profile works great. The Mi11x Pro display is vibrant and even when this is an 8-bit panel, HDR performance on Youtube is above average. The phone supports DRM L1 certification and 1080p streaming works across popular apps like Netflix and Prime videos. The Mi 11x Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s reigning flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 888, paired with LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage. As far as performance hardware goes, this is as lavish as it gets on the Android side of things, even if you spend twice or thrice as much. Day-to-day usage was perfectly smooth and we noticed that apps remained cached in the memory for a long duration. 120 FPS is supported for gaming, but the phone switches to 60fps as the temperature rises. Call of Duty Mobile defaults to ‘Very High’ graphics and ‘High’ FPS, but the gameplay is quite smooth even when you toggle the Frame Rate to ‘Max’. It was indeed a pleasure gaming on the phone, except for one small caveat. The phone heats up quickly and this results in throttling and performance drop. With Call of Duty Mobile, we noticed janks and jitters after 30 minutes of gaming on maximum settings. The battery drain also gets steeper as the phone heats up. Overheating seems to be one common issue with Snapdragon 888 phones. While we haven’t tested the Mi 11x yet, we didn’t face any such issue on Snapdragon 870 powered iQOO 7 (review). The Mi 11x Pro did really well at benchmarks, but again it did get uncomfortably hot. In fact, the 3D Mark stress test repeatedly got terminated midway with an overheating prompt.
Xiaomi Mi 11x Pro Benchmark Scores
Geekbench 5.1 Single Core – 1096Geekbench 5.1 Multicore – 3486PCMark Work 2.0 – 13077PCMark Work 2.0 writing – 132313DMark Wildlife – 5713Androbench Random Read Speed – 195.8 MB/sAndrobench Random Write Speed – 231.67 MB/s
MI 11x Pro runs Android 11- based MIUI 12 software out of the box. The software is feature-rich and has abundant customization options, but it also feels cluttered. Xiaomi is still pushy with pre-installed services and its Get Apps store, but the good thing is that there are options baked in to disable many of the annoyances (even if it isn’t always easy to find them). For instance, you can replace the app vault on the -1 screen with Google Discover feed, realign apps horizontally in the recent apps menu, disable notifications of preloaded apps, or disable the app scan window that interrupts after every app install. Consumers who aren’t tech-savvy will still have to bear the inconvenience. The software is in dire need of a makeover. We are hoping that meaningful UX changes are on their way with the MIUI 13 that’s due for launch in a few weeks. Other than that, we didn’t face any issues with call quality and connectivity. There are three cameras on the rear. The first and foremost is the 108MP Samsung HM2 sensor that combines 9 pixels to 1, resulting in 12MP images. The other two sensors are an 8MP wide-angle and 5MP macro camera. Images shot in proper daylight turned out really impressive. Details are great, colors are close to natural, and the dynamic range is pretty wide. There is also a 108MP mode for full resolution images which have better details when you zoom in. We’d have loved to test this outdoors beyond home confinements, but couldn’t do so due to pandemic imposed restrictions. Xiaomi’s Night Mode is among the very best available. Using the mode, the Mi 11x Pro faithfully captures dark scenes. And as for the other two sensors onboard. The wide-angle camera is quite pedestrian, but the Macro camera is quite fun (in proper outdoor lighting). The portrait mode does a great job with edge detection and background blur. Selfies have ample details but skin tones are natural. There is some oversharpning but no artificial botched up beautification. Video footage we captured in and around our home turned out pretty decent too. The phone lets you shoot 8K videos at 30fps but without image stabilization. If you need stabilization, 4K@60fps should be a better choice. All said and done, the Mi 11x Pro camera quality is befitting its price. The primary sensor does a great job in proper lighting and holds rather well in tricky situations. Mi 11x Pro has a 4520mAh battery and ships with a 33W fast charger. During the review period, we had the display set to 120Hz and the battery mostly lasted for around 6.5 hours of screen on time. It isn’t very hard to drain the battery in less than a day and on particularly heavy usage days when you are traveling or need to click a lot of photographs, you will most probably need to resort to mid-day charging. And on such days, you can use power-saving profiles or dial back to a 60Hz display to extend mileage. Having said that, most people will manage more than a day’s use on a full charge with standard usage. The bundled 33W charger takes around 1 hour 15 minutes for a full charge. Audio output from the stereo speakers makes a difference while gaming and while watching videos. The combined output isn’t very loud or exactly balanced, but the overall impact is nice and the audio feels full and rich. We didn’t face any issues with streaming wireless audio either. We really enjoyed using the Mi 11x Pro as our daily driver. This is an attractive and ergonomic phone with a powerful chipset, an amazing display, and one that offers great cameras for the price. The major downsides are the cluttered software and poor thermal efficiency. Compared to the Mi 11x, the extra money you’ll spend will probably be on the cameras. At the end of the day, the Mi 11x Pro offers excellent value for the price and thus is easy to recommend. Editor’s rating: 4 / 5 Reasons to buy
Appealing designExcellent display Excellent performanceDecent battery mileageStereo speakers
Reasons to not buy
Runs hot under heavy loads Software needs improvement
What is the SAR value of Mi 11x Pro? SAR Value head is 0.853 W/ kg; body-worn SAR is 0.598W/ kg Does Mi 11x Pro support HD and HDR streaming on Netflix and Prime? Full HD streaming works fine on Netflix and Prime videos. HDR content is supported only on Youtube. Does Mi 11x Pro support AR Core for Google objects? Yes, AR Core and Google AR objects are supported. Does Mi 11x Pro support 4G carieer aggregation and dual 4G VoLTE? Yes, it does. Does Mi 11x Pro support auto call recording? No, it does not. How much storage is free on Mi 11x Pro? We have the 128GB variant with us and around 106GB is free for end users. Does Mi 11x Pro support Camera2 API for Pixel camera? Camera2 API Level 3 is supported.
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