[REVIEW] Xiaomi 15 Ultra: A combination of the best in an expensive flagship

It’s been through another full year again, and once more we have the very best from our favorite manufacturer. A lot has already been written about Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and it was among the most anticipated smartphones on the market. Now it’s finally officially here—and it’s also available in Slovakia.

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It’s back again with an ultimate design, top-tier cameras, a large battery, and other features that make it almost an ideal flagship. In this review, you’ll learn everything important about it.

Where to buy Xiaomi 15 Ultra?

Xiaomi 15 Ultra is currently available from our Chinese partners at the best coupon prices—right away from a European warehouse with express delivery in 7 days and a 2-year warranty.

You can also find it with local electronics sellers, but it’s only available in the version with 512 GB storage. The advantage, however, is ultra-fast delivery, a full 2-year warranty, or the option to return the product.

Unfortunately, this smartphone’s package doesn’t include an original charger due to new EU regulations starting in 2025. Since the phone supports 90W wired charging and Xiaomi’s 90W charging adapter can’t be purchased, we recommend either a slower 67W charger, or a faster 120W charger—the phone will take up to 90W, and charging is completely safe.

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Xiaomi 15 Ultra Global Version

EU warehouse, 16 GB + 512 GB 984,43 €EU warehousePL warehouse, 16 + 512 GB, 2 years warranty 1 088,71 €PL warehouseSlovak warehouse, 16 + 512 GB, 2 years warranty 1 279,00 €SK warehouseSlovak warehouse, 16 GB + 1 TB, 2 years warranty 1 313,10 €SK warehouse

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Updated 14. 10. 2025 on 16:06

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1. Copy the code and click GET THE DISCOUNTIn our article, copy the coupon and click the button GET THE DISCOUNT. The link will take you directly to the product in the AliExpress app.
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Xiaomi 15 Ultra: Technical Specifications

In the box

Xiaomi has also jumped on the trend of not including a charging adapter in the box. It’s a shame, because a smartphone for €1500 basically demands one. So you’ll have to buy the original 90 W adapter separately, which will cost you extra money. Alternatively, you can decide to use your fast USB-C adapter that you already have at home. No, actually you can’t, because Xiaomi includes a USB-C cable in the package, but on the other end it’s a regular large USB connector. That’s a bit disappointing.

Even without a charging adapter, the box is still pretty bulky—it definitely doesn’t look like they saved any space here. At least you get a protective cover in the box, although it’s just a plain hard plastic that also doesn’t look very good. On the other hand, it still provides basic protection for an expensive smartphone.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra has an attractive design and top-notch build quality

The design is one of the strongest features of this new release for us. In particular, the back side turned out great. Xiaomi 15 Ultra is officially available in three colors – white, black, and gray (the one we tested, and in our opinion, the most beautiful). This finish with a leather-like imitation on the back doesn’t capture fingerprints and looks great.

There’s also room for a silver (matte) strip with the manufacturer’s logo, which adds style and a certain exclusivity to the back. An entire chapter on its own is the huge camera circle that sits quite noticeably above the device’s surrounding surface. No wonder—there are large sensors inside that need their space. It looks great, but ergonomics suffers.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra doesn’t feel the most secure in hand. Aside from being large, that’s not helped by this ring either, which you can brace your fingers against, but it still doesn’t quite feel right. We do praise the squared-off sides, they look modern and stylish. The button layout is traditional – all the hardware buttons are on the right side. The power button is ridged, which adds even more to the stylish design.

The phone itself is built exceptionally well. The combination of quality materials and enhanced water resistance (IP68) meets the strictest requirements. Just one touch is enough to tell you that Xiaomi 15 Ultra belongs to the most expensive—and best—models on the market.

Display

Looking at the specs, it’s completely clear that this is an absolute top-tier device. The foundation is a high resolution of 3200 x 1440 pixels, but once you unbox it, the resolution is set to FullHD+. There’s no missing 120 Hz refresh rate that can change dynamically and go as low as 1 Hz. And that alone works really well—just when the image on the display stays still for a moment, the display immediately drops to 1 Hz.

The image quality is excellent: the colors are vivid, and there’s practically nothing we could complain about. The maximum brightness of 3200 nits in automatic mode is great, and readability in direct sunlight isn’t an issue at all.

The display is very slightly curved on both sides, which doesn’t feel distracting. Compared to competitors, for example the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max, though, the frame around it is thicker, and from the front those competitors look more modern and better. For a phone at €1500, you’d expect this to be handled a bit better. These are just details, but with flagships, even those matter.

You’ll love the pre-installed protective film, which will protect against scratches and fits really well. Xiaomi also boasts the second generation of Shield Glass. A big new feature is the ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which is extremely fast and reliable. However, it comes with one downside – it will be exceptionally hard to find a screen protective glass that can work without any issues with this type of sensor.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra performance is top-tier, but you won’t want to look at the benchmarks

Xiaomi 15 Ultra is traditionally equipped with the best chipset on the market. Inside you’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, paired with 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM. Storage is 512 GB in UFS 4.1, so it’s seriously fast.

Right now, we can’t find anything better on the market—and that matches the overall experience of using the smartphone. Everything is snappy, animations run smoothly, nothing lags, and even gaming isn’t an issue.

As for raw performance, in Geekbench we measured 2869 points in the single-core test and 8804 points in the multi-core test. Compared to the latest iPhones, it still lags in single-core performance (they have around 3500 points), but in the multi-core test, Xiaomi beat them—though only by a few dozen points.

Unfortunately, Xiaomi literally banned the use of benchmark apps, so we can’t compare the results from other sources. We tried 3DMark and AnTuTu, but we couldn’t get them to run.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra and its camera: Great hardware isn’t everything

The camera should be the biggest draw of the new Xiaomi 15 Ultra, and you can tell not only from its design, but also from the sensor lineup. On the market, there probably isn’t a smartphone that offers a better combination. Let’s go step by step. The main camera is a huge 1″ sensor with 50 megapixel resolution and optical image stabilization. Its aperture is f/1.6 and it’s fixed—which is a step back compared to the predecessor.

A higher aperture number would come in handy, for example, for shots of objects from closer distances. A large sensor blurs the background very nicely and naturally, but it can also show up as a blur of the subject that ideally should stay fully in focus.

The ultra-wide camera also has a resolution of 50 megapixels, however the field-of-view angle is only 115 degrees. Competition often offers more, but usually with a smaller sensor. So this is a plus for Xiaomi. Next, we have a telephoto lens with triple optical zoom, a resolution of 50 Mpix, and an aperture of f/1.8, which also doesn’t lack optical image stabilization.

And last but not least is perhaps the most interesting and completely new large 200-megapixel periscope camera with 4,3-times optical zoom and optical image stabilization. Digitally, it can zoom up to 120-times, and during the day its shots practically have no competition.

They’re sharp, high-quality, and have a solid dynamic range. You can zoom in up to 30x and the shot will still be pretty usable. High resolution plays a pretty important role here.

As for the actual photo quality, we should go through it step by step as well. The main sensor is excellent, and it works great at night too. We recommend the Leica Authentic photo mode—it delivers genuinely natural colors, but sometimes it may try a bit too hard: for example, night shots tend to look colder than in real life. Still, they look amazing.

A triple telephoto lens will serve you well for taking portraits, but it won’t fall behind when zooming in within the range from 3x to 4,3x. At night, of course, it’s weaker, but the software after creating the shot can enhance the photo properly. And we’re not even talking about Night Mode, although that one requires a steady hand.

In the DXOMARK rating, Xiaomi 15 didn’t place among the top spots, and we have to objectively admit that, for example, the Pura 70 Pro shoots a bit better at night. We were able to compare them directly. Xiaomi mainly lost in dynamic range during normal shooting, but the night mode always managed to fix that.

It often managed to take a better photo than Huawei, but some kind of consistency was missing. With Huawei, we could always rely on what you’d get.

At night, the Pura had a better telephoto lens—largely thanks to the clone f/2.1. But in zooming, Xiaomi was clearly better during the day thanks to its high-resolution sensor. In the end, we can say that the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is truly a great camera phone, and if you know how to work with manual settings, you’ll get amazing shots thanks to top-tier hardware. On the other hand, on the very best, something is still missing—it’s just not quite there.

Video

The first positive feature is, that all the lenses on the back can record 4K video at 60 frames per second, and during recording you can also switch between them. You still don’t see this very often. What’s more, the main camera and the huge periscope camera handle 4K video at 120 frames per second.

And we have to say that the video is genuinely top-notch. Image stabilization is excellent, the video is full of detail, and it’s among the best. Xiaomi 15 Ultra is probably the only Chinese phone that can truly go head-to-head with Apple or Samsung. However, in worse lighting conditions, the latest iPhone is still a bit better than the competition, but in this case Xiaomi really doesn’t have to be ashamed.

What’s more, video recording with zoom lenses is also very pleasant—this applies especially to shots of people. The subject is nicely in focus and the background is naturally blurred, which gives the videos a kind of cinematic effect.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra: System and speakers

Xiaomi 15 runs on the latest operating system Android 15, enhanced with Xiaomi’s massive HyperOS 2 overlay. It’s been tuned really well—it offers perfect animations and a smooth, great day-to-day experience. We’ve rounded up all its updates in this article, so we won’t go into every single functionality here. What matters now is the real experience, and it’s genuinely impressive.

The manufacturer promises 4 operating system updates, meaning the last one will be Android 19. That’s still a high standard, but it’s not on the same level as iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung with their seven updates. Xiaomi is making real progress in this area and is practically right behind those three manufacturers. The good news is 6 years of security updates.

The AI era naturally came to smartphones as well. Xiaomi 15 Ultra is no exception and offers plenty of AI features. At the core is the voice assistant Gemini, which also works in Slovak, and you can launch it with a longer press of the power button.

Of course, this isn’t an exclusive Xiaomi feature—Gemini is integrated like this into practically every Android 15 smartphone. On top of that, you get dynamic AI wallpapers, and AI lets you edit photos, add captions, and more. There’s really quite a lot to it.

The speakers are also a big plus of this new device. One is located in the usual way at the bottom of the smartphone, and the other doubles as a handset used for calls. The sound is really loud, individual tones don’t blend together even at maximum volume, and there’s also some kind of bass component. In this regard, Xiaomi 15 Ultra definitely delivers quality on par with the best on the market.

Battery and charging

Compared to the previous Xiaomi 14 Ultra, there’s a noticeable improvement. Battery capacity has increased from a flat 5000 mAh to 5410 mAh, which is quite respectable. The predecessor wasn’t among the flagships with the longest battery life, but in this case it’s different now. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t have it on the very best. A Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or an iPhone 16 Pro Max will last longer on a single charge—even with a smaller battery. We hope future updates will improve this, because the hardware potential is definitely there.

It’s a shame the manufacturer doesn’t offer a global-market version with a 6000 mAh battery. Still, it’s a new type of silicon battery with higher density and lower weight.

With the battery life during testing, we didn’t run into any issues at all. We were reaching some 6 hours of SOT consistently, without any problems—even with morning and afternoon navigation to and from work. So you definitely don’t need to worry about battery life. What’s a bit sad, though, is that the charger didn’t find its place in the package.

For that 90-watt maximum, you’ll need to buy your own original adapter. There’s also wireless charging with 80 W, and reverse wireless charging is included as well. As for charging capabilities, there are no complaints.

The device, of course, also includes power-saving modes, but the more interesting part is battery protection options in the long run. For example, the user can enable standard optimized charging—something we already know from other models. In other words, the phone will learn your habits and adjust charging accordingly later. That means it will charge only up to 80 percent, and then top up the battery again shortly before you wake up.

We also have the option to set it so the battery is never charged above 80 percent. So if you plan to use Xiaomi 15 Ultra for several years, your battery will definitely thank you after you activate this feature.

Final verdict

Xiaomi 15 Ultra is exactly what it promises. The best smartphone from the Chinese manufacturer arrived with brutal specs, which shows in everyday use as well. Whether it’s build quality, performance, the display, or the cameras, it’s a great, well-balanced device. It has plenty of advantages, but given the high price, we’d have expected something even a bit better.

Despite the great camera hardware, in our opinion the photos aren’t the best on the market. The same goes for battery life and the fact that there’s no charger included in the box. In any case, it’s a great smartphone—buying it, you definitely won’t regret it, and it will serve you for years.