[REVIEW] Xiaomi 17 Pro Max: The biggest leap in the manufacturer’s history? We were surprised

A smartphone we even considered mythical before the official launch. We redirected our attention to the premium Xiaomi 17 Pro Max practically right after the first leaks about its specs and design became available. The leap in the technologies used and special features is breath-taking.

The biggest Xiaomi community group in Slovakia

However, to be objective, we can’t just praise the phone based on first impressions or the specs on paper. We decided to test it and experience its features firsthand. We ordered this new device directly from China to see what it’s like in practice. Our review of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max will tell you whether you should also consider buying this smartphone.

Where to buy Xiaomi 17 Pro Max?

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max can be purchased from our partner TradingShenzhen for the best price on the market. The advantage of buying through TradingShenzhen is unmatched and precisely fine-tuned shipping, which guarantees delivery from China directly to Slovakia and the Czech Republic without customs duty or VAT.

Everything is already included in the price, so you won’t face any unpleasant surprises on delivery. On our website, we’ve already published an article about our order of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, which arrived in an incredible 9 days!

‼️‼️Important for orders from TradingShenzhen: All orders from the TradingShenzhen store must be manually checked because of our VIP support. Please follow the correct ordering process and order exclusively through the Chrome browser! After paying for your order, send the order number (Order Reference) and a screenshot of the entire order to our Messenger or by e-mail to info(@)xiaomiplanet.sk. Thank you for your understanding!

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In the long white package, you get the smartphone itself, a transparent plastic case, a 100 W charger with a Chinese plug (the seller will include an adapter to an EU plug), a charging cable with USB-A to USB-C connectors, a tool for removing the dual nanoSIM tray, and the essential documentation is included too.

Check out our unboxing:

Design and build quality

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a typical representative of big flagships, but without wasting space unnecessarily. The body, with dimensions of 162.9 × 77.6 × 8 mm and a weight of 219 g, combines a glass front with a durable aluminum frame. The surface feels premium, extremely solid, the metal is pleasantly cool, and nothing creaks.

The hardware buttons have a firm, precise “click”. We appreciate the use of durable Dragon Crystal Glass 3, which is additionally protected by a factory-applied film. We always appreciate that, and the film is also applied to the rear display, which is undoubtedly exposed to an even higher risk of scratches.

Many will also appreciate the high durability according to the IP68 certification, which at this point is basically mandatory in the top segment. The frame is slightly rounded, which helps ergonomics with the 6.9-inch diagonal. We have to admit that even despite the massive size, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is much more pleasant to use than most large smartphones with smaller displays. The bezels around the screen are absolutely minimal, the weight distribution is well thought out, and the phone feels very premium in hand.

The manufacturer also included a plastic protective case in the box, but it’s quite bad – we’ll say it straight. It feels cheap and it ruins the premium feel of such a beautiful, well-built device. Buttons rattle and the bottom edge is almost not protected… But!

It’s definitely better than nothing, and we’d treat it as temporary protection for the back before buying a higher-quality case. We’d go for silicone—something like the type of case that Xiaomi includes with its much cheaper phones.

The rear camera module with lenses and a rear screen is big (in the style of iPhone 17 Pro Max), and when you place the phone on a table it wobbles slightly due to the slightly protruding sensors from this module. We bought the green color variant, and we absolutely have no regrets.

The color isn’t loud—it still looks elegant, understated, but not gloomy. The top and left side of the device are completely blank; the buttons are on the right, while the speaker, USB-C port, microphone, and a slot for two nanoSIM cards are all located along the bottom edge.

Display and speakers: an absolute flagship level

The front is covered by a premium 6.9-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with 10-bit color rendering (68 billion colors), an adaptive 120 Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 3500 nits. The 1200 × 2608 px (~416 ppi) resolution looks great, with a subpixel matrix and TrueColor calibration delivering precise colors that are easy on your eyes. Support for Dolby Vision / HDR Vivid / HDR10+ is standard.

If you have sensitive eyes, you’ll be impressed by the ultra-fine 2160 Hz PWM dimming—when used at night, it’s gentler on your eyes, the image doesn’t flicker, and the minimum brightness is comfortable even in complete darkness. In sunlight, readability is excellent; the auto mode can briefly squeeze the maximum from this panel, keeping text beautifully sharp and the picture free of discoloration.

Touch responsiveness is, of course, excellent, and the same goes for viewing angles. The pair of speakers gets loud and sounds clean, with well-balanced dynamics. We were also surprised by the bass component, which is quite pronounced for a smartphone.

Dolby Atmos combined with Snapdragon Sound brings a wider soundstage for movies and an immersive audio experience when you use headsets. Don’t expect a 3.5 mm audio jack—there’s high-quality audio transmission via USB-C or top-tier Bluetooth codecs instead.

Magic Back Screen: rear 2.9″ display

The second LTPO AMOLED panel on the back has a 2.9-inch diagonal, 976 × 596 px resolution, a high refresh rate of up to 120 Hz , and an exceptionally high brightness of 3500 nits —it’s not just a fancy toy.

In practice, it’s a fast dynamic widget: a preview for photos from the rear sensors (top feature—the result is “selfies” with unbeatable quality), music playback controls, quick-call reply shortcuts, and a stylish time display with the date.

Normal notifications—like incoming messages—unfortunately aren’t shown on this display. Sure, it’s something that could be added via a software update, but since it isn’t available on the smartphone at the time of our testing, we can’t guarantee you’ll get this option someday.

To us, this seems very logical, and we expected that showing regular alerts would be a given. Well, it isn’t. Magic Back Screen has—and potentially the most practical feature—one less.

We like the option to use your own photo, letting you pin from your gallery either a QR code (for example a travel document or a payment code), a shopping list, or a thumbnail of different photos on the rear display—without needing to wake the main screen.

There’s also a fun animated “AI pet”, an interactive mascot that reacts to the weather and movement. Xiaomi even offers a gaming case with buttons that lets you play well-known titles directly on the rear panel. Worth noting: owners of a Xiaomi car can quickly check the remaining range from the rear display, lock the doors, or open the trunk.

You can definitely do it via the main display too, but we have no doubt about what a great effect it can create for the user (and for everyone around them). Although some features are specifically designed for Chinese users, you can definitely benefit from the back display as well. And if you think otherwise, just take it as a stylish add-on that nobody in your area probably has.

Back display customization options via settings

Performance and memory: the most powerful Android smartphone we’ve tested so far

The heart of the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a new, extremely powerful chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (3 nm) with Oryon CPU (2×4.6 GHz + 6×3.62 GHz) and the graphics accelerator Adreno 840. It’s the fastest smartphone we’ve encountered so far.

And we’re not only talking about these “raw” benchmarks, but of course also real-world use. Apps launch instantly, you can trim LOG video directly on the device in 4K resolution, and demanding games run at the highest settings like butter.

Even after 30–60 minutes of gaming, the FPS stays stable thanks to the massive „Ring Pump“ cooling with an area of 5533 mm² and a capillary microstructure. So in your hands, the phone doesn’t feel hot during demanding activities—the heat is distributed evenly.

However, after about 10 minutes of intense gaming, we notice a small FPS drop due to so-called “thermal throttling”, meaning the performance is reduced because temperatures rise. But it’s nothing drastic.

We also look at how loading slows down when new map sections are brought in, but that happens across all tested devices—so it’s essentially an optimization issue in that specific game. Even so, peak performance is phenomenal.

Memory configurations start at 12 GB LPDDR5X with an extremely fast UFS 4.1 storage (from 512 GB to 1 TB). So if you’re planning to create lots of RAW photos and 4K videos—or even up to 8K—you really won’t be short on storage space.

HyperOS 3 (Android 16): speed, stability, AI little extras

HyperOS 3 runs on top of the Android 16 operating system and is very well tuned. Of course, this is a Chinese system, since the phone is currently sold only in the Chinese version. In this review, though, we’ll show that it works just fine in Slovakia and the Czech Republic as well. We’ll also share tips and tricks, how to properly set up notifications—or even partial Slovak language support.

Expect maximum smoothness, clear settings, interesting features you won’t find on standard global firmware, and also a few preinstalled Chinese apps that you can safely uninstall.

We recommend doing it especially for this reason: these apps send notifications in Chinese. This mainly concerns the GetApps app, which can’t be uninstalled—it’s the basic app store from Xiaomi, because Google Play isn’t included by default on the Chinese firmware and its installation is done manually later.

In that case, we recommend uninstalling the app updates, then in the app management in Settings, disable the option to send notifications, and also turn off Autostart and enable battery saving for it.

How to set notifications so they come through without delays?

When it comes to that—if you want your apps to send you notifications, you have to enable this specific “Autostart” and then in the next section of the app settings for battery saving, turn off all restrictions, i.e. choose “No restrictions”.

Then notifications will come reliably and—most importantly—on time. We didn’t have issues with anything, basically, not even with Slack (the app for corporate/team communication), which used to be problematic on some Chinese models.

AI features

There are also AI features, but they don’t come across as pushy — you get text recognition in a screenshot, smart call transcription (don’t expect Slovak here), or photo-editing-focused functions.

More practical options include generative image upscaling, or even a very effective sky change with several great-looking variations. Loyal Xiaomi fans will already know this feature with the sky — it’s nothing new. You can also try AI upscaling for photos or AI beautification.

During our testing, we didn’t run into any stutters, sluggish animations, or apps crashing (except for an issue during the Geekbench AI benchmark). Everything works like a charm, and the smartphone just feels great in the hand.

There’s another bug that really caught us off guard. If you use Google-account login for apps, unfortunately we couldn’t get it to work. You still see an error message.

A new feature: Hyper Island

A standout functionality is Hyper Island, a dynamic, interactive element in the top part of the display in the cutout area for the front camera. Hyper Island shows up, for example, when media is playing in the background — like YouTube or Spotify.

Its functionality is still more limited, for example compared to iPhone, because it requires implementation on the part of the developers of the specific app.

By tapping this pill, you can interact with the media being played — pause it, rewind/skip, or go back to an earlier track (or video).

We also liked the extra settings in the calling app that you won’t really find anywhere else. For example, there are options for enhanced call blocking, such as:

• all numbers,
• unknown numbers,
• forwarded numbers,
• international numbers,
• private numbers,
• suspicious numbers,
• numbers from real estate companies,
• numbers from marketing companies.

However, we believe that recognizing specific numbers — for example company numbers — will work correctly only in China. The last button is there to cancel automatic number blocking for callers who keep calling repeatedly. By the way, since this is the Chinese version of the smartphone, you also get a call recording feature via the built-in Xiaomi calling app.

A very simple guide: How to get Slovak into your phone?

The system in Xiaomi 17 Pro Max (and other Chinese phones) can be partially “Slovakified” using the SetEdit app. When you buy from TradingShenzhen, it’s already preinstalled on the phone — all you need to do is apply the required settings according to the video below.

All supported apps get translated into Slovak – things like Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Chrome, and more – and even some system settings and built-in apps. However, 95% of the system is still only in English.

Cameras: four 50 MPx sensors with Leica optimizations

The photography setup of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is among the most comprehensive you can find in the smartphone world today. On the back, there’s a lineup of 50 MPx sensors with different tasks, and the front “selfie” camera also has 50 MPx resolution.

The main sensor has a resolution of 50 MPx, a physical size of 1/1.28″, and an aperture of f/1.7, and of course it also wouldn’t be complete without optical image stabilization (OIS). It’s a new sensor called Light Fusion 950L with Leica Summilux optics, capable of capturing an enormous amount of detail — even in scenes with challenging lighting conditions.

During the day, the photos are really beautiful, very sharp, with a wide dynamic range and excellent exposure balance. Compared with the competition, the contrast is a bit lower when you compare the images directly with the Google Pixel or Vivo X100 Ultra results (we also included some shots from this model for comparison).

The colors are quite true to life, and the Leica mode setting does a lot. If you’ve already owned a flagship from Xiaomi, you know you get a choice between two color profiles: Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic. For our sample photos, we went with Leica Vibrant, which—despite higher saturation—feels more realistic, while Leica Authentic tries to reproduce the look of older cameras. Those photos have a bit of vignetting and such a “old-school” appearance, and they’re overall darker.

A 5x periscope telephoto lens, as we already mentioned, also has 50 MPx, but the sensor itself is quite small (1/1.95″). It does have optical stabilization, and it can also handle surprisingly good macro shots from 30 cm. In the viewfinder, zoomed-in photos often look blurry, and sometimes that carries over into the final shot.

Even though the results are very decent—colors and exposure are on point—we’d have expected better contrast and occasionally more sharpness… After zooming in beyond 30x, you’ll see the option in the app for AI adjustments, which is quite noticeable afterward. Sometimes in a positive way, sometimes in a negative one, in the sense of the word. You can see a sample of how it works in the test shots.

If you have, for example, a Xiaomi 15 Ultra, after switching to Xiaomi 17 Pro Max you’ll probably miss its higher-quality telephoto lens. It’s not that terrible, though. The ultra-wide lens has 50 MPx and a 102-degree field of view, which sounds average. The competition brings a wider view in practice—and also better detail.

The colors are a bit washed out, and the contrast doesn’t impress much either. It will work well for occasional landscape shots or group photos, but we prefer using the primary camera, which is truly high quality. It also proves itself at night: the results are very clean with minimal noise and very solid handling of bright highlights as well as shadows.

Sometimes you’ll see “lens-flare” from street lamps, but it’s acceptable. We have to praise the reliable automatic night mode—manual activation was never necessary. The ultra-wide lens is almost unusable at night, and the telephoto lens loses a lot of detail, resulting in a too-soft image.

If you’re into shooting videos, with the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max you’ll be able to enjoy it to the fullest. It offers 8K recording at 30 fps, 4K video up to 120 fps, and supports a 10-bit LOG profile for fans of manual color grading. For an even more vivid look, Dolby Vision HDR is available. With the 4K / 60 fps setting, you can use all three lenses on the back, while with 8K / 30 fps only the primary sensor is available. 4K / 120 fps allows it to use, in addition to the main camera, the telephoto lens too.

The main camera handles video perfectly—the image is sharp, noise is minimal, and stabilization is very good. At night, the quality drops, but you probably expected that. Still, it’s at a usable level. Below, we show examples of multiple video recording configurations. We also include screenshots showing an enormous number of settings in the photo app. If you want to find them all, you’ll have plenty to do.

We’d use the front camera only for video calls; for “selfies”, use the back display and create them with a much better, primary camera. They’ll be absolutely unmatched. A typical feature of smartphones for the Chinese market, however, is beautifying via enlarging the eyes and whitening the skin. You’ll probably turn this option off right away—it feels quite unnatural.

Test photos:

Test videos:

Battery and charging: long days without a charger—power delivery in half an hour

The massive Si/C 7500 mAh Si/C battery, on paper, looks like an absolute champion in battery life among all today’s flagship phones. At first, we were worried about reduced battery longevity—one of the early issues with this smartphone—and in practical tests the phone actually beat iPhone 17 Pro Max by only a few ridiculous minutes, despite having a battery that’s over 50% larger.

These issues should have been fixed by a software update, so we immediately checked whether we’re running the latest version. The result?

The battery life is phenomenal—we haven’t tested a flagship phone that could reach times like this with the screen on, or, more importantly, such a long total battery life including standby. The reality is 1,5 — 2 days not just of normal, but fairly demanding use (5G, photos, navigation, YouTube, social media, occasional gaming). And in a day, you’ll only drain it with long, demanding gaming or by recording videos.

If you’re not on your phone for literally hours every day and you’ll limit yourself in some respects, then Xiaomi 17 Pro Max will last you with a charge 3 full days.

In that case, though, you’ll need to factor in things like turning Wi‑Fi and mobile data off overnight (or generally during longer inactivity), less frequent camera use, and so on. 2 full regular days are, however, basically always a reality for us, with more demanding testing at 1.5 days.

If you’re into gaming, you’ll definitely want to take advantage of the brutal performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. But how does battery life look during gaming? Significantly worse than with other scenarios, but still quite acceptable. So on one charge, you can enjoy 4 – 5 hours of continuous gaming.

1 hour of playing Minecraft on the highest settings turned into a loss of 22% from the battery level. We also tested streaming a YouTube video in high quality at medium brightness for two hours, and after that time, the battery indicator showed only 8% less.

Over a night with the internet connection turned off, you’ll lose roughly 2 – 3%, except for one case that unpleasantly surprised us the next day. Near the end of our testing, on the second day morning we had an incredible 40% less, and the phone was noticeably warm.

We don’t know what happened; we doubt it was updated – Wi‑Fi and mobile data were both off. It happened once (maybe still not fully tuned software?). Another surprise, this time a pleasant one, is charging speed. The 7 500 mAh capacity in a mobile device of this weight really isn’t small.

That’s more energy than you’d get from laptop batteries. So even though it supports fast 100 W wired charging, we didn’t expect record-breaking charging times—still, in an hour you’ll have:

• 5 minutes: 17 %
• 10 minutes: 28 %
• 15 minutes: 38 %
• 20 minutes: 48 %
• 25 minutes: 59 %
• 30 minutes: 68 %
• 35 minutes: 78 %
• 40 minutes: 88 %
• 45 minutes: 92 %
• 50 minutes: 95 %
• 55 minutes: 97 %
• 60 minutes: 99 %
• 65 minutes: 100 %

We were, however, left shocked by the next charging test. We expected to have to charge for about an hour or so. In reality, we just went to take a shower and make breakfast, and in half an hour and a few minutes we were basically charged (from about 20 % to 80 %). We then repeated the detailed charging-speed measurement, and the result? Again, almost identical — roughly an hour:

• 5 minutes: 9 %
• 10 minutes: 17 %
• 15 minutes: 31 %
• 20 minutes: 53 %
• 25 minutes: 63 %
• 30 minutes: 74 %
• 35 minutes: 83 %
• 40 minutes: 94 %
• 45 minutes: 96 %
• 50 minutes: 98 %
• 55 minutes: 99 %
• 60 minutes: 99 %
• 65 minutes: 100 %

If you start charging at a higher percentage, topping up is usually a bit faster than when charging the battery from empty. Here’s another measurement starting at 31 % remaining battery:

• 5 minutes: 46 %
• 10 minutes: 58 %
• 15 minutes: 71 %
• 20 minutes: 84 %
• 25 minutes: 94 %
• 30 minutes: 96 %
• 35 minutes: 97 %
• 40 minutes: 99 %
• 45 minutes: 100 %

There is also a 50 W wireless alternative, or even a very powerful 22.5 W reverse wireless power delivery for supported smartphones and, above all, accessories (such as wireless headphones). The software offers several options for saving power, space, or improving security in general, such as:

• automatic cache cleaning after locking,
• network connection optimization for 5G networks based on specific scenarios,
• background process optimization during the night – while you sleep,
• automatic performance limiting in cold weather to extend battery life,
• scheduled phone on / off.

On the other hand, if you need to squeeze maximum performance out of the device, there is a “Performance” mode available. Traditionally, you’ll use “Balanced”, but more advanced “Battery saver” modes with minor restrictions are also available, as well as “Ultra battery saver”, which prioritizes the longest possible endurance at the cost of several significant limitations and turns the interface into a very simple one with a black background and only basic apps, while you can choose 6 more that you consider essential in this mode. Internet is, of course, available in this mode.

Connectivity: pushed to the max

A very important fact is that Xiaomi 17 Pro Max supports all the necessary LTE and 5G bands for Europe. It has Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Adaptive/HD and LHDC 5, NFC, an infrared port for controlling home electronics, and USB-C 3.2 with DisplayPort. A bonus is UWB for centimeter-accurate tracking of supported accessories. The ultrasonic under-display fingerprint reader is extremely fast and reliable.

For location tracking, GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, BDS, QZSS and NavIC satellite systems are available. Signal transmission strength over Bluetooth at a distance was very good, and we also have to praise the data transfer speeds within the 5G network, including reliable reception.

As for phone calls, we thought we had run into a connectivity problem, when after a few seconds, sometimes even minutes of a call, complete silence suddenly appeared in the speaker. Assuming the call had dropped entirely, we kept making the call again.

Only later did we notice that as soon as this happened, if we switched to speakerphone, we could hear the other party. Switching back to the regular earpiece for calls let us continue the conversation for a few dozen seconds, until it happened again.

This does not seem like a hardware fault. It looks to us like a software bug, but we can’t find any mention of this phenomenon from other reviewers anywhere. We have no idea why it happens to us (we no longer noticed it in the last calls before the end of testing).

Final verdict: buying the Chinese Xiaomi 17 Pro Max makes sense

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max can’t be considered only an evolution. Compared to the base Xiaomi 15 or even the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, this is basically a revolution. Even though, for the “Ultra” variant, it may not apply to cameras due to physically smaller sensors, we were happy with the results, and we believe you’ll be too.

At least in other areas, the new Xiaomi 17 Pro Max simply comes out on top—even when compared with the next Android competitor.

According to the manufacturer, this model is also meant to be a direct competitor to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. In this regard, it’s all about the preferences of a specific user. If you want Android, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max can definitely be considered a direct competitor.

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For those who are used to, or specifically require, integration with the iOS / Apple ecosystem, it’s likely that any Android will only be acceptable with compromises that each person has to evaluate for themselves.

So if you’re considering importing a Chinese version, count on the absence of native Slovak in the system and a non-functional Android Auto. On the flip side, Google services and contactless NFC payments via Google Wallet (Google Pay) work reliably. OTA updates also arrive as standard, without delays, and you can safely remove unnecessary Chinese bloatware.

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a luxurious, feature-rich smartphone for everyone who wants a big, all-round, and creative tool. It’s designed especially for photographers, video creators (LOG + Dolby Vision), gamers (although after a longer time it “throttles”, top-tier performance is phenomenal), demanding users in general (UFS 4.1, fast charging, Wi-Fi 7), and for those who appreciate the back panel—though in its case we’d welcome more features.

And even if none of that interests you and you just need a phone with a large display and record battery life on a single charge, you don’t need to pay “1000” just to get a top-spec device that’s currently among the best in the world. In essence, it competes with virtually every existing flagship on the market.

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max gets our clear recommendation. There are few compromises, and the price is appropriate given the specs. Of course, that’s assuming you’re willing to invest a few hundred into the phone. It’s a flagship we haven’t seen from Xiaomi until now—and it goes beyond the limits. In our view, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max model has clearly turned out to be a success.