Verdict: Xiaomi Mi 10T
Our editorial rating based on product testing.
- great performance
- display with a 144 Hz refresh rate
- fast charging
- good camera
- great fingerprint reader
- weaker macro
- fingerprint magnet
- no wireless charging and no 3.5 mm jack
A lighter version of the flagship from 2020 — that’s the Xiaomi Mi 10T. It offers a 64 MP main camera, a large IPS display with a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz, and a 5000 mAh battery. The biggest stir was caused by the display, because there’s no AMOLED here. Is that really such a big downside? Is it still worth it?
In our editorial test, we bring you answers to these and other questions.
Xiaomi Mi 10T: Where to buy?
You can currently get the Xiaomi Mi 10T at the best price from our partner Edwaybuy, where it’s also available from a European warehouse. Your order will be delivered by courier within a few business days.
Xiaomi Mi 10T 5G Global
TIPExpress delivery from the German warehouse with no customs duty and no VAT.
This product will be delivered to you express from a local German warehouse. Delivery from Germany usually takes 7-10 days, and it’s brought by courier. When it arrives, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty or VAT.
TIPExpress delivery from the German warehouse with no customs duty and no VAT.
This product will be delivered to you express from a local German warehouse. Delivery from Germany usually takes 7-10 days, and it’s brought by courier. When it arrives, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty or VAT.
In the box
The Xiaomi Mi 10T comes in a white box with gold text. After opening it, there’s a box on top with a manual, a silicone case, and a pin for opening the SIM card slot.
The case is transparent and antibacterial, and its back part is divided into one third. The top part is classic glossy, while the bottom is matte with a large Xiaomi logo. The case is bulky and high-quality, and it protects the phone well, but we have certain reservations about its appearance. For a phone like this, we’d expect a more elegant case that would make an already quite large phone less bulky.
In the case, between the manual, there’s a USB-C to 3.5 mm jack adapter hidden, since the phone doesn’t include a 3.5 mm port. Under that box, you’ll already find the smartphone itself, with a display film applied.
Next in the box there’s a charging cable with orange-colored connectors and an adapter with a maximum output of 33 W. As usual, headphones aren’t included in the package. We can at least be glad that Xiaomi still includes charging adapters in the basic bundle.
Build quality and design of the Xiaomi Mi 10T
At first glance, the phone feels very high-quality. All of its parts fit together perfectly. However, it’s truly a big smartphone, so it doesn’t feel very comfortable in a smaller hand. Its dimensions are 165.1 x 76.4 x 9.3 mm.
Its perceived quality is also supported by its weight. When something is heavier, many people automatically assume it’s made with a solid metal build—and that’s true in this case. The phone weighs 216 grams.
Its larger dimensions reduce the comfort of carrying it in your trouser pocket, because not every pocket is deep enough for a phone like this. One-handed operation is almost impossible. Since the display is as big as 6.67″, when you hold it in one hand in the classic way, you can’t reach the entire screen with your thumb—so, for example, pulling down the notification bar from top to bottom without repositioning the phone in your hand is something you can’t manage.
In this case, Xiaomi chose a display with a so-called punch-hole for the camera in the upper-left corner. Personally, we like this placement on the edge more than having it in the center. That way, the selfie camera is completely non-intrusive because it’s located at the edge of the top bar.
The phone’s design doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking. We had it available in a dark gray color, the so-called lunar silver. The back is plastic, glossy with a mirror-like effect, and very prone to fingerprints.
Here there are also three cameras with an LED diode, which together protrude noticeably from the back section. If we place the phone on the table, it will “stand on the cameras” even when it’s in a case.
The left side of the phone is unusually completely blank. On the right side, you’ll find the hardware buttons for volume control and a fingerprint reader that also serves to secure the phone.
The bottom hides the main speaker, a microphone, a USB-C port, and a slot for 2 SIM cards. The slot is handled in an interesting way. SIM cards slide in from both sides, not next to each other like is usually the case, so it’s very small.
The top section is fitted with a secondary microphone, a second speaker, and you’ll also find an infrared port. The speaker for calls is placed in the frame above the display, together with the notification LED.
What’s the 144 Hz display in the Xiaomi Mi 10T?
Many Xiaomi users were disappointed when they found out that Mi 10T would get an IPS display instead of AMOLED. After all, last year’s Mi 9T also had AMOLED, which is kind of a symbol of a quality display. Can IPS compete with it? It can, but get ready for certain compromises.
Recently, we brought you an article that explained the pros and cons of IPS and AMOLED when comparing the Mi 10T vs Mi 9T displays. It was published by the well-known portal xda-developers. But the Mi 10T only reached us now, so we can actually compare it side by side with another AMOLED display.
Xiaomi is trying to attract fans with a high display refresh rate that can reach a maximum of up to 144 Hz. In the settings, you can choose between a standard 60 Hz, a mid – 90 Hz, and a high – 144 Hz.
AdaptiveSync should also be present, as it can change the refresh rate based on your needs, but we couldn’t find any mention of it anywhere in the settings.
We have to admit the display is incredibly smooth, and during animations, games, and videos the difference compared to a 60 Hz AMOLED display is noticeable. The maximum brightness is high, and the colors look great. At first glance, the display is really nice, and despite the fact that we’ve used phones with AMOLED displays for years, it didn’t look bad at all.
But when we placed Mi Note 10 with an AMOLED display next to it and set the maximum brightness, the difference was immediately obvious. On an AMOLED display, colors are more vivid, and the way it handles black makes a difference.
Still, we could easily imagine the Mi 10T working with an IPS display.
Performance and connectivity
Xiaomi Mi 10T comes with a flagship processor from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 865 with 5G support. Since 5G isn’t available with us yet, we couldn’t test it. However, when you insert two SIM cards, the phone will show a notice that with 5G only one SIM card can be used.
The processor is truly powerful, so the phone’s responses are incredibly fast. There’s just not much to talk about here—Qualcomm’s flagship processor for year 2020 is simply among the best.
In the AnTuTu benchmark, we reached a score of 580 881 and ranked 8th among phones like the OnePlus 8 or Samsung Galaxy S20 FE (Editorial note: we tested the Mi 10T, even though the AnTuTu app recognized it as the Mi 10T Pro).
We tested the version with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage. A higher version with 8 GB RAM is also available. After switching the phone off and back on, we had roughly 6.2 GB of free RAM instead of 6 GB.
The internal storage is UFS 3.1. We tested the write and read speeds using the PCMark app, which measured sequential read and write speeds of around 1400 MB/s.
On the Mi 10T, you get support for WiFi 6, WPA 3 encryption, Bluetooth 5.1, and NFC. For navigation systems, you’ll find support for GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, and Beidou. As expected, there’s also a proximity sensor, a light sensor, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, an electronic compass, and the aforementioned IR.
We tested the GPS by placing the phone on a table and running the My Tracks and Endomondo apps. Both apps recorded the phone’s movement by a few meters, even though it wasn’t moved.
In a further test where we tracked our activity during a walk, we noticed that the GPS signal dropped out for a few minutes. However, during in-car navigation via Google Maps, we didn’t experience any issues.
It lacks certification for increased water- or dust-resistance, so we don’t recommend using the phone in heavy rain.
Stereo speakers and their sound quality
We were pleasantly surprised that the Mi 10T comes with stereo speakers. As we already mentioned in the introduction, there’s a primary speaker on the bottom and a secondary one on the top. Sound quality is good, even though compared to the stereo speakers in Samsung phones the bass component is weaker.
A big plus for us is the level of the minimum volume, which is truly very low. In many phones, even the minimum volume is fairly loud and distracting in complete silence.
The smartphone didn’t get a 3.5 mm audio jack. Instead, the package includes an adapter from a 3.5 mm connector to USB-C. We’re happy with the audio output through wired headphones and have no complaints about it.
Fingerprint reader and face recognition
The fingerprint reader is on the right side and is slightly recessed into the phone’s frame. It’s extremely fast, and the phone unlocks instantly after you place your finger on it.
Since it’s on the side, it’s narrow, so sometimes we failed to place our finger correctly on the first try. Unlocking still works perfectly, and we didn’t have any issues even with slightly damp fingers.
But there were a few times when we unlocked the phone accidentally while carrying it. Having it on the side also has its downsides. If you keep the phone somewhere on a desk and want to pick it up and move it elsewhere, it can happen that you grab it exactly where the reader is located.
Face unlock also works very quickly. However, there are no sensors for facial scanning here, so unlocking works only in light conditions, using the selfie camera.
Xiaomi Mi 10T: Android and the MIUI skin
We got the Xiaomi Mi 10T with Android version 10 and the MIUI 12 skin. Right after turning it on, we were offered a smaller security update.
MIUI is something you already know well. The controls are intuitive, and we found everything exactly where we were looking for it. System responsiveness was always snappy, and not once during the testing period did the environment freeze or display something incorrectly.
Our only gripe is how the control center is shown, where we don’t like the moving text under some of the icons. Design-wise, though, we really like MIUI 12.
We appreciate the number of settings available to customize the environment. We were particularly interested in the display wake-up option, which was once known from LG phones that had a screen-unlock button on the back.
There’s also an interesting reading mode that changes the color scheme or enables dark mode. Both of these modes can be scheduled, meaning they turn on and off at preset times.
You’ll also find special features like Game Turbo, floating windows, or a simplified mode that enlarges icons and text.
Camera and video
The Xiaomi Mi 10T comes with a trio of main cameras:
- Main: 64 MPx with a 26 mm focal length and an f/1.9 aperture
- Ultra-wide: 13 MPx with an f/2.4 aperture and a 123° field of view
- Macro: 5 MPx with an f/2.4 aperture
The selfie camera has 20 MPx, and its output is at a good level.
How the Mi 10T takes photos is something you could already see in our comparison with the Mi Note 10. Overall, we evaluate the camera very positively despite a few minor shortcomings. Photos are sharp, rich in color, and the Mi 10T has nothing to be ashamed of in this respect.
Unfortunately, the Mi 10T doesn’t have optical image stabilization, which is noticeable especially when taking photos with higher zoom. We didn’t like that when you open the camera settings in landscape orientation, the settings also aren’t rotated to match this position.
A standout feature is a function called Clone, which lets you capture the same person in a single photo even 4 times.
As for video, the phone can record up to 8K video at 24 or 30 fps. Other options include 4K (60 fps, 30 fps), 1080p (60 fps, 30 fps) or 720p at 30 fps. With Mi 10T, you can also record slow-motion videos.
However, this option surprisingly isn’t found in the video menu. Instead, it’s available in the menu where you switch between photo, video, Pro mode, and similar options. You can record slow-motion video in 1080p resolution at 120, 240, or up to 960 fps. The same frame rates are available for 720p resolution.
You can watch a sample short 8K video recorded with the Mi 10T below:
In the video settings, it’s possible to enable the H.265 or H.264 codec. There are quite a lot of settings here, and the camera app is genuinely top-notch. The smartphone video itself is quite good, but the mentioned lack of optical stabilization is clearly visible.
So if you want to record nice videos while moving, you need a gimbal—otherwise our footage was shaky even when we tried very hard to keep the smartphone as steady as possible in our hands.
Battery, charging, and battery life
The Mi 10T smartphone has a 5000 mAh battery. During our test, we were pleasantly surprised that the battery easily lasts for two full days of regular use. We appreciate that Xiaomi equips its smartphones with a higher-capacity battery.
A big plus is the fast 33 W charger included in the box. The main downside is the short cable, but that’s pretty standard these days.
We connected the smartphone to the charger when the battery capacity dropped to 27 %. In 30 minutes, it charged to 85 %, and in another 43 minutes we were already at 99 %. We reached exactly 100 % in a total of 50 minutes. With such fast charging, we wouldn’t have any problem topping up the phone every day.
Xiaomi Mi 10T: Final assessment
If you’re looking for a phone in the 400 € price range, the Xiaomi Mi 10T is a great choice. Right after the first power-on, it impresses with a fast display with a refresh rate of 144 Hz. Even though Xiaomi decided to use an IPS panel instead of AMOLED, it didn’t bother us at all. You’ll also appreciate the extremely fast in-display fingerprint reader and excellent performance.
The camera also holds up well and impresses with plenty of settings and various features. Mobile gamers will especially appreciate it, thanks to the aforementioned high performance and the large, fast display.
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