Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

Introduction

The much-anticipated Xiaomi 11T series are out and we have the vanilla 11T in our hands for a quick hands-on review. We also have the full written review of the 11T Pro if you want to check that out.

The vanilla 11T retains most of the premium features from the Pro model, costs less and can well prove to be the more popular model in the duo.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

Design

The Xiaomi 11T features the same chassis as the Pro, down to a millimeter. Same materials used too and that’s mostly a good thing.

Xiaomi 11T and 11T Pro side by side
Xiaomi 11T and 11T Pro side by side

We’ve got a glass back of unknown origin, frame that Xiaomi says has metal underneath and plastic on top and Gorilla Glass Victus sheet protecting the crisp OLED panel on the front. The Meteor Gray color we have has that brushed metal finish behind the glass back and it looks awesome. Sadly, it’s a fingerprint magnet as well so you might want to consider the Moonlight White or Celestial Blue colors if you think that will bother you.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

Thin and well-balanced bezels on the front along with the centered punch-hole means the 11T looks similar to most mid-range and premium smartphones these days. It’s a flat panel with only slight curvatures around the edges.

The glass on the back is curved on all sides giving the phone a more distinctive look, while the matte finish of the frame improves the grip quite a bit. The phone doesn’t just feel solid but it sits well in the hand with the even weight distribution helping as well.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

Lastly, just like the Pro, the vanilla 11T offers some ingress protection – it’s rated IP53, which means it may not survive submerging under water, but merely a casual splash or light rain.

Hardware overview

One of the key selling points of the 11T is the 6.67-inch OLED panel. Shared with the Pro model, the panel offers 120Hz refresh rate, 480Hz touch sampling rate, 10-bit color reproduction, HDR10+ support and up to 1000 nits peak brightness. We’ll make sure to test that in our full review.

The 11T also comes with the Adaptive Colors feature (Xiaomi’s version of Apple’s True Tone), which may is a nice perk.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

Of course, some feature disparity should be in place and in this case, it’s the SoC. The device swaps the Snapdragon 888 found on the Pro for a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 – still a potent chipset but behind Qualcomm’s top-tier solution for 2021. It has 8GB of RAM and can be paired with either 128GB or 255GB storage.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

While the Xiaomi 11T shares the generous 5,000mAh battery withthe Pro, charging speed has been downgraded from 120W to “only” 67W. We suspect that would still be sufficiently fast but just about everyone, though.

Last, but not least, the vanilla 11T gets the same flagship-level camera setup as the beefier Pro device. The main 108MP camera with nona-bayer pixel binning uses Samsung’s huge ISOCELL HM2 1/1.52″ sensor with 0.7µm pixels and is paired with f/1.75 aperture lens. The binned mode gives you pixel size of 2.1µm and 12MP resolution.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

The ultrawide camera has a modest 8MP sensor and f/2.2 lens and you also get one of Xiaomi’s telemacro cameras. It has a 5MP sensor and 2x f/2.4 lens, but more importantly can obtain focus from as close as 3cm.

As for selfies, you have a 16MP 1/3.06″ sensor and f/2.4 aperture.

Early verdict

Going for €500, the Xiaomi 11T seemingly has great potential in the “flagship killer” niche. It might not be powered by the top-of-the-line chipset but most of the hardware is flagship-grade, nonetheless.

Xiaomi 11T hands-on review

We find the feature disparity between the Pro and non-Pro 11T models to be quite small, so spending about €150 more for the 11T Pro honestly doesn’t seem like a wise investment at first glance. Perhaps we’ll find more differences once the full review is complete? Stay tuned for that!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *