Early Verdict: The Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro shakes up the mid-range market, offering incredible value for what you’re paying for. A top-tier flagship processor, an impressive set of optics as well as a competitive price tag makes it a solid choice for people looking for a premium device for not much money.
The Mi 10T Pro is priced at Php 24,990 for the 8GB/256GB version in Lazada.
Xiaomi has announced two new members of its mid-range family in the Philippines: the Mi 10T and the Mi 10T Pro. Both phones slot nicely in the upper mid-range category of the brand, offering fantastic value at half the price of similarly-equipped flagships. Today we’ll be taking a look at the Mi 10T Pro – its features, price, and performance before we dip into our full review of the product.
Pros
- Aggressive price tag
- High-resolution main snapper
- Flagship processor
- Large RAM and storage
- 144Hz refresh rate
Cons
- The unnecessarily large camera bump
- Screen isn’t OLED
- No wireless charging
Packaging and contents
The Mi 10T Pro comes in a big black box with the name of the product printed on the front in gold letters, along with the phone’s main camera resolution printed on the upper left side.
Included in the box are a silicone case, fast USB charger, USB Type-C charging cable, and documentation, along with the phone.
Design and display
Both the Mi 10T and the Mi 10T Pro share the same design, including the gigantic camera module on the phone’s rear. Xiaomi’s designs for its top-tier phones already tend to be fairly large and chunky, and the prominent camera module doesn’t help in that regard one bit.
That being said, the rest of the phone is fairly premium-looking. Like the Mi 10 released earlier this year, the Mi 10T Pro has an aluminum frame that’s sandwiched by Gorilla Glass 5, giving the phone increased scratch protection during daily use.
The aluminum frame is curved and rounded in the right places, making it easier to hold this chunky phone, though as always people with smaller mitts may have trouble using the phone one-handed.
The power and volume rocker is placed on the right, with the power button pulling double duty as the fingerprint scanner. The USB Type-C port is on the bottom, flanked by the speaker grille as well as the SIM slot.
There’s the requisite IR blaster on the top of the phone which is a standard feature on Xiaomi’s phones.
One of the most interesting features of the Mi 10T Pro is its display. It has all the bells and whistles that you’d get from a top-tier flagship phone: large 6.67-inch panel with 20:9 aspect ratio, 1080 x 2400 resolution as well as HDR10+ support and 144Hz refresh rate.
What’s interesting is that the Mi 10T Pro has an LCD display, not an OLED one as you’d expect from a flagship phone.
Now some people may feel that this is a downgrade, but in our short time with it, the LCD panel on the Mi 10T Pro looks to be the best we’ve seen so far in a smartphone this year. Sure, you’re not getting inky blanks but the colors that the display produces are fantastic, and it can go as bright as the best OLED display out there.
Like most flagships, the Mi 10T Pro has a fast, 144Hz refresh rate, but unlike most flagships, the phone can actually regulate the screen’s refresh rate depending on what you’re doing. The tech, dubbed Smart AdaptiveSync Display, adjusts the refresh rate according to what’s happening on the screen. If for example, you’re simply reading a web page and you’re not scrolling through timelines in FB, the refresh rate goes down to 50Hz or 60Hz. Once you start scrolling again, the screen goes back up to 144Hz. This adaptive refresh rate allows you to enjoy all the benefits of a higher refresh rate without the associated battery drain of having it on all the time.
Camera
Despite the camera module looking like it’s packing five cameras, the Mi 10T Pro only has three: a 108-megapixel Samsung ISOCELL HMX main sensor with an f/1.6 aperture lens as well as OIS, a 13-megapixel utlra-wide camera with an f/2.4 aperture lens, and a 5-megapixel macro camera with an f/2.4 aperture. Its smaller brother gets a 64-megapixel main shooter instead of the 108-megapixel sensor.
The selfie cameras are the same for both ranges, with both the Mi 10T Pro and the Mi 10T sporting a 20-megapixel selfie snapper.
Performance and battery
The Mi 10T Pro comes equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 processor, along with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as it was lent to us. The Mi 10T, on the other hand, will come with two flavors: 6GB/128GB or 8GB/128GB. Both phones will have 5G connectivity out of the box.
While the Snapdragon 865 processor has been overshadowed somewhat by its turbocharged sibling, the SD 865+, it’s still a fairly powerful processor on its own. And thanks to the fairly fast refresh rate of the phone, make the Mi 10T Pro a great choice for people who want a capable phone for gaming on the go.
The phone also comes with MIUI 12, Xiaomi’s latest version of its overlay on its devices, based on Android 11. The company has been working hard to address many of the issues that users found on their phones, and for the most part, they’ve been doing a great job on the software side of things.
Like most phones nowadays, the Mi 10T Pro comes with a large, 5000mAh battery inside of it that should last the phone quite a bit. Once your battery runs out, the 33W fast charger that’s included in the package should get your phone back up and ready to use again in no time.
Wrap-up and conclusions
Xiaomi’s done it again – their new Mi 10T Pro has a great blend of features and specs for roughly half of what you pay for a similar flagship phone, thanks to the Mi 10T Pro’s Php 24,990 price tag.
The best part here is that if you don’t care about the 108-megapixel camera and are willing to take a hit in both RAM and storage, you can grab the vanilla Mi 10T at a lower price – just Php 19,990 for the 6GB/128GB variant.
The Mi 10T Pro will be on sale today, Oct 16, in Lazada. The good news is that you’ll be able to get a premium speaker valued at Php 1,399 when you buy on that date. Mi 10T buyers will be able to pick up the base 6GB/128GB variant of the phone for just Php 17,990, which is Php 2K off of the price during the promotion in Lazada, and Xiaomi will also be giving away Php 1,000 voucher as well for a limited time.
