Xiaomi 12 Professional Evaluate: Hit {Hardware}, So-So Software program

Neglect the identify: the Xiaomi 12 Professional is admittedly the direct successor to final yr’s Xiaomi Mi 11.

A re-shuffle in Xiaomi’s flagship line-up has launched the smaller Xiaomi 12, now giving the Chinese language firm a pair of high-end telephones in several sizes to instantly rival Samsung’s Galaxy S22 and S22+ – with a 12 Extremely rumoured to reach later this yr to tackle Samsung’s personal Extremely handset.

Being pitted instantly towards the S22+ (to not point out the likes of the Oppo Discover X5 Professional and OnePlus 10 Professional) provides the Xiaomi 12 Professional loads to stay as much as. For essentially the most half the {hardware} right here is clearly as much as the duty, matching its rivals in a lot of the locations it counts, although the battery life lets the aspect down.

Software program points hinder the expertise additional, with each bugs and awkward interfaces, and the result’s a cellphone that impresses loads however nonetheless feels prefer it’s lagging behind the pack.

Design & construct

Glossy, easy design
Giant display screen
No IP ranking

If there’s a design philosophy to the Xiaomi 12 Professional, it appears to be ‘enticing however conservative’.

In a yr the place Oppo is additional exploring moulded glass digicam modules, OnePlus shifted to a wrap-around design, and Samsung supplied two separate designs inside the similar S22 collection, Xiaomi has performed it comparatively secure.

That’s not essentially a nasty factor although. Accessible in gray, purple, or blue (China’s inexperienced leather-based mannequin doesn’t appear to have made it to the worldwide launch, sadly), the 12 Professional is smooth and easy, with solely a slight glitter to the end that helps catch the attention.

The digicam module is very restrained by fashionable requirements, however I find it irresistible. The over-sized major lens naturally attracts the eye, however subtler touches attraction extra: the truth that the opposite two lens are flush with the module, the offset weighting, the just-barely-there dividing strains that carve the entire thing up right into a grid.

It’s not simply how the cellphone seems to be – Xiaomi has nailed how the 12 Professional feels. Curved edges to each the physique and show maintain the cellphone comfy to carry regardless of the comparatively giant 6.73in show (look to the Xiaomi 12 for a smaller various) and at 205g it isn’t too heavy both. Throw in an nearly satiny end to the glass and the cellphone is a pleasure to fidget with.

Sturdiness is a little bit of a priority although. The 12 Professional has no official IP ranking guaranteeing safety from water or mud, and whereas it makes use of powerful Gorilla Glass Victus on the show, it is the weaker Gorilla Glass 5 discovered on the rear. After solely a few weeks, the gray end of my assessment unit has already picked up a number of micro-scratches that appear to be eradicating the paint.

Show & audio

Excessive decision AMOLED show
1-120Hz dynamic refresh price
Quad audio system

The Xiaomi 12 Professional has a wonderful show, up there with the perfect you’ll discover in a cellphone proper now.

The 6.73in AMOLED panel boasts a excessive WQHD+ decision, wonderful peak brightness of 1500 nits (which helps drive Dolby Imaginative and prescient and HDR 10+ content material), and makes use of LTPO tech in order that it might probably scale the refresh price from 1-120Hz – providing you with advantages to the battery on static screens, and easy scrolling and animations when acceptable.

As show high quality improves it’s grow to be more durable and more durable to tug telephones other than it – the equal Oppo and OnePlus flagships each function panels which are simply pretty much as good, although this does have the S22+ beat – that cellphone sticks to a decrease FHD+ decision and may’t drop its refresh price as low when wanted.

Audio is slightly more durable to name. On paper the 12 Professional ought to impress due to quad audio system tuned by Harman Kardon, although in apply I used to be slightly dissatisfied. There’s a muddiness to the sound profile, particularly at larger volumes, that sees devices run collectively within the combine. It’s truly most noticeable in common speech, with an absence of crispness to podcasts or audio language classes in Duolingo.

Specs & efficiency

Snapdragon Eight Gen 1 chipset
Eight or 12GB RAM
256GB non-expandable storage

It is actually tough to fault the 12 Professional’s specs or efficiency. Powered by the newest Snapdragon Eight Gen 1 chipset, the cellphone additionally provides both Eight or 12GB of RAM and a set 256GB of non-expandable storage.

The cellphone is quick and easy in day by day use and can be greater than able to any commonplace cellphone duties as much as and together with severe cell gaming. In contrast to some equally specced telephones, I haven’t discovered it liable to overheat throughout demanding work, which is usually a efficiency limiter in different units.

That efficiency is mirrored within the benchmarks, which present that the 12 Professional is clearly on a par with its rivals – although as we have seen with different telephones this yr, on the CPU-focussed Geekbench 5 take a look at it is truly slipped behind final yr’s Mi 11, whereas exhibiting clear year-on-year enchancment within the graphics-based GFXBench checks.

Efficiency is nearly an identical to the same Oppo Discover X5 Professional, and whereas the likes of the Realme GT 2 Professional and Exynos-powered Galaxy S22+ outpace the Xiaomi on graphical benchmarks, that is solely as a result of their chips are driving decrease decision shows.

Naturally, the 12 Professional additionally provides 5G connectivity, with dual-SIM assist, and that is joined by Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and Wi-Fi 6 or 6E – although Xiaomi warns that the precise Wi-Fi model varies by area.

Battery life & charging

Nearly one-day battery life
Excessive 120W wired charging
50W wi-fi charging

In the case of energy administration, the 12 Professional is the definition of a blended bag.

Battery life is, to be blunt, poor – each in our PCMark benchmark take a look at, and in day-to-day use. Even with comparatively gentle use, I discovered that the cellphone solely barely makes it to bedtime, regardless of what must be a adequate 4600mAh cell.

That’s with each refresh price and backbone set to range dynamically – which ought to assist preserve energy – and the cellphone’s ‘Balanced’ energy profile enabled.

The cellphone hasn’t but died on me earlier than the tip of the day, however I’d be hesitant about counting on the battery if my routine concerned extra gaming, GPS navigation, video recording, or different power-intensive duties.

Surprisingly, the cellphone’s battery monitor blames Wi-Fi as the largest battery drain, which feels like both a software program error or an optimisation drawback. Hopefully, which means this is a matter that Xiaomi can patch up and enhance.

To compensate for the battery issues, the 12 Professional does excel at charging. Xiaomi ships the cellphone with an astonishing 120W wired charger, which it says can ship a full cost in 18 minutes, although in my testing it did not fairly hit these speeds – it reached 70% cost in 15 minutes. The small print is that to get at that full velocity you need to manually allow the ‘Increase’ charging mode, which is more likely to speed up battery degradation.

You may then favor to depart it off. Even with out it, in my take a look at the 12 Professional topped as much as 66% battery in simply 15 minutes, and was at a full cost earlier than the half-hour mark.

The cellphone additionally helps wi-fi charging, and reverse wi-fi charging for different units. When charging itself, the cellphone can cost at as much as 50W utilizing Xiaomi’s official wi-fi charger, although it’ll hit a lot decrease speeds on typical third-party Qi wi-fi chargers.

Digicam & video

Triple 50Mp rear cameras
New Sony IMX707 sensor
32Mp selfie digicam

Xiaomi has confirmed itself an business chief in digicam stakes over the previous few years, and unsurprisingly the 12 Professional impresses right here.

That vast major rear digicam lens is on the coronary heart of issues, powered by Sony’s 50Mp, 1/1.28in IMX707 sensor – the truth is, the 12 Professional is the one cellphone to make use of the part to this point.

In good lighting, element is great from this lens. Colors are punchy and vibrant, although the tones are barely on the exaggerated aspect of pure. At instances the dynamic vary feels slightly restricted, with particulars misplaced in darker spots and a few direct gentle blown out, however not a lot as to be a crucial failing.

Foremost lens outcomes impress at evening too. Utilizing the devoted evening mode preserves a fraction extra element and dynamic vary, however hardly sufficient to be value digging via menus for it – the auto mode is completely adequate. This isn’t fairly the perfect low gentle digicam round (the Vivo X70 Professional+ nonetheless wears that crown), nevertheless it’s fast, dependable, and spectacular for the worth.

That major lens is joined by two smaller shooters, although don’t write them off. Each the ultrawide and the 2x telephoto zoom lens use 50Mp, although they use smaller Samsung sensors.

Regardless of that, their strengths and weaknesses are related, albeit exaggerated. Element is great, however dynamic vary could be missing they usually wrestle greater than most when confronted with shiny, direct gentle. Even with out optical picture stabilisation the telephoto holds its personal surprisingly effectively at evening, preserving element and exposing gentle nearly in addition to the principle sensor, although the ultrawide has a sharper high quality drop in low gentle.

On the entrance of the cellphone, the 32Mp selfie digicam produces lovely leads to the fitting lighting (albeit with the identical caveats round dynamic vary), although struggles significantly at evening, producing tender, murky photographs that appear to be they need to come from a less expensive system.

As for video, you possibly can shoot at [email protected] throughout all three rear lenses, with an [email protected] possibility restricted to the principle digicam. The selfie lens caps out at [email protected]

Video recording is supported by some new focus monitoring tech, which is able to assist when filming pets, children, or different fast-moving topics – although they do have to remain pretty central and enormous within the body for the monitoring to work.

Software program & updates

Android 12
MIUI 13
Three Android model updates

The Xiaomi 12 Professional ships with Android 12, operating Xiaomi’s MIUI 13 on high.

I’ve lengthy mentioned that Xiaomi telephones have been let down by the corporate’s tackle Android, and sadly, nothing’s modified in that respect.

MIUI is unintuitive and irritating by fashionable Android requirements. The settings menu is cluttered and complicated, with controls specified by sections you’d by no means look forward to finding them. Some UI selections – like a break up management centre and notification tray, every accessed by swiping from a distinct aspect of the display screen – are shamelessly cribbed from Apple, however ill-suited to Android.

To high all of it off, the cellphone comes pre-installed with apps like Fb, TikTok, and Joom, with adverts included for extra.

Whereas Xiaomi has included the entire key privateness and safety features of Android 12 into its newest MIUI model, it’s omitted one of many OS replace’s most interesting options, Materials You. There’s no signal of this selection to tweak the cellphone’s color palette primarily based in your chosen wallpaper, despite the fact that it’s maybe the principle user-facing function of Android 12.

It doesn’t assist that I’ve encountered a number of bugs in my time with the 12 Professional, too. Darkish Mode sometimes generates visible artifacting within the settings menu; as soon as the alarm went off however was inconceivable to seek out to deactivate; and a few interplay with the Android 12 privateness options prevents the microphone from activating in any respect for speech classes in Duolingo. I’ve had none of those points on different Android 12 units.

Xiaomi’s present coverage is to problem its flagships with three years of Android updates and a fourth of safety patches, which ought to see this cellphone get Android 13, 14, and 15. That’s roughly typical for high-end Android telephones, although lags behind Samsung’s promise of 4 years of updates for its telephones, or Apple’s market-leading strategy to long-term assist.

Value & availability

Whereas the Xiaomi 12 Professional has now formally launched worldwide, we don’t but know precisely when it’s going to go on sale in every single place, with launch dates more likely to range by market – although the UK will get it a while in April. And regardless of the ‘international’ launch, you shouldn’t anticipate to see the cellphone formally go on sale in North America.

Regardless of that, Xiaomi has introduced pricing in US {dollars} for now, with different currencies to comply with. The 12 Professional will begin from $999 for the 8+256GB mannequin, with the 12+256GB model to price extra – although the corporate hasn’t but mentioned how a lot.

For comparability, the common Xiaomi 12 begins from $749. Head to our information to the place to purchase the Xiaomi 12 collection for the newest data on pricing, availability, and offers.

It’s most likely no coincidence that that is the precise beginning worth of the Galaxy S22+ within the US, although for that worth the Samsung cellphone ships with half the storage. It’s slightly cheaper than the £1,049/€1,299 Oppo Discover X5 Professional, and can doubtless additionally price barely lower than the OnePlus 10 Professional when that launches later this month.

Take a look at our decide of all the perfect Android flagships for extra choices (or the perfect telephones on the whole, should you’re not towards an iPhone), or simply check out our rating of the perfect Xiaomi telephones to see how the remainder of the corporate’s line-up stacks up.

Verdict

The Xiaomi 12 Professional has an terrible lot going for it, however that’s coupled with a pair of main flaws.

I really like the smooth, understated design. I really like the gorgeous show and the spectacular efficiency. And I (principally) love the digicam, which is a stable performer, if not fairly best-in-class.

Sadly, the battery life is a transparent failing, and the software program suffers too – each from unintended bugs and intentional design selections. A few of these failings may effectively be mounted with updates, however for the second they frustrate.

That’s not sufficient to cease me from recommending the Xiaomi 12 Professional, nevertheless it is sufficient to make me encourage you to take an in depth take a look at the cellphone’s rivals earlier than you commit.

Specs
Xiaomi 12 Professional: Specs

Android 12 w/ MIUI 13

6.73in WQHD+ LTPO AMOLED 120Hz curved show, 20:9, 480Hz contact sampling, HDR10+, Dolby Imaginative and prescient

In-display fingerprint sensor

Gorilla Glass Victus

4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon Eight Gen 1

8/12GB RAM LPDDR5

256GB UFS 3.1 non-expandable storage

50Mp, f/1.9 major digicam with OIS

50Mp, f/2.2 ultrawide digicam

50Mp, f/1.9 2x zoom telephoto digicam

32Mp, f/2.45 front-facing digicam