Xiaomi 12 Lite review

Standard triple-camera setup

The main camera gets a big upgrade this year and not only in terms of pixel count. Last year's 64MP 1/1.97" sensor is replaced with Samsung's 108MP ISOCELL HM2 sensor, which is considerably bigger too - 1/1.52", 0.7µm pixels. The unit is paired with an f/1.9 aperture and outputs 12MP images in a nona-bayer arrangement (bins 9 adjacent pixels into 1).

The ultrawide shooter, on the other hand, keeps the same, tiny 8MP, 1/4.0", 1.12µmp sensor paired with an f/2.2 lens covering a 120-degree field of view. The macro snapper has is downgraded from 5MP down to 2MP and there's no autofocus this time around either. The aperture is f/2.4.

The selfie camera gets a slightly bigger 32MP, 1/2.8", 0.8µm sensor with f/2.5 aperture and autofocus capabilities, which is a rare finding even in higher-end phones. Interestingly enough, there's no binning enabled, so selfies are in the full 32MP resolution.

Camera menus

The camera app is a rather straightforward implementation, though it does have its quirks. First, basic operation for changing modes works with side swipes (on the black bezel!), and you can also tap on the modes you can see to switch to those directly. Up and down swipes don't work for switching between the front and rear cameras; only the toggle next to the shutter release does that.

You can add, remove, and rearrange modes in the main rolodex by going to the More tab and navigating to the edit button, and you can access that from the settings menu as well. The unused modes will still be in that More tab, but you can switch to a (less intuitive) pull-out pane that's summoned from a line next to the shutter release.

Camera menus

The hamburger menu at the far end is where you'll find additional options, including the Super Macro mode (why here and not a mode in the rolodex?), plus the icon to access the settings. Next to that hamburger menu, you have a flash mode switch, an HDR switch, an AI toggle, a shortcut to Google Lens, and a magic wand with beauty effects and filters.

More camera settings

On the near end, you have the camera zoom switch that operates in one of two fashions. The first one is simply tapping on one of the three dots that represent the ultra-wide, primary, and 2x digital options. Or you can tap on the active magnification and slide sideways to reveal even more zoom levels - 2x and 10x, plus a slider for intermediate magnifications.

There's a nicely capable Pro mode, where you can tweak the shooting parameters yourself. You can use the primary, the ultrawide and even the macro cameras here. You get to pick one of 4 white balance presets or dial in the light temperature with a slider, there's a manual focusing slider (with peaking as an option, particularly useful for the macro), and shutter speed and ISO control with the range depending on which camera you're using. A tiny live histogram is available, and a toggle for zebras can be found in the hamburger menu.

As expected, there's a host of extra modes, including Long Exposure with its own set of different presets - moving crowd, neon trails, oil painting, light painting, starry sky, and star trails. The extra modes in the "More" sub-menu can be displayed with bigger thumbnails for easier navigation.

Extra camera modes

Night mode is available for the main and the ultrawide cameras. There is Auto Night mode in the advanced Settings, too.

Daylight samples

Main camera

The main camera's rendition is quite similar to the previous generation, which in turn means that the daylight photos are excellent. There's little to complain about, really. Sharpness is good, there's plenty of fine detail resolved, dynamic range is wide and noise is virtually non-existent. The software visibly boosts colors and contrast by default, which is typical for a Xiaomi phone. While some may find the photos attractive, others could argue that colors are a bit over the top.

12MP daylight samples

The boosted contrast leads to small clipped highlight patches and loss of detail in the shadows, which can often appear crushed. The good news is that this is easily fixable with a software update. Then again, we don't think it's that big of an issue.

12MP daylight samples

Shooting with the full 108MP resolution delivers an unparalleled level of detail, but you sacrifice general sharpness and dynamic range. Noise becomes a lot more apparent, too.

108MP daylight samples

2x zoom

Naturally, there's a 2x zoom toggle by default, but quality is far from a proper 2x telephoto camera. Rendition is identical to that of the 1x main camera mode, except for sharpness. The 2x zoom samples are noticeably softer.

2x zoom daylight samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera uses a tiny, common 8MP sensor that rarely puts out decent enough photos, but these are pretty good, as long as the right lighting conditions are met. The ultrawide samples have a nice contrast, good dynamic range for the most part (a couple of crushed shadows and clipped highlights, but not deal-breakers) and punchy colors (similar to the main camera's). Noise is well-controlled and sharpness and detail are pretty good if the subject is close enough. Notice how foliage changes with distance. The camera begins to struggle indoors as sharpness deteriorates visibly.

Ultrawide daylight samples

Macro camera

The 2MP macro camera is a downgrade from last year's model in terms of resolution and overall quality. It has a fixed-focus at 4cm as well. The low resolution doesn't allow for higher detail, colors are washed out, contrast is low and it's quite hard to nail the right focusing distance without any cues provided on the viewfinder.

Macro samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

The low-light samples are pretty good even without resorting to the dedicated Night mode. Colors and contrast are pretty good and most of the detail in the shadows and around the highlight areas is retained with minimal noise. However, the noise suppression algorithm can sometimes smear some of the fine detail. Dynamic range needs some improvement, though, as shadows can often be too dark while highlights are clipped. Then again, this could be caused, once again, by the high contrast.

Low-light samples

The good news is that the dedicated Night mode improves the images in those exact aspects. It balances out the highlights and shadows, removes the remaining nose, more detail pops up, boosts colors and improves overall brightness to resolve more detail in the shadows. The best part is that the samples don't look overly processed. The Night mode is strongly recommended after dusk as it takes superior photos to the standard photo mode.

Night mode samples

2x zoom

As was the case during the day, the 2x zoom samples are considerably softer and noise is more visible. The Night mode does little to improve image quality. We can only see a significant change in noise and a small increase in the amount of detail resolved, but that's about it.

2x zoom low-light: Normal • Night mode

Ultrawide camera

Without the Night mode, the ultrawide camera produces soft photos with clipped highlights, crushed shadows and plenty of noise. It's hard to recommend. And although the Night mode doesn't get the sharpness where it needs to be, it makes images good enough for social media posting. It improves upon dynamic range, detail, color reproduction and highlights.

Ultrawide low-light: Normal • Night mode

Once you are done with the real-life examples, take a look at our Photo compare tool for some pixel-peeping and see how the Xiaomi 12 Lite fares against the competition.

Xiaomi 12 Lite vs. Realme GT Neo 3T and the Xiaomi 11T Pro in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The portraits we captured are excellent. They are detailed, sharp with lively colors and natural skin color. Dynamic range is wide enough to keep the subject's face well-exposed without burning the background. The faux bokeh effect is convincing enough but struggles with messy hair and fine detail around the subject.

Portrait samples

Selfies

The selfies are pretty good. They are decently sharp, resolve quite a bit of detail and thanks to the autofocus feature, you don't have to be in the right focusing distance. In contrast to the back cameras, the front one is more conservative with the colors as they are close to natural, including the subject's skin. It may appear even slightly pale indoors in sub-optimal lighting conditions. Dynamic range is excellent and exposure is on point.

Selfies

The bokeh effect in Portrait mode is a bit rough around the edges, as one would expect, but does the job and we haven't noticed any deterioration in quality.

Portrait selfies

Video recording

The handset caps at 2160p@30fps using the main camera while the ultrawide is limited to 1080p@30fps. There's also a 2x zoom toggle, which is a simple crop from the main camera but still in 4K. The system allows for an action cam-like electronic stabilization, which is also limited to 1080p. That's to be expected since advanced stabilization in higher resolution requires quite a bit of processing power, which the Snapdragon 778G just isn't capable of. Now without further ado, let's get to the important bit of this section.

The 2160p videos taken with the main camera look great. Sharpness is more than sufficient, you can spot fine detail all around, contrast is high once more and dynamic range is wide. Colors are slightly exaggerated, but one could argue that the footage looks better this way. Our only minor complaint is the color temperature as it seems a bit colder than it should be. Notice the blue-ish tinge on the building in the distance and passing white cars.

You can expect near-identical rendition from the ultrawide camera when it comes to colors, dynamic range and contrast. Understandably, the sample below is considerably softer compared to the main camera's mostly due to the lower 1080p resolution and the nature of ultrawide lenses. Still, we would say that overall quality is sensibly above average compared to other implementations of this exact sensor and lens.

The handset supports 4K video stabilization, so even without resorting to the so-called Steady video mode, you get a pretty solid EIS in the maximum supported video resolution.

The Steady video, on the other hand, provides more advanced stabilization mimicking action cameras but as expected, the resolution is limited to 1080p in this mode.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the Xiaomi 12 Lite stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

2160p: Xiaomi 12 Lite vs.Realme GT Neo 3T and the Xiaomi 11T Pro in our Video compare tool