Xiaomi 12T Pro review

Design

The Xiaomi 12T Pro has a very classic design that borders on boring at times. The overall look is very subdued and serious. The pack panel is curved in a very natural and palm-friendly manner.

The 12T Pro measures 163.1 x 75.9 x 8.6 mm and tips the scale at 205 grams. It feels dense and nicely balanced with a solid grip to it. Not too heavy nor too light.

The back panel has a slightly frosted finish, which helps with fingerprints and other dirt quite well. The finish is also anti-glare, so don't expect the 12T Pro to catch any fancy and playful reflections as you use it. Once again, this design means business.

The same goes for the color selection. You can have the 12T Pro in Black, Silver or Blue. All of these with nicely color-matched camera islands and no additional color accents to speak of.

Speaking of the camera island, it has a very familiar arrangement, shared by many recent Xiaomi devices. We personally like the large rectangular main sensor and the overall shape of the island around it. The subtle separator lines between the two additional camera sensors also look nice and complement the rest of the design, as subtle as it may be.

There is nothing particularly interesting or noteworthy about the front side of the 12T Pro. Honestly, it's as straight-forward as they come - relatively thin bezels around a flat display and a punch hole camera. Just what you want for a boardroom meeting.

Looking at the phone from the side reveals one slight oddity with how the display assembly works. Xiaomi decided not to extend the middle frame of the phone up onto the display assembly to cover its sides. As a result, the 12T Pro sort of has the slightly odd "dual frame" thing going from the side.

Materials and build quality

There are no surprises in the construction department either. The Xiaomi 12T Pro feels solid and very well put together. Everything is nicely packed together.

Xiaomi employed a typical "glass sandwich" construction scheme for the 12T Pro. A solid plastic middle frame holds everything together, and two pieces of glass are glued on either side.

The front is Corning Gorilla Glass 5, while the back is glass as well but of undisclosed make. We'd be the first to admit that Gorilla Glass 5 sounds like a downgrade compared to the Xiaomi 11T Pro, which came out with Victus.

Both devices share the IP53 ingress protection rating. It means you get the extra peace of mind that you can use your device in humid weather, but not much than that.

Even so, it is a very well-constructed device that feels solid in every sense of the word. Plus, there is a red rubber gasket clearly visible on the SIM card tray, so unofficially the Xiaomi 12T Pro could probably survive a short dip in fresh water.

Controls and connectivity

There is nothing particularly odd or out of place in the control scheme and layout of the Xiaomi 12T Pro. The power button and volume rocker are on the right-hand side. Both are well positioned and comfortable to use. That's kind of surprising, given their thinness. Still, Xiaomi did a great job optimizing their feel and travel.

The left side of the phone is entirely empty with no controls.

The top of the phone houses one of the two speakers from the 12T Pro's stereo setup. It is interesting to note that despite having two dedicated speakers in our testing, the 12T Pro appears to also be using its earpiece for multimedia output. Perhaps Dolby or Harman Kardon has a hand in that decision for the sake of its Atmos tuning, but we'll inspect that more closely in the audio test section of this review.

The secondary noise-canceling microphone and an IR blaster are on the phone's top side, which is all quite common.

The bottom of the 12T Pro houses the other dedicated speaker and the main microphone. The dual nano-SIM card slot is also here.

The Type-C port can do up to 120W of charging using Xiaomi HyperCHarge tech. Beyond that, it is a bit disappointing in its capabilities since it is just wired for USB 2.0 data transfer speeds and lacks anything fancy like video output. It can do audio out and supports USB Host mode for attaching accessories like a mouse and/or keyboard.

Speaking of the Type-C port, this is as good a place as any to note that the Xiaomi 12T Pro lacks a 3.5mm audio jack, expandable storage and a notification LED. However, that last one is hardly surprising on a modern phone.

The 12T Pro has an optical under-display fingerprint reader. It is very fast and reliable. We have absolutely no complaints about it.

While we are discussing the front of the device, we should mention that it has a proper hardware proximity sensor nestled in a small area on the top bezel above the display, to the right of the selfie camera. Next to it is an stk3bcx light sensor, and Xiaomi claims there is a second one on the back too. The 12T Pro also has a lsm6dso accelerometer+gyroscope combo on board and a qmc630x magnetometer. There is no barometer here, unlike on the Xiaomi 11T Pro.

In terms of wireless connectivity, the Xiaomi 12T Pro supports SA/NSA 5G on both of its SIM slots. There is also Bluetooth 5.2 on board as well as Wi-Fi 6 (ax). Our 12T Pro review unit has NFC as well, but that feature is market-dependent.