Xiaomi 12T Pro long-term review

Display quality, brightness

The Xiaomi 12T Pro splits the difference between 1080p+ and QHD+ opting for a not very often seen resolution of 1220x2712. Will you be able to tell a difference in day to day use between this and the equivalent for the same aspect ratio 1080p+? No. Will you be able to tell a difference in day to day use between this and QHD+? No. Will you be able to tell a difference between this and QHD+ when you intentionally go looking for one? Sure. Why would you do that, though? This is all a very convoluted way of saying - the resolution is fine. This is not a 'low-res' panel by any stretch of the imagination, and for most people, it's more than they'd ever actually need.

The panel used is high quality, and brightness maxes out right above the advertised 900-nit level when auto brightness is on. That's not record-breaking or even close to that, but it's still perfectly respectable. It's more than what most mid-rangers can put out, and, for a point of comparison, Samsung's Galaxy S22 only goes a tiny bit further. In practical terms - this display remains viewable in all ambient lighting conditions, including on a bright sunny day. If the sun directly hits the screen, you will need to squint, but you will make out what's on it, just about.

So in terms of brightness, the story is by now a familiar one: the Xiaomi 12T Pro offers decent, solid performance that isn't wowing or earth-shattering. That seems to be the theme of the entire device, by the way - spoiler alert. At the other end of the scale, the screen gets dim enough for most people, probably, but we'd still have liked for it to go even dimmer - either on its own, or if not, then at least by using the Extra dim feature that Google's packed into Android 12, which Xiaomi simply refuses to use.

We won't stop calling this out until it changes; there's absolutely no reason for such a potentially useful feature not to be included, niche as it may be. It's only an added Quick Settings toggle, and there are already a ton of those with much more debatable utility. As things stand, on the lowest brightness setting, we don't recommend viewing things with white backgrounds in pitch dark environments for a long time, as there's a lot of light hitting your eyes from all that white, and it might get straining after a while. The dark theme mitigates that somewhat, and you could also use a browser that automatically applies a dark theme to websites.

On the plus side, the 12T Pro uses very high-frequency PWM dimming - 1920Hz instead of the usual 500-800Hz, and this apparently should be way less disturbing for people who are sensitive to PWM (you know who you are). DC dimming would have made the problem go away entirely, but we assume that simply wasn't an option for this panel, so this is arguably the next best thing.

Display settings

Auto brightness... is pretty bad out of the box. We had to wrestle with the algorithm for weeks on end, constantly manually adjusting the brightness until we finally got something that made more sense. It always tends to react too dramatically to even the tiniest of changes in ambient light, so all our work with it was done towards trying to tame these inexplicable tendencies.

Of course, once you have tweaked it, it will remember your personal setting for the next time it encounters that specific level of ambient light, so even if you're unlucky like we were, it will get better in time the more you manually change it. We want to note that perhaps the one redeeming feature is how nicely the phone reacts when there's a lot of light suddenly hitting its back. It's clear that it has two ambient light sensors, and the rear one is used very well.

Color settings

MIUI's color settings have gotten progressively more confusing over the years, and things are no different on the Xiaomi 12T Pro. So we'll try to summarize all the different options you get: Vivid mode targets (and pretty much hits) the DCI-P3 space, although with a white point that's too cold - you can mitigate this with Warm under the color wheel. Original mode targets (and hits) sRGB, which is still the color space where most things on the internet are rendered.

Color scheme settings

So we'd recommend going with this, choosing a white point that you like the look of best (this reviewer is partial towards Warm), and calling it a day. If you're the type of person who cares about DCI-P3, then go with Vivid. And if you like the punchiest, most saturated colors, Saturated is what you want, but fair warning - the world outside of your phone's screen might start to look bland in comparison.

Refresh rate

The Xiaomi 12T Pro's display is capable of refreshing at 120 Hz, and the touch sampling rate is a good 480 Hz. The default refresh rate setting supposedly optimizes things dynamically, but we don't have time for that. Custom 120 Hz is where it's at, since the refresh rate influences perceived smoothness a lot, and smooth is what you want your software to be. Even this doesn't ensure 120 Hz all the time, yet it's the best you can get, and should pick it. By the way, games generally run at 120 Hz too, which is not always a given on Chinese phones.

Refresh rate settings

Now, if you want to eek out more battery life, going with the default refresh rate mode does make more sense. But if not, just set Custom to 120 Hz and never think about it again.

Always-on display, Reading mode

The 12T Pro's Always-on display is incredibly customizable, and we dig that a lot (does anyone use "dig" in this way anymore?). You can choose whether it's truly always on, or schedule it, or have it only appear for 10 seconds after tapping on the screen. And then, you can pick from a multitude of analog and digital clock styles, kaleidoscope images, and other backgrounds. Custom text? Sure, that too.

You can basically change the design every day, and you wouldn't see the same thing for almost a month; that's how many options there are, and while we obviously haven't used every single element on offer, we're happy to see such choice being offered. There's a lot of it without feeling overbearing.

Always-on display settings

It's a very similar story for Reading mode, MIUI's blue light filter, which still goes further than all others. Sure, you can adjust the intensity with a slider and schedule it to either come on automatically at sunset and turn off at sunrise or use a custom period.

Reading mode settings

But then there's Paper mode, MIUI's unique trick that introduces a paper-like texture into the mix, which can also be controlled with an intensity slider of its own. Finally, you can pick "light colors" (desaturated in plain English), or black-and-white too.

Biometrics

The Xiaomi 12T Pro has an in-display fingerprint reader, which is mounted a little bit too low for top comfort but not low enough that using it will always pose a risk of dropping the phone due to the extreme finger gymnastics involved. We still would have liked to see it slightly higher up the screen, but it is what it is.

It's definitely not the fastest we've ever tested, while also not being among the slowest. It's a little bit above average in unlocking speed and very good for accuracy - but again, not the best. It gets our fingerprint recognized on the first try in about 90-95% of cases, which is good for an in-display sensor, but we've seen better. Still, it's unlikely to annoy you very much in day-to-day use - maybe a couple of times each day, it might be more stubborn than you'd expect, but otherwise, it's fine.

Biometrics settings

There's face unlocking too, of course, and unsurprisingly it uses the front camera only, which means it's much less secure than the fingerprint sensor. If you choose to use it, you'll find that it's insanely fast - so much so that you might forget you've turned it on. It feels as if you have no password, no PIN, no authentication enabled whatsoever. So that speed might be enough of a benefit for you to alleviate the decrease in security compared to fingerprint scanning. For what it's worth, we also checked and face unlocking doesn't work when your eyes are closed.