Xiaomi 13 review

A bright, flat, 6.36-inch, 120Hz OLED

The Xiaomi 13 has a gorgeous 6.36-inch AMOLED display at its helm. It is a bit bigger than the 6.29-inch panel on the Xiaomi 12, but not quite as bit as the 6.67-inch displays on the Xiaomi 12T and 12T Pro. It has a FullHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels, which at this diagonal works out to a very crisp and sharp 414 ppi or so.

The panel looks great in person and is made from an E6 generation of material, which allows for superb brightness, among other things. Xiaomi advertises a high brightness mode of 1,200 nits and a peak brightness of 1,900 nits. We measured 507 nits of brightness by maxing out the slider and then a whopping 1254 nits in max auto mode in our standardized test. Needless to say, there is no shortage of brightness, and the Xiaomi 13 is a pleasure to use outdoors. Naturally, it has excellent contrast as well.

The Xiaomi 13 is also quite good at color reproduction. It has quite a few color modes to choose from.

Color modes

Vivid is the default. It targets the DCI-P3 color space and does so decently well. This default color profile has a slight blue tint but nothing too outrageous. Vivid color mode retains said tint while also boosting the other primary color channels (red and green) for a more balanced but also more saturated look. Use this one if you are after that signature OLED "pop". As the name suggests, the original color mode is meant to provide great color accuracy. It targets the sRGB color space and nails it perfectly with extremely low deltaE values. This mode can definitely be considered color accurate.

Interestingly enough, the dedicated sRGB and DCI-P3 advanced color modes don't provide as accurate color reproduction. Avoid these unless you have a particular reason to use them.

The Xiaomi 13 also has excellent HDR support. The display offers support for all the major HDR standards - HDR10, HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision. The display definitely has enough brightness to deliver on those lofty HDR promises as well. The phone also reports support for decoding all four formats in software, which is great to see.

Pro HDR is an additional system working on the Xiaomi 13 to enhance the relationship between light and dark areas based on the content that is being played. It aims to deliver a visual experience as close to human vision as possible.

HDR support • Widevine • Netflix playback capabilities

We are also happy to report that the Xiaomi 13 has the highest possible Widevine L1 certification, allowing streaming apps like Netflix to saturate its FullHD resolution.

High refresh rate handling

The Xiaomi 13 has a 120Hz refresh rate display and a very smart and well-optimized system to manage its refresh rate dynamically. When we say dynamically, we still mean in fairly coarse steps.

It lacks LTPO tech and the really dynamic refresh rate switching that comes with it. Instead, the Xiaomi 13 can run its display at 120Hz, 90Hz and 60Hz.

Refresh rate options

In terms of settings, you can set the Xiaomi 13 to refresh at a fixed 120Hz, fixed 60Hz or leave its default automatic switching behavior. The latter is excellent in practice. For the phone UI and most apps, the system uses 120Hz while the user is interacting with the display or there is motion on screen, and then once it sees a static image for a couple of seconds, it drops the refresh rate down to 60Hz to save power.

Automatic refresh rate switching in the UI and most apps

The auto refresh rate mode is also smart enough to detect when there is a video playing on screen or a video playback app like YouTube has been launched and drop its refresh rate down appropriately to 60Hz to save power.

60Hz during video playback

As for games, we tried a few titles we know can render at above 60fps. Unfortunately, none of these managed to automatically trigger 120Hz mode. Once we manually set the phone to 120Hz, they made proper use of the available refresh rate headroom. So, not exactly the flawless automatic behavior we've seen with past Xiaomi devices like the 12T Pro, but still usable.

Gaming at 120Hz in 120Hz mode

Overall, the automatic refresh rate system works well but seems to have gotten worse on the Xiaomi 13 compared to some of the company's previous models. Perhaps it has something to do with the move to Android 13. We can't say for sure, but we hope an update restores the system back to its former glory. As things currently stand, you just need to remember to flip the phone over to 120Hz mode manually to make use of high refresh rate gaming. The rest of the time, there is no reason not to just leave the Xiaomi 13 in auto-refresh rate mode.

Battery life

The Xiaomi 13 has a decently-sized 4,500 mAh battery at its disposal. Battery endurance is one area in which the efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset has managed to prove its worth. While not chart-topping, the Xiaomi 13 still managed a very good battery endurance of 108 hours. That's a nice uptick from the Xiaomi 12, and its 82 hours from a 4,500 mAh battery and even has the Xiaomi 12T Pro beat with its 91 hours on a 5,000 mAh battery. Color us pleasantly surprised.

The on-screen battery numbers are a bit on the lower end, but again nothing compared to previous generations of Xiaomi devices. Plus, the Xiaomi 13 makes up for that with excellent 3G talk time and network standby numbers. Overall, we can't complaint at all.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage patterns check out our all-time battery test results chart where you can also find all phones we've tested.

Charging

The Xiaomi 13 can charge at a rate of up to 67W using proprietary Xiaomi charging tech. It also features support for Power Delivery 3.0 and Quick Charge 4. Though, if you want to make use of its maximum charging speed, you need to hold on to both the provided charger and cable from the retail box.

We aren't quite sure why Xiaomi decided to stick to 67W charging for the vanilla Xiaomi 13, given that devices like the Xiaomi 12T Pro are already out with 120W wired charging. Perhaps it was a market segmentation decision since the Xiaomi 13 Pro does get 120W charging.

Xiaomi claims that a full charge on the Xiaomi 13 should take 38 minutes. We didn't quite manage said figure in our testing, but we definitely got close enough at 42 minutes. Despite rocking the older Xiaomi charging standard, the Xiaomi 13 is still quite a speedy charging device.

Plus, while it lacks 120W charging, the Xiaomi 13 still gets 50W wireless charging support and 10W reverse wireless charging to back up its status as a proper flagship.

Speakers

The Xiaomi 13 has a stereo speaker setup with a Dolby Atmos equalizer on top. One of the stereo channels is handled by a proper down-firing speaker, while the other is front-firing and doubles as the earpiece. A fairly-common hybrid setup. It is worth noting that other Xiaomi devices, like the Xiaomi 12 and the 12T Pro, have a second speaker grill on the top frame, which Xiaomi decided to omit on the 13 for some reason.

Interestingly enough, the top speaker/earpiece on the Xiaomi 13 doesn't just handle one of the channels but actually assists in both of them and is always outputting audio. An interesting system that works surprisingly well in practice, though at the expense of stereo separation.

Xiaomi worked together with Dolby on the audio of the 13. There are settings for Dolby Atmos available, as well as a full-featured equalizer.

Dolby Atmos settings and equalizer

The Xiaomi 13 gets quite loud and managed a VERY GOOD loudness score in our proprietary test. Its frequency response is also nice and tight, with a surprising amount of base and nice clean highs. Despite their location, the speakers aren't particularly easy to cover while holding the phone in landscape mode either.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.