Xiaomi 13 Pro review

Display

The Xiaomi 13 Pro appears to feature the same 6.73-inch LTPO OLED panel we experienced on the Xiaomi 12 Pro and the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. It offers QHD resolution, 10-bit color depth, adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, and Dolby Vision support. The only improvement since the previous versions is the increased maximum brightness.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro has a flat LTPO OLED panel with a slightly curved Gorilla Glass Victus protection. The screen has 3,200 x 1,440 px resolution or 522ppi density. It supports an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, one that can drop as low as 1Hz when necessary. There is also support for 240Hz touch sensing.

The display has 10-bit color depth, which means it can support more than a billion colors and will have no color banding even with challenging images compared to 8-bit panels. There is support for DCI-P3 color gamut, and a promise of great color accuracy.

The screen is certified for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision content. Xiaomi has listed 1,900 nits of peak brightness (up from 1,500) and 1,200 nits of high maximum brightness (up from 1,000). We've completed our display test, and the numbers are in line with Xiaomi's advertisement.

We captured 527nits of maximum brightness when using the brightness slider manually. When set on Auto, or with the Sunlight Boost on, the screen can be much brighter - 1,253 nits to be specific. And simulating a local peak brightness on a small white square, we did capture 1,900 nits.

The minimum brightness at point white was 2.2 nits.

Color accuracy

The Xiaomi 13 Pro display supports DCI-P3 wide color space, and it's the default setting. The display color options offer three different color models - Vivid (default, DCI-P3), Saturated (DCI-P3 with saturation boost), and Original color (sRGB). You can fine-tune the color temperature for each mode.

There is also a custom section, where you can select the color gamut (Original, P3, sRGB) and fine-tune colors, saturation, hue, contrast, and gamma.

The Vivid (default) option reproduces DCI-P3 faithfully, and we found it to be fairly accurate, excluding the slightly bluish-white and gray hues, but this is fixable by selecting the Warm Color temperature.

The Original color option corresponds to sRGB and offers very accurate rendering, including the white and gray colors.

We also tested the modes on the Advanced Settings - P3 and sRGB offer good accuracy, but they both exhibit the blue tint over the white and gray colors. The Original color from Advanced Settings has the same perfect accuracy towards sRGB targets as the Original Color from the Standard display settings.

Refresh rate and resolution

Just like the 12 Pro and 12S Ultra, the 13 Pro lets you choose whether the phone should render in its native 1440p resolution or a lower 1080p, the presumption being that the lower-res setting would be less taxing on the battery. When you're in 1440p mode, there's also a toggle that allows the phone to automatically switch down to 1080p when it decides it's appropriate.

Color, resolution and refresh rate settings

The display supports up to 120Hz refresh rate, and there are two refresh modes - Custom (choose between 120Hz or 60Hz refresh ceilings), and Default (automatic switching behavior).

The adaptive refresh rate works as expected - it drops down to 1Hz when the screen shows static content and can be incredibly dynamic (constantly changing between 10Hz and 120Hz with no fixed steps) in games or browsers. The few scenarios where we saw it go for fixed refresh rates, besides 1Hz for static picture, were 24Hz for 24fps videos, 30Hz for 30fps clips, and 60Hz for HFR clips and apps which are incompatible with dynamic refresh rate adjustements.

The always-on display uses 30Hz, and on a couple of occasions, we saw static content display at 10Hz - as we mentioned, the screen is indeed as dynamic as they can be these days.

There is a twist, though. The minimum refresh rate depends on the screen brightness. If the brightness is below 100nits or so, the refresh rate will be kept at maximum (60Hz or 120Hz), depending on the occasion, and the only time it will drop below these maximums is for specific video fps (24 or 30 fps).

On the positive side, the display supports high-frequency 1920Hz PWM dimming so it shouldn't bother anyone sensitive to the usual low-frequency PWM brightness control on OLED screens.

HDR and streaming

The Xiaomi 13 Pro comes with Widevine L1 DRM support, and Full HD streaming with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support is available across popular platforms, Netflix included.

Display enhancements

The Xiaomi 13 Pro offers three AI Image Engine features (all disabled by default).

The first one is Super Resolution - this feature tries to upscale the resolution of local videos. It could increase battery consumption and may not yield much improvement.

The second feature is called AI Image Enhancement and works only within the Gallery app. It automatically scans and identifies objects across your photos and applies some predefined contrast/color/filter settings when you are viewing said photos.

Finally, the AI HDR enhancement uses some sort of processing across SDR content to bring more detail to both lighter and darker areas.

AI Image Engine features

Battery life

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is powered by a 4,820mAh battery, about the same as on the Xiaomi 12S Ultra and 5% larger than the one inside the Xiaomi 12 Pro.

In our Active Use test, the 13 Pro posted mostly average numbers for a high-end device. The OnePlus 11 and the Pixel 8 Pro are roughly on par, while the Galaxy S23 Ultra and the iPhone Pro Max 15 (that one in particular) have a significant edge.

Charging speed

The Xiaomi 13 Pro supports 120W HyperCharge support for its 4,820mAh battery. The phone comes bundled with that charger and an appropriate 6A-rated cable, so you are good to go right out of the box.

Battery options

The Xiaomi 13 Pro also supports up to 50W wireless charging, but you will need to buy Xiaomi's 50W wireless charger and connect it to one of Xiaomi's 60W+ wired chargers. There is also support for reverse wired and 10W wireless charging. The latter needs to be enabled from Settings->Battery or from the Control Center.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro supports Boost Charge mode - this feature allows the fastest possible charging at 120W, but only when the phone is with its screen turned off as an overheating prevention measure. This option is turned off by default, but you can enable it from within the Battery settings.

Naturally, we did our charging test with the Boost mode, as otherwise the phone is limited to 60W-80W charging.

So, the Xiaomi 13 Pro and its 120W power brick are an awesome combination. We got 10% in just 75 seconds of charging and 33% in 5 minutes. Then we clocked 61% of charge in 10 minutes and 81% in 15 minutes!

A full charge took 22 minutes, slightly above the promised 19 minutes from Xiaomi.

During the 120W fast charging, the phone didn't get hot, just warm.

We also tested without the Boost mode, and the first 5 minutes were identical - 33%. Then we got 50% of charge in 10mins, while 15mins gave us 66%. We clocked 81% of charge in 20mins; that's 5 more minutes compared to the Boost mode.

A full charge took 27 minutes, adding another 5 more minutes on top of the Boost full charge time. This means the charging slows after the first 5 minutes, but not that much, obviously.

Speakers

The Xiaomi 13 Pro has a stereo speaker setup with the two pieces placed on its top and bottom sides behind dedicated grilles. The top speaker also acts as an earpiece, and that's why it has another front-facing outlet.

The top speaker is quieter than the bottom and less bassy, but thanks to the two outlets - the Xiaomi 13 Pro delivers balanced audio output. The speakers support Dolby Atmos enhancement, and it's OFF by default.

The Xiaomi 13 Pro scored a Very Good mark on our loudness test; the sound quality is very good as well - the vocals are great, there is some bass, and the high frequencies are fine, too.

Using a Dolby Atmos makes a little difference - it improves on the bass, but its vocals aren't as rich.

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.