Xiaomi 13 Pro long-term review

Display brightness

The Xiaomi 13 Pro's display is among the best in the market right now. It's a proper high-end panel for a properly high-end phone, very befitting. The 13 Ultra's gets a bit brighter, but in our extended use of the 13 Pro we've never once felt more brightness was definitely needed.

The panel here is easily viewable on a bright sunny day, even with the sun hitting it directly. Sure, more is always better when it comes to these things, but what we're saying is you won't miss the extra brightness of the Ultra, unless you've had the Ultra before and are switching from it. That seems to us like the definition of a niche use case, hence why we can say that for most people, this will always feel bright enough.

At the opposite end of the scale things aren't as rosy. On the minimum brightness level, this might still be a tad too bright for comfortable use in pitch black environments, especially if you don't use the dark theme. And unfortunately there's nothing you can do about it either, since Android's Extra Dim feature still hasn't been 'imported' into MIUI.

If you like 'em bright and retina-searing, obviously you'll have no problem with this one, but otherwise... get ready to switch to the dark theme (or at least schedule it to come on at night), and squint a little. It's a real shame that Xiaomi's software team can't get around to adding the Extra Dim function to MIUI, it would be very welcome especially for panels like this.

Speaking of dimming, while DC dimming hasn't been an option in a rather long time on any phone we've reviewed long-term, the Xiaomi 13 Pro has 1920 Hz PWM dimming, which means that most people who are sensitive to pulse-width modulation won't have any issues here - it's generally the lower frequencies that create problems.

Display settings

The auto brightness algorithm here is a real standout, as it's the best we've encountered in at least a year, if not two, on devices we've reviewed long-term. Over our many weeks spent with the Xiaomi 13 Pro, we only had to manually adjust brightness a handful of times. Seriously, it's just that good.

Display quality, color settings

Quality-wise, this display is exceptional, with a very accurate sRGB rendition in Original Color mode. Likewise, the Vivid preset reproduces DCI-P3, though it's a bit cold out of the box - select the Warm color preset and you're golden, however. We went with Original since most content out there still targets sRGB, but if you like more vividness, then definitely go for Vivid. Well named indeed. If you need even more color saturation (while understanding that you're losing accuracy in the process), then Saturated will do the job.

You can fine tune all of these in Advanced Settings, which brings us to the point that color settings in MIUI are currently a mess. Most people will probably never touch the default, and that's fine (or it would be, had it been less cold), but if you want to tinker... you're presented with a labyrinth of similarly-sounding options and it's not a good look.

Color settings

For once it would be great to take some inspiration from Samsung's One UI and how easy that makes it to pick and change such settings (although the propensity to use names such as "natural" or "original" or "vivid" instead of just saying what color space is being targeted still feels inane - again, 'normal' users that might get confused by "sRGB" or "DCI-P3" will never touch these anyway).

Refresh rate, resolution

Just like any other mainstream flagship today, the Xiaomi 13 Pro maxes out at 120 Hz refresh rate. In order to ensure that it hits that as much as possible, you need to go into Settings and switch from the default option to Custom and then pick 120 Hz manually. Like all other high refresh rate phones nowadays, note that this doesn't mean it will stay at 120 Hz all the time - for battery life purposes, it will go lower when it can. Say, only a static image is displayed - in this case, expect the refresh rate to be 1 Hz.

Refresh rate settings

Similarly, the 60 Hz Custom option is itself a ceiling, not a fixed rate, while the default makes the most adjustments during usage. You might be fine with the default, but we always like to take the refresh rate to the max for our long-term reviews since the refresh rate impacts the perceived smoothness of a handset immensely.

On that front, we're happy to report that whatever adjustments below 120 Hz the 13 Pro has been making, it never felt not-smooth, and this is exactly how it should be, as you basically get a win-win situation: more battery life (since it's not locked at 120 Hz), but without any perceived smoothness penalty.

The 13 Pro's display has 1440x3200 resolution, but runs at 1080x2400 out of the gate, to supposedly save battery. We'd argue that most people couldn't tell the difference, but then we'd also argue that you're paying for a high-res screen so you may want to actually use all those pixels to their fullest extent. We ran the phone on the top resolution for the entirety of the time we spent with it, and, as you'll see in the appropriate section, battery life was excellent even so.

Display resolution settings

That said, we did leave the "Save battery with WQHD+" option turned on as it is by default. This allegedly switches resolution automatically back to FHD+ when it deems it appropriate. Maybe battery life would have been impacted more with this turned off, but in the past we have gone that route and still managed good longevity. If you're struggling with battery life on this phone (having a much more demanding use case than ours), then we'd suggest maybe trying to go down to FHD+ and see if that helps. Otherwise, we'll just say it again: you paid for all that resolution, use it.

Always-on display, Wallpapers, Reading mode

The Xiaomi 13 Pro has MIUI's standard Always-on display (AOD), of course, which is among the most feature-rich on the market today, and the Reading mode blue light filter which is definitely the most feature-rich of its kind.

Not only does the Always-on display have the usual scheduling settings - you can have it on or off or have it follow a specific time interval - but it can also only show up for 10 seconds after you touch the phone. While in the past we went with our AODs truly always on, nowadays we find ourselves really enjoying the "ten second" option.

After all, it only takes a touch to activate it, plus it activates every single time you get a notification, and since the screen was black before that, this actually makes it much more obvious that you are getting a new notification, when it lights up, including with a special effect across the display's curved sides. This is customizable too, naturally.

Furthermore, you can choose between analog and digital clocks, text, images, a bunch of dynamic 'kaleidoscopes', and if you use one of the few Super Wallpapers that are on offer, then the AOD will change based on that.

Always-on display settings

These were introduced a few years ago and sadly haven't been updated since, but they're still very cool. They provide a fully integrated dynamic experience between the AOD, the lock screen, and the home screen, with either a moving Planet Earth, Mars, the rings of Saturn, some snowy mountain peaks, or geometric shapes. The implementation is great, but we wish there were more to pick from.

Wallpapers settings

MIUI's blue light filter is called Reading mode and no other blue light filter on the market can touch it with a ten foot pole at the moment. It has the usual stuff: the ability to turn it on or off, schedule it for sunset to sunrise or with a custom time interval, and of course there's the effect you see everywhere else, with an intensity slider.

Reading mode

But then there's also Paper mode, which introduces texture into the equation, and on top of that you can desaturate colors too, or go for black and white. There really isn't anything out there that's even close, and we wish every Android skin had such a blue light filter implementation.

Biometrics

The Xiaomi 13 Pro has an in-display fingerprint sensor, and it's the best one we've ever used for a long-term review. It's the fastest and the most accurate, with accuracy rivaling the best of the capacitive sensors we've used recently (now only found in side-mounted implementations, embedded in the power button). We got in on the first try about 98-99% of the time, and that's just outstanding performance for any fingerprint scanner, let alone one that's of the under-display variety.

Speed is also on point, we never felt like unlocking was taking more than it should - it's practically instant. There's not really much more we can say about it - it's the best one so far, and that's that.

Those who have something against fingerprint authentication or just in-display sensors (if this one hasn't changed your mind due to how good it is) may resort to face unlocking, which is unsurprisingly present, but as usual less secure than fingerprint scanning (and in fact you get a very visible warning about this prior to enrolling your face).

Biometrics settings

This is fast too, but at the best of times it's as fast as the fingerprint sensor, not any faster. When you factor in the reduced security, in this reviewer's opinion this should only be used when, for whatever reason, you can't or won't go for the fingerprint scanner. By the way, we checked, and even if there's no specific setting regarding this, face unlocking in fact doesn't work when your eyes are closed, and it does work well with glasses (but we've only tested this having enrolled the face without glasses on, so your mileage may vary).