Xiaomi 13 Pro long-term review

Conclusion

The Xiaomi 13 Pro is one of the best phones of the year so far. That said, obviously the Xiaomi 13 Ultra is better still (unless you really consider quicker charging as the most important thing for you). But the question isn't whether the Ultra is better than the Pro, the question is whether, for you personally, it's worth hundreds of euros more for the cameras it has and the slightly brighter screen and the marginally bigger battery capacity. That's it, that's the main thing you need to think about when considering a pick between these two.

Also, the Ultra's price makes it compete head-on with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, and that makes it a tougher sell than the 13 Pro, weirdly enough, even if it's better, because most people factor in brand awareness and the amount of warranty service they can get, and some people also want more timely updates, be those small security ones that fix bugs or the big Android version updates.

So in a way, while still not being affordable, with its marginally lower price, the Xiaomi 13 Pro is in a slightly better position in the market compared to the Xiaomi 13 Ultra. That is before you consider the Samsung Galaxy S23+, which currently can be found cheaper than the 13 Pro in some places. That phone has the brand cachet, the longer update promise, the timelier updates, the same SoC but overclocked a tad, good cameras too, but it also has a less smooth software experience, a lower-res screen, and much slower charging.

As usual, it's all up to you - you know best which boxes a smartphone needs to tick for your taste and use case. However, the Xiaomi 13 Pro can definitely stand on its own even in the very crowded space nowadays, with great high-end cameras - not 'the best' but arguably very close and 'good enough' for most people.

Smoothness is the best we've ever encountered so far in a long-term review; the OnePlus 10 Pro from last year has finally been dethroned. MIUI, in its 14th version/iteration, still looks like its predecessors, and that might be an issue if you're looking for a fresher UI, and it continues to have some idiosyncrasies that, for some reason, have been ignored so far. Not to mention bugs - not so many that we'd say you should stay away, but enough that we urge you to consider them before making any purchase decision. The slow and far-between updates don't help either. Otherwise, MIUI works and is pretty easy to get used to nowadays, plus it comes with a lot of customization options - among the most out there, really.

Some of its features are unmatched by the competition to this day (the two types of "Control center", the two ways to show Recents, and the Reading mode blue light filter instantly come to mind, but there's more). You could look at such things as a net positive if you're the tinkering type, or a disadvantage if all you want is things to 'just work', it's up to you.

Battery life is great, charging is among the fastest out there and day and night compared to the worst offenders in the space (looking at you, Apple, Google, and Samsung), and even if you can't get through an entire day with a full charge, a quick top-up is so fast that we'd wager battery anxiety will be totally a thing of the past with this phone, provided you can use the bundled charger and cable.

The screen is among the best ever put into a smartphone, even though there are slightly brighter ones, but you wouldn't notice the difference unless you held them side-by-side, and almost no one does that outside of reviewers like us. The speakers are as good as the best out there, and so is the vibration motor, and the fingerprint sensor is the best in-display one we've ever used.

In the end, perhaps the Xiaomi 13 Pro has two impediments to becoming a true best-seller: one of them is its middle-child status and the constantly floating shadow of its more potent sibling, the 13 Ultra, which we've discussed above. The other is simply the fact that Xiaomi and its various sub-brands have, over the years, been so good at creating 'value for money' mid-rangers and low-end smartphones that a lot of people might not see the point of paying this much for a Xiaomi - there's that association with cheap and cheerful devices, with getting 'more than your money's worth'.

But while that still applies to entry-level and mid-range smartphones, it simply can't apply to a properly high-end device, which is what this is.

The 'flagship killers', of which Xiaomi has a line too (the "T" series) may try to sleight-of-hand you into thinking you're getting 'most of a high-end device for a fraction of the price,' but that's simply not true. With those, you're not getting cameras that are on par, you're not getting screens that are on par, and most of the time, you're also not getting a lot of the little things that you might not pay attention to on a spec sheet, things such as amazing speakers or an almost perfect fingerprint sensor, stuff like that.

The markup on more expensive devices will always be higher than for mid-rangers, and the latter is what 'flagship killers' really are after all, despite how they're marketed. But so what? Even if a high-end phone delivers "only" 20% more 'whatever' than a flagship killer and is 40% more expensive, the high-end phone is still better. Not by exactly as much as you're paying on top, but it is, and in our online world obsessed with maximization of returns that can easily be overlooked.

And that's the tale of the Xiaomi 13 Pro, and why we think most people might not give it a serious look. But if you do give it a chance, provided you're okay with its very few downsides that we've already described, we're sure you'll be as happy with it as we were, which is to say - very.