Xiaomi 13 Ultra review

Design, build quality, handling

Fitting cutting-edge camera hardware on a smartphone is never going to make for a subtle rear-end appearance and previous Xiaomi Ultras have been anything but... incognito. But they've always owned it and made the large camera assemblies appealing in their own particular way.

We weren't so sure about the 13 Ultra when we saw the initial renders, though. After all, its camera bump has a camera bump!

But in reality, things are nowhere as bad. Not at all bad, actually. If anything, the sort of ramp that leads up to the huge circular camera assembly helps create a smoother transition from smartphone thickness to camera thickness, so to speak.

While the specs read 9.1mm (measured at the thin end, obviously), our calipers said 9.3mm. The thickness at the Leica end, on the other hand, is 15.2mm - so a camera protruding nearly 6mm would have been quite the eyesore, not to mention potentially impair handling (and out-of-pocket-pulling). The ramp is most welcome then.

Co-engineered with the German optics specialists, the cameras are clustered together under a common glass circle measuring 55mm in diameter. It's a couple of millimeters larger than that of the 12S Ultra and placed just a bit lower on the back of the phone.

Things have been moved around inside since there's one extra camera now and the center is now home to the Leica logo. Previously, the ultrawide camera went in there.

The Xiaomi 12S Ultra (left) next to the 13 Ultra

The new ultrawide's location in the top right corner of the cluster places it closer to the edge of the phone. We had more than one instance where we got fingers blocking the corner of the frame when taking pictures in landscape orientation and holding the phone with both hands. It's worth keeping an eye out for that.

That left middle finger is definitely within the ultrawide's frame

The rear panel of the 13 Ultra is made of man-made leather (so not 'real' leather), and it's one of the best implementations of the material that we've fondled. On par with the 12 Ultra's tactile experience, the 13 Ultra's leather-like back feels soft and grippy and it's that extra bit better than competing efforts from Oppo or vivo.

Our review unit is in the Olive Green hero colorway which is unlike any other out there, but also understated as opposed to in-your-face. The brass-looking ring around the camera housing could have been a shade of green too, but perhaps it serves well to add a splash of color as it is. Two more body color options are also available, and you can't really go wrong with the classics - Black and White. In all cases, the ring remains the same color.

Somewhat unusually, the rear panel doesn't go all the way to the side edges - it's the aluminum frame that curves inwards to meet it, instead. More exposed metal is more premium, no?

The frame is color-matched to the back panel from colorway to colorway and gets a satin finish. The symmetrical placement of the strips that divide it and enable it to serve as antennas is a nice touch for those who appreciate attention to detail.

Those same folks perhaps won't be thrilled to find out that the speaker 'grilles' in the frame are made up of four circular openings instead of the cool wavy design of the 13 Pro or the 11 Ultra. Then again, the 12S Ultra already abandoned that for the more serious look of identical circles, it's just that there are fewer of them here than on the last gen.

In addition to the speaker outlets on top, there's also an infrared emitter, as usual, plus two mic pinholes. Another set of speaker holes is on the bottom, joined by a mic and the SIM card slot (dual nano, no microSD). The gasket on the card tray hints at water resistance and the specsheet confirms it with an official IP68 rating.

Top • Bottom • Card tray

The flat sides are a boon for hand-holding as they provide ample gripping area, and picking up the 13 Ultra from a table doesn't require any special approaches. There's also the matter that the camera bump raises it significantly from the surface so it's not just the flat rails - it's a joint effort.

The 13 Ultra's physical controls are on the right - power button around the middle, volume rocker above it. As expected they all have a very solid clicking action, and they're metal too.

Sort of a 'physical' control is the fingerprint reader underneath the display. The optical sensor is placed at just the right height - not too low, not too high, and operates with the speed and consistency you'd expect at this level.

Yes, it's only now that we get to the display side of the handset, but it's just that there's so much character everywhere else. That's not to say that we're not loving the Ultra's 6.73-inch OLED screen - quite the opposite.

Minimal bezels all around and the faintest of curves that the Gorilla Glass Victus makes towards the sides deliver a premium look and feel that's worthy of... well, whatever price Xiaomi comes up with, really.

Part of that posh impression the Ultra leaves can also be attributed to the phone's weight - or rather, the perception of density you get when holding it. At 227g, it weighs a few grams less than a Galaxy S23 Ultra (234g) or an iPhone 14 Pro Max (240g), so it's hardly the heaviest of its peers. The Find X6 Pro is slightly lighter, and so too are the vivo X90 Pros.

It is, of course, a full-size smartphone, so if you're after a compact solution, you should probably look elsewhere. But quad-cam setups with a 1-inch main unit haven't been known to come in overly pocketable phones, no.

To sum it all up, the Xiaomi 13 Ultra won us with its design despite our early skepticism. It's handsome to look at in the flesh, it handles well and it feels expensive.