Xiaomi 13T Pro long-term review

Brightness, quality

A 6.67-inch screen on a Xiaomi / Poco / Redmi phone? That's not only not shocking or surprising at all, it should probably become a meme at this point (why would the Snapdragon 625 of years past get all the fun?), considering the fact that this is clearly the company's favorite size. Not 6.6", or 6.7", mind you, but 6.67" - "just right", we can almost hear Xiaomi saying.

It's a flat panel, and it's a very good one. It gets much brighter than its predecessor, which is great because that was definitely an area that needed some improvement. It's not quite at the level of brightness that the recently long-term reviewed Galaxy S23 is at, which we declared 100% readable even when the sun directly hits it - for the first time in a long-term review. But the 13T Pro is close, and it's no slouch. Still, its panel will get a little washed out when the sun directly hits it, and some squinting might be required. In any other circumstance, it's plenty bright.

Our issue with it, just like with most modern OLED panels, is that it doesn't really get dim enough for comfortable use in pitch black environments. This is compounded by the fact that Xiaomi still hasn't added the Extra dim feature that Google introduced years ago, so there's really nothing you can do about it - save for installing third party apps for additional dimming, but those need to use the Accessibility suite to do so, which basically means you have to give them permission to read your screen at all times. That might not be something you're comfortable doing, and we totally understand.

If you don't like pointless brightness at night, the best you can do is use the dark mode and the blue light filter and that's about it. It's not necessarily blinding at night, mind you, especially with the dark mode on, but it's not what we'd call comfortable either. We're not sure why modern OLED screens took a turn in this direction, but we will say that back in the day most of them got much dimmer - with no Extra dim or apps necessary.

The auto brightness algorithm is the best we've encountered over the past year or so, with minimal manual adjustments required in the first two or three days, after which it was all incredibly smooth sailing, with our customizations being remembered of course, as they should be. We wish all phones had an auto brightness algorithm as good as this.

The quality of the screen is top notch. The default Vivid color mode reproduces the DCI-P3 color space faithfully when you select the Warm tone, while Original color corresponds to the sRGB space and is also very accurate. There are a lot of confusing color options still in HyperOS, but they're all easily ignored if all you want is accuracy mapped to either of these two color spaces - which are by far the most used, incidentally.

Color scheme settings

Refresh rate

Most phones nowadays, aside from the absolute cheapest ones, come with a 120 Hz maximum refresh rate. The 13T Pro wasn't happy with that, so it takes things up a notch - to 144 Hz. Will you notice a difference between 120 Hz and 144 Hz? Absolutely not, since it only actually goes that high in some games, benchmarks, and some compatible apps - but not UI rendering, for example.

Refresh rate settings

As usual for Xiaomi phones, there's a default option that automatically switches between refresh rates, and then you can go Custom and pick 144 Hz specifically. Note that this doesn't actually mean the display will always refresh at that rate, just that it will hit it more often. If you've ever read one of our other long-term reviews, it won't surprise you to find out that we did in fact use the phone with the Custom setting set to 144 Hz, since we enjoy maxing out the refresh rate as much as possible - it greatly impacts perceived smoothness, and we love smoothness.

Biometrics

The 13T Pro has an optical in-display fingerprint sensor. It is thus automatically, thanks to the way it operates, a tiny bit slower than the ultrasonic ones out there - the S23's comes to mind. That wouldn't be an issue in and of itself, but this isn't even the fastest optical sensor out there. It's not annoyingly slow, but it could be better.

Accuracy is very good, but also not the best we've encountered on an in-display fingerprint sensor. It got us in upon the first try about 94-95% of the time, which is slightly behind the top tier in-display sensors out there that are closer to about 97% (these numbers may be different for you and your fingers but the point here is that we're comparing the same fingers so a difference should still exist).

Still, its performance is nothing to scoff at, but we do assume this was an area where Xiaomi used the second-best part available, and not the absolute best, in order to hit the 13T Pro's price point. It's unlikely this will ever bother you, we just want to be thorough in our description as always.

There is face unlocking too, but, as you'd expect, it's not as secure since it only uses the front-facing camera and no other fancy sensors. Thus, keep in mind that if you do go that route, it's not impossible for someone with a picture or a video of your face to unlock the phone. The software even warns you about this prior to your enrollment of your face data.

Although there is no specific setting for this, we checked and we're happy to report that face unlocking doesn't work if your eyes are closed, so you can at least rest assured that no one will be unlocking your phone while you're sleeping. Face unlocking is exactly as fast as using the fingerprint sensor, so it doesn't make sense to turn to it in order to get in more quickly. Then again, if you're wearing gloves, for example, it is of course more convenient than entering your PIN or password.

Biometrics settings

You can even have face unlock automatically look for your face whenever the screen is locked and you get a new notification, but after trying it for a bit we turned this off (as it is by default) since it got really annoying really fast. You of course may think differently, so the setting is there if you want it.

Display features

The Always-on display (AOD) settings are buried in Wallpaper and personalization - though oddly this category only shows up as Wallpaper in the top level Settings so you might not be aware that's where the AOD stuff is hiding. We know we had to search for it to find it, so we thought we'd give you a heads-up.

As usual for Xiaomi AODs, you can have it always on or only for 10 seconds after tapping, or of course schedule it to your heart's content. It can also automatically turn off when the Battery saver is on, so it doesn't needlessly drain.

Always-on display settings

The options you get for the AOD are identical to those in MIUI 14, unsurprisingly, so there are a lot of them - it's unlikely you won't find one to suit your taste, from the myriad analog and digital clocks, Kaleidoscopes, and images. You can also have a custom image or some text show up - pretty much all the bells and whistles are here, aside from direct support for Bitmoji or animoji or anything like that (you can still use those as custom images, we presume).

Reading mode settings

We've been praising Xiaomi's Reading mode for a long time now, and it's unchanged in HyperOS, with the same still-unrivaled breadth of options, ranging from a simple filter to the grainy Paper version with its separate texture slider and support for desaturated colors and even a black and white mode. This can of course be scheduled, either with custom hours of your choosing, or to go on at sunset and off at sunrise.