Xiaomi 14 Civi review

6.55-inch OLED display with all the HDR

The Xiaomi 14 Civi features a 6.55-inch OLED panel with 1236 x 2750px resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. The screen has 12-bit color depth and 240Hz touch sampling rate.

When it comes to brightness, the screen fell short of its claimed 3,000 nit brightness, but still did very well. In manual mode, we got 810 nits, while in auto mode, the panel boosted up to 1,441 nits. That's more than enough for comfortable outdoor use, even on the brightest of days. Moreover, the device easily tops its peers.

The 3,000 nits are likely only probably achievable in absudrly small patches on the screen when displaying HDR-ready content.

Refresh rate

The handset utilizes the high-refresh rate display to the fullest and runs at 120Hz in almost all cases and third-party apps. This is no LTPO panel so you don't get granular refresh rate adjustments, but it can dial down to 60Hz when the display isn't actively used or when you are watching videos.

However, you our experience showed that very few games run at 120Hz on the 14 Civi, which is somewhat disappointing.

Battery life

The Xiaomi 14 Civi has a 4,700 mAh battery and runs on a supposedly efficient Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 SoC, or at least more efficient than its standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 counterpart. However, our battery life test results were largely unimpressive.

The handset achieved a 11:36h Active Use Score, less than most phones in this price range. While the web browsing runtime is decent enough, the video playback, gaming and calling times are lower than its rivals.

Lately, this seems to be a theme with Xiaomi devices. For the last couple of years, all Xiaomi smartphones score lower in our battery tests and since they use the same hardware as other brands, we have to assume the software has room for optimization.

Charging speed

The phone supports Xiaomi's proprietary 67W charging with the supplied charger and cable in the box. That's what we used for our charging test. Power delivery 3.0 is also supported, although it doesn't maximize the charging speed.

In the first 15 minutes, the handset restored 45% of its battery while a 30-minute charge got it to 80%. The full charging cycle took only 44 minutes, which is great, if not quite the best we've seen.

Speakers

The Xiaomi 14 Civi has a hybrid stereo speakers setup - a main one at the bottom and the earpiece acting as the second one. This inherently leads to slight imbalance as one of the speakers will always be slightly louder.

The phone achieved a "Good" loudness score, but we can't say we are impressed with its sound quality. It's not that it's bad, but it lacks bass and detailness, especially compared to competitors like the Galaxy A55 and Motorola Edge 50 Pro. Their tracks sound richer and have a prominent bass, whereas the 14 Civi is just flat.

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.