Xiaomi 14 Civi review

Competition

The Xiaomi 14 Civi appears to be an excellent all-rounder with stand-out design, solid camera setup and excellent performance for its class. However, That combo should make it an enticing choice at around the INR 40,000 price point. And since the 14 Civi's availability at the time of writing is limited to India, we will be looking at alternatives in the Indian market specifically.

Starting with the Samsung Galaxy A55. A popular midranger with a solid all-around package. It lags behind the 14 Civi in camera and performance, but offers better battery life and loudspeaker quality. Xiaomi's contender has a brighter and more feature-rich display, faster charging and a more premium design, but lacks ingress protection rating. Sure, the A55 is cheaper than the Civi, but not by much, which means Xiaomi's phone offers the better value here.

Samsung Galaxy A55 • Motorola Edge 50 Pro

Perhaps a closer match for the 14 Civi is the Motorola Edge 50 Pro. The device has a similar feature set, but with a 3x telephoto camera and a better main selfie shooter too (but no ultrawide selfies). It also charges faster and has a comparable display. It does come with 128 GB internal storage in its base version, but since that's actually cheaper, you can go for the 256GB variant and still make the same budget. The serious disadvantage of the Edge 50 Pro is the chipset - it's considerably less potent than the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 inside the 14 Civi.

Oppo Reno12 Pro • OnePlus 12R

The Oppo Reno12 Pro and the OnePlus 12R are valid alternatives too. The Reno12 Pro has the camera edge, but fails to match the 14 Civi's display and performance. On the other hand, the OnePlus 12R has the upper hand when it comes to performance and features a comparable display, but it's no match in the camera department. In either case, Oppo or OnePlus, you will get significantly better battery life than the 14 Civi offers. Oh, and they are both a tad cheaper too.

Verdict

Xiaomi put together a very competitive package, leaving little to complain about. The device has an excellent display, potent and versatile camera hardware, fast charging, class-leading performance and good-looking, compact and lightweight body.

However, subpar battery life continues to plague Xiaomi's phones and despite the versatile selfie camera hardware, you can find better quality of the main one elsewhere. Those are the two only reasons that keep us from giving the 14 Civi an even better score. Still, if you value group selfies over outright quality and fast charging over top-notchbattery life, the 14 Civi will be well worth your money.

Pros

• Lightweight, compact and premium design.
• Brighter than most and feature-rich display.
• Competitive charging solution.
• Potent and versatile camera system.
• Comes in 8GB/256GB, UFS 4.0 by default, IR blaster.
• Powerful chipset for the asking price.

Cons

• Videos have some sort of magenta tinge.
• Battery life is below average.
• Loudspeakers sound rather flat.
• No ingress protection rating.
• No eSIM support.