Xiaomi Mi 10 5G review

Low-light photo quality

We kick things off with the main 108MP camera on the Mi 10 and pretty high expectations due to its all-round stellar performance so far. Plus, the fact that we have already seen the Mi 10 Pro leverage the same snapper in low-light. We start with a few shots taken at dusk.

Camera samples at dusk: 25MP main • HDR ON • AI ON • 108MP • ultrawide • 2x zoom

Camera samples at dusk: 25MP main • HDR ON • AI ON • 108MP • ultrawide • 2x zoom

Camera samples at dusk: 25MP main • HDR ON • AI ON • 108MP • ultrawide • 2x zoom

Once again, we made sure to test out the HDR mode, forced on, as well as the Ai mode. Naturally, going over the ultrawide, 108MP, and 2x zoom modes, as well. Before we move on to a more in-depth analysis of how each of these behaves on the Mi 10, we offer the dusk photos as complete sets. Now to the proper night shots. Stating with regular ones from the main camera in 25MP "full auto" mode.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera

Thankfully, no unexpected surprises here. These 25MP shots have plenty of detail, contrast, and nice color science - relative to the conditions, of course. Definitely a flagship-worthy performance.

Forcing HDR on these scenes was generally a bad idea. Like we said before, just leave it on auto for the best results. HDR simply made most things a whole lot noisier and was getting in the way of the noise suppression algorithms.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, HDR ON

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, HDR ON

After close examination, it seems that only our odd, "straight-up" vertical angle shot at a building's edge might have benefited from HDR, and it was probably a fluke. We were, however, a lot more hopeful for the Ai toggle. And indeed, we got some interesting shots.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, Ai ON

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, Ai ON

The Ai was definitely smart enough to detect that we were shooting in low-light conditions, as reflected by a moon icon, as well as the noticeably longer shooting time. However, not nearly as long as those of the proper night mode, which we will get to in a bit. What Ai seems to be going is extending the exposure on shots, while also applying some other tweaks to processing. However, it is clearly not straight-out enabling Night mode. The results appear to lack a lot of the more aggressive processing and "painting-in" of details that we got with the Night mode, while also bringing color saturation up a bit.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, Night mode

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, Night mode

These are the same shots taken using the dedicated Night mode for comparison. There are some positives and negatives to the two approaches, not to mention the variation from one scene to another. However, some of the general observations we made include that Ai mode tends to blow-out highlights more and generally handle them less effectively, It also leaves behind a bit more noise. On the flip side, Ai also seems to conserve a lot more of the original detail in the scene and does a better job of saturating colors. The full-on night mode takes a few seconds longer to capture and tends to be really artistic about filling-in certain "retails" and often results in things looking a bit "painted over". On the plus side, it does a better job at keeping highlight clipping at bay, overall noise, as well as generally creating a more unformal scene.

Honestly, deciding which one of the two to use is a bit of a toss-up to us and, just like we mentioned in the Mi 10 Pro review, a lot of it seems to do with the quality of the main 108MP camera, combined with just how far Xaiomi's camera algorithms have come. For the sake of convenience, we would probably just keep Ai turned on and enjoy the quicker capture times. Only, potentially, resorting to Night mode and its slow stacking in really, really dark environments. Here are the dusk scenes from earlier, shot with Night mode on, as well:

Xiaomi Mi 10 dusk samples, main camera, Night mode

And since we are already on the subject of Night mode, we should mention that it works with a zoom applied to the main camera, as well. Since the Xiaomi Mi 10 lacks any other proper zoom camera, we were planning on showing you some 2x photos, in low light from its main camera anyway.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, 2x zoom

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, 2x zoom

Once again, we are rather impressed with just how well the Mi 10 takes a 2x shot in low-light conditions. As for Night mode, while zoomed-in, there is potentially a bit more to be gained in terms of overall image sharpness by putting-in the extra patience and waiting for the stacking to do its job. Perhaps, it's because the zoom inherently makes the starting, non-night mode image that little bit softer.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, 2x zoom, Night Mode

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, 2x zoom, Night Mode

At the risk of repeating ourselves, we will mention, once again, that in such low-light conditions, the main camera had the occasional autofocus hiccup, while zoomed at 2x. Emphasis on the "occasional" bit. Naturally, this setup kind of assumes you are shooting a subject well beyond the range of the Laser autofocus that the Mi 10 is missing, but the Mi 10 pro has. So, it likely wouldn't have made any difference. We just use this as a convenient opportunity to bring up this subtle downgrade to the vanilla Mi 10.

Finally, on the topic of Night mode, or rather lack thereof, we really wish the Mi 10 had the option available for ultrawide shots. This is where that f/2.4 aperture, we already complained about, really starts to pile on top of, what is already a relatively softer-shooting camera.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, ultrawide camera

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, ultrawide camera

Unless you really have to, we would probably avoid using the ultrawide at night altogether. And to finish off our low-light testing, we also gave the 108MP mode a try. While it holds its own, the process starts to show some imperfections a bit more clearly in these conditions. So, even though you end up with more resolutions, we really can't say you get any more detail. Perhaps the ability to see noise from a bit closer. Joking aside, you are probably better off not using 108MP at night either.

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, 108MP mode

Xiaomi Mi 10 low-light samples, main camera, 108MP mode

Video recording

Having the same Snapdragon 865 chipset inside the Xiaomi Mi 10 and the Mi 10 Pro, means that the vanilla should come with little compromises in the video capture department since it gets the same capable Spectra 480 ISP. And, indeed, that is the case. With a few minor exceptions.

Just like its Pro sibling, the Mi 10 can shoot at up to 8K@30fps with its main 108MP camera. You can still shoot at that resolution, with a 2x zoom applied. The main camera also gets access to 720P@30fps, 1080p@30/60fps, and 4K@30/60fps. Interesting fact - the Mi 10 Pro can't do 2x at 60fps with its dedicated telephoto camera. Another interesting, though in a much more perplexingly unfortunate way, is the fact that the vanilla Mi 10 lacks the high frame rate options of its sibling. That means no 1080p@ /120/240/960fps. Not a major loss in our book, but still not something that should be missing, since the hardware to pull it off is all there.

You get video image stabilization pretty-much all around with both the main camera and the ultrawide. The only exception, naturally being 8K resolution. The 108MP has a combination of OIS and gyroscopic EIS, while the ultrawide only gets the latter. With pretty-good results all around.

Before we move on to the video samples, there are a few things to mention about bitrate on the Mi 10, since we observed the same behavior on the Mi 10 Pro, as well. Like most modern phones, you get a choice between h.264 and h.265 (HEVC) video encoding on the Mi 10. The latter being the smarter option for more content-aware and efficient compressing, using advanced tricks, like checkerboard resolution. Our review practice generally has us using the h.264 to minimize compression and maximize playback compatibility.

Examining the bitrate of our sample videos, we find that the ones of moving cars have 1080p@30fps captured at a bit over 20Mbps and the 4K@30fps at around the 50Mbps mark. Perfectly fine so far. The 4k@60fps clip, however, gets the same 50Mbps bitrate, which means worse quality individual frames. Not ideal, but still a fairly common practice. Then we have our 8K@30fps cars video hovering a bit over 100Mbps. Not amazing, but perfectly adequate.

Moving over to the poster videos we capture for the purposes of our video compare tool, though, we start seeing extremely inconsistent bitrates. Often dynamically dipping down to 10Mbps at 4K and 35Mbps at 8K. These numbers tend do vary wildly depending on the amount of movement we introduce to the frame. We often wave in front of the camera to trigger refocusing for testing purposes. When we set up a tripod, point it at the poster, and don't move anything in front of it for long enough, the frame rates tank even lower. We aren't exactly sure what is going on here, but it seems that Xiaomi has introduced some dynamic motion-dependent algorithm for bitrate modulation. We can't say that we or our video compare database is too thrilled about that. Make of it what you will.

Enough complaining though. When stuff is actually happening in front of the main 108MP camera of the Mi 10 and it's is keeping its bitrates normal, the end results are impressive. 4K videos from the main camera have excellent contrast, spot-on colors, and we can praise the dynamic range. The resolved detail is very good, though occasionally you get softness or smudginess in patterns like grass and foliage.

But what's with that pitiful 4K, we hear you ask? Bring out that glorious 8K! Well, about that. The way 8K is achieved here is by getting the center 7680x4320px portion of the sensor - with 4px squares of each primary color. These are big enough and far enough apart not to be able to provide intricate detail like what you could potentially get out of a regular Bayer array with a 1px pitch. Examining a 100% crop of an 8K clip, hence, understandably looks quite like an upscaled 4K video from the same sensor. And with a bitrate north of 100Mbps and a steady frame rate of 30, which we definitely commend Xiaomi for achieving, you end up with an unwieldly 700MB for a minute of 8K footage. Footage that really isn't all that better than 4K. Honestly, outside of Xiaomi's PR department, we don't really see how that's benefiting anybody.

Circling back to our bitrate findings and rant from earlier, we honestly have to commend Xiaomi for the real-world results pulled-off by whatever dynamic bitrate sorcery they have going on. While the 4K@60fps video came out with roughly the same 50Mbps, or so, bitrate as its 30fps counterpart, the individual frames were not twice as compressed. So, even though, in the absence of a toggle of some sorts for the feature, we really can't rely on the frame grabs we got for our video compare tool, real-world results seem to stand on their own.

Dropping the resolution down to 1080p doesn't spoil the experience either. While you can see the loss of detail in a side-by-side comparison with 4K, FullHD clips retain mature processing and cover 2020 flagship expectations for this resolution.

Zoom videos looks pretty good at 4K. Not really surprising, considering the excellent showing from the 108MP snapper thus far. You do get a bit more softness due to the cop, but that's just par for the course.

The ultrawide camera produces perfectly usable results, though not exactly impressive. You get most of the same issues you do with still here too - like a bit more softness than is pleasing to the eye. Honestly, its weakest aspect, though, has to be the limited dynamic range.

You can actually take videos with the macro camera. At just 2 MP, understandably, the final clips end up just 720p in resolution. Also, its autofocus isn't the snappiest, nor the most accurate. For what it is, though, it is actually usable. Give it a lot of light and mount it securely, and you can probably get a decent setup for reading tiny circuit board elements and marking. Just don't try to use it for soldering, since the phone ends up uncomfortably close to the board.

Finally, 4K video from the main camera at night looks very impressive. The detail is there, noise is kept very low. Honestly, we don't have any complaints about it at all.

2160p: Xiaomi Mi 10 5G against the Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Huawei P40 Pro in our Video compare tool

4320p: Mi 10 against the Galaxy S20 Ultra and the ZTE nubia Red Magic 3 in our Video compare tool

Once again, we remind you that in light of the situation with dynamic video bitrate, we observed on the Mi 10 and despite our best efforts to always select the best possible still grabs for every phone, some of the images for the Mi 10 might not be entirely representative of its true video capture quality and do exhibit signs of compression.

Selfie camera quality

The selfie snapper on the Mi 10 is borrowed straight from its Pro sibling. It makes sense as the display panel is probably manufactured with that punch hole. Still, the camera is nothing fancy, just a fixed-focus 20MP, f/2.0 unit.

Still, it produces perfectly usable results. It has a fairly wide focus plane, so you don't really have to worry too much about holding the Mi 10 too close or too far from your face.

Xiaomi Mi 10 20MP selfie camera samples

The selfie camera gets the full array of beauty filters from the main one.

Beauty filters

These go fairly in-depth, with individual sliders, like - "Smooth", "Slender", "Big eyes", "Nose", "Chin", "Lips" and "Hairline". There is a preset value for all of these, which you can get back using the "Reset" button. The only way to disable beauty mode on the selfie camera, which is turned on by default, is to scroll all the way to the right on said interface and press the "Clear" button. Not exactly the most intuitive systems we have seen.

Xiaomi Mi 10 20MP selfie camera samples, default Beauty filters

The Ai mode toggle is present on the selfie camera as well. However, we really didn't notice it doing much to our selfies.

Xiaomi Mi 10 20MP selfie camera samples, Ai ON

We gave selfie videos a try and got decent results. As long as you are mindful of the light around you, so as not to torture the limited dynamic range of the camera too much and use a gimbal or at least monopod to make up for the lack of stabilization, you can probably do some light vlogging.

There is a live portrait effect for selfie videos, but you should definitely stay away from it. The subject separation is really, really bad.

Portrait mode for selfie videos