Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro long-term review

Conclusion

Let's not mince words here. The Mi 10 Pro is one of the best smartphones of the year so far. It's obviously not perfect, because no one device is for everyone - we feel like a broken record constantly pointing this out, but it's true. Even so, the Mi 10 Pro has an outstanding build quality and a very good in-hand feel, as well as software (after the MIUI 12 update) that's fresh and modern and provides a very good out-of-the-box experience without making you needlessly tweak things to behave the way you expect them to. That said, the new skin has retained almost all of its predecessors' customizability, while going further with it than most in some areas - the Always On Display comes to mind.

The screen is great, although it's not the highest-resolution around nor does it come with the highest refresh rate you can get on a flagship right now. It is a very high-quality panel though. Performance has been nothing short of excellent, with zero hiccups, stutters, or lags, with the notable exception of using one of the Super Wallpapers, but we assume this is easily fixable in a subsequent update. Speaking of updates, Xiaomi does its own thing with these, so the new features mostly come with new MIUI iterations, and not necessarily through updates to the underlying Android version. The Mi 10 Pro will surely get Android 11, and yet it will probably not be among the first handsets to run the new build. Regardless, if you'll still have MIUI 12 on top of Android 11, don't expect the user experience to be changed significantly. So in that way, Android version updates matter slightly less for Xiaomi devices than other phones.

Battery life has been outstanding, compared to almost every other 5G device out there, and easily tied with the Huawei P40 Pro overall. On some days it's better, on some slightly worse, but in general, you're unlikely to run the Mi 10 Pro's battery into the ground before the end of the day unless your usage scenario is really heavy. Charging is fast, though not insanely so like in the China-only Mi 10 Ultra that just came out, so using the included charger makes the phone uncomfortably hot when you unplug, which is one of our niggles with this phone. The same goes for fast wireless charging using a Xiaomi-made unit capable of 30W. Heat isn't an issue if you use any other, slower charger, be it wired or wireless, and that will also prolong the lifetime of the battery, so it's perhaps a good thing to keep in mind, especially if you'll mostly be charging during the night when it's irrelevant how fast the process is.

The Mi 10 Pro has no periscope zoom lens, but its rear camera setup is among the most flexible out there, with two separate telephoto shooters to maximize quality and minimize the need for lossy digital zooming. The images it captures are excellent all-round, with the exception of the ultrawide at night. The setup overall is definitely among the best out there this year, while not actually achieving the No.1 spot. But that's 'overall', it's important to note that everyone uses cameras on phones differently, and unless you really need extreme zoom levels, autofocus on the ultrawide, or that cam itself to be usable at night, this will probably do just fine.

There are a bunch of nice touches too, like the incredible stereo speakers (and this is true stereo with exactly the same quality per channel, not one of those 'hybrid' solutions that use the earpiece), as well as the vibration motor, which is hands-down one of the best on the market. And the software really uses that, with gentle vibrations, we like to think of as 'nudges' that give using the phone a more 'physical' experience (for lack of a better word). These don't seem like huge things but they do add up in day-to-day use.

If we were to nitpick, we'd note that the phone's design, while it works, does feel a bit bland, and the position of the ultrawide camera on the back outside of the main island and very close to the middle of the device will result in your fingers inevitably smudging it while using the Mi 10 Pro. The fingerprint sensor seems like a weird downgrade from previous Xiaomis, because it feels less accurate and slower. Don't get us wrong, it's still very usable, but while being of the optical variety its performance actually reminds us of Samsung's ultrasonic ones, which we were never huge fans of.

Perhaps the Mi 10 Pro's biggest downsides are its price and availability. While this phone did get an international launch, unlike the Mi 10 Ultra, it's still very hard to find in a lot of markets. And when you do find it for sale officially, you're then confronted with its recommended retail price of €1,000. That's not an absurd price based on what it's offering compared to the competition, but it may feel much too high for people who are used to the 'old' Xiaomi, the company that was always laser-focused on value.

This is definitely not a 'flagship killer'. It's a proper high-price flagship, and it's Xiaomi's first mainstream high-end phone to be that. And so a lot of people expecting something else may be in for some sticker price shock. While you could find it for less than that right now, this is still very far from an affordable device, and so Xiaomi's challenge here is whether people will adapt to this new reality, in which the company is also offering true flagships alongside its usual 'flagship killers'.

In its defense, let's reiterate that the Mi 10 Pro has a surprisingly small list of compromises, and most of those that are there make some sense - the screen resolution definitely aids with battery life, while the jump in refresh rate from 60 Hz to 90 Hz is much more noticeable than going from 90 Hz to 120 Hz or more.

So while it doesn't cross all the checkboxes, it does cross all of the important ones for most people: performance is amazing, the cameras are very good, and battery life is great. On top of that, Xiaomi added something that's impossible to notice on a spec sheet: the experience of using this phone is incredibly good, day in and day out, on a regular basis. The performance and the software (with its optimizations but also with its animations and vibrations) conspire to give you the phone to beat in terms of how subjectively good it feels to use.