Xiaomi Mi 11i/Mi 11X Pro review

108MP main camera, modest ultrawide, no tele

The Mi 11i is equipped with a triple camera system, headlined by a 108MP primary unit. There's no dedicated telephoto, but there is, of course, an ultrawide, plus a macro of the non-useless variety.

As we already explained, the Mi 11i is identical to the Indian Mi 11X Pro, so you should expect the two to have the same image quality.

And in case you've missed it, here's our quick camera comparison of the Indian Mi 11X Pro to the Mi 11X, the OnePlus 9R, and the Mi 10T Pro.

The main camera uses a 108MP Samsung HM2 sensor with a Nonapixel filter array - so you'd be getting 9-to-1 binned 12MP images by default. It's the more mainstream type of sensor in Samsung's Nona lineup, the one with 0.7µm pixels and an overall size of 1/1.52", as opposed to the high-end HM3 (0.8µm, 1/1.33"). The lens has an equivalent focal length of 26mm and an f/1.8 aperture, OIS is missing.

The ultrawide is a rather unassuming 8MP unit, which Xiaomi lists as covering a field of view of 119 degrees, but it's not quite as wide, really. The lens has an f/2.2 aperture.

Then there's the macro camera. It's one of the more practical members of the breed, having a 5MP sensor (not 2MP), a 50-ish mm equivalent lens (long as opposed to wide) and AF in the 3cm-7cm range (not fixed focus).

Camera app

The camera app is a rather straightforward implementation, though it does have its quirks. First things first, basic operation for changing modes works with side swipes as expected, and you can also tap on the modes that you can see to switch to those directly. Up and down swipes don't work for switching between the front and rear cameras; only the toggle next to the shutter release does that.

You can add, remove, and rearrange modes in the main rolodex by going to the More tab and navigating to the edit button, and you can access that from the settings menu as well. The unused modes will still be in that More tab, but you can switch to a (less intuitive) pull-out pane that's summoned from a line next to the shutter release.

The hamburger menu at the far end is where you'll find additional options, including the Macro mode (why here and not a mode in the rolodex?), plus the icon to access the settings. Next to that burger menu, you have a flash mode switch, an HDR switch, an AI toggle, shortcut to Google Lens, and a magic wand with beauty effects and filters.

On the near end, you have the camera zoom switch that operates in one of two fashions. The first one is simply tapping on one of the three dots that represent the ultra-wide, primary, and 2x digital options. Or you can tap on the active magnification and slide sideways to reveal even more zoom levels - 2x and 10x, plus a slider for intermediate magnifications.

Camera UI

There's a nicely capable Pro mode, where you can tweak the shooting parameters yourself andyou can access each of the three cams, including the macro. You get to pick one of 4 white balance presets or dial in the light temperature with a slider, there's a manual focusing slider (with peaking as an option, particularly useful for the macro), and shutter speed (1/4000s to 30s) and ISO control with range depending on which camera you're using. A tiny live histogram is available, and a toggle for zebras can be found in the hamburger menu.

As expected, there's a host of extra modes, including Long Exposure with its own set of different presets - moving crowd, neon trails, oil painting, light painting, starry sky, and star trails. There's no Supermoon, thankfully.

Night mode is available on the main and ultrawide cameras, as well as at the 2x zoomed-in level. Auto night mode is a toggle in settings, enabled by default, and it lets the phone decide whether to use Night Mode or not. We only found it to work on the main camera and it would display a pop-up with the projected duration of the shot, something you don't get in the actual Night mode. Xiaomi does not offer exposure settings for either Night Modes.

There's also Dual video mode which can record a 50-50 split between the selfie cam and the main camera on the back. Finally, the Movie Effects mode reveals the special Hollywood modes that Xiaomi is so loud about - they include Magic Zoom, Slow Shutter, Time Freeze, Night time-lapse, and Parallel world. We covered those in detail on the vanilla Mi 11.

Daylight image quality

Main camera photos out of the Mi 11i are very good overall. You get wide dynamic range and excellent contrast, along with consistently good exposure. Colors have just the right amount of pop and we witnessed no weird casts or questionable choices for, say, the blue in the sky.

When it comes to detail, we're seeing fairly standard 12MP photos - nothing out of the ordinary. The way that detail is rendered is close to the Mi 11 Ultra's very conservative take in terms of sharpening - grass and leaves look very natural. Noise is essentially non-existent in these images.

Daylight samples, main cam (1x)

Photos taken in 108MP mode come with a few downsides, most notably the 4x as large file sizes and a big hike in noise. We wouldn't say there's a tangible increase in detail to warrant these trade-offs.

Daylight samples, main cam, 108MP

The 2x toggle will get you relatively sharp and detailed zoomed-in shots from the main camera. It works particularly well with straight lines, slightly less so with random textures. Noise remains very well canceled out.

Daylight samples, main cam (2x)

The ultrawide camera is a bit more unpretentious. It's neither particularly ultrawide, not very high-res with its 8MP sensor. For what it is, though, it takes good enough photos which are surprisingly sharp and detailed. Colors aren't precisely matched to the main cam's, and we're seeing the faintest green tint alongside a general uptick in saturation, but neither is bothersome. Dynamic range, meanwhile, remains respectable.

Daylight samples, ultrawide cam (0.6x)

Macro

The dedicated 5MP macro camera offers a rather unique set of features - a fairly high resolution, a 50-ish mm focal length equivalent and autofocus. The images we got out of it have a lot of detail, as much as you can expect from a 5MP imager anyway. The out of focus areas can look a bit busy and distracting, but the subject is rendered very sharp.

The thing is, the depth of field is so shallow that you're likely to often end up with blurry shots anyway, despite the AF capability. For one, the camera can't quite keep up with fast-moving subjects (the cat was really hard to capture, the snail was more cooperative). Then there's the matter of camera shake - if you're shooting handheld, the slightest movement will result in the subject not being at the same distance the camera is focused on. So while you could manage to get successful shots handheld, having stationary subjects and/or some sort of camera support will get you a long way. The fact that you can access the macro camera in Pro mode, where you can focus manually and have AF peaking for assistance, helps a lot too.

Macro/close-up samples

Low-light image quality

With the Auto Night mode enabled, the Mi 11i takes good photos, but ultimately not ones that make you go 'wow'. The phone exposes a bit darker than we'd like, leaving shadows underdeveloped. Conversely, highlights are very well preserved.

Colors maintain a good level of saturation, while greens, in particular, tend to pop more than usual. We didn't observe issues with warm street lights throwing an orange cast, like we saw on the Mi 11 Ultra.

Detail in these photos is about average in the well-lit areas but things quickly get mushy in the shadowy parts. There are tell-tale signs of that Night mode action like the heavy sharpening visible around contrasting edges. There's not much noise to speak of.

Low-light samples, main cam (1x), Auto Night mode on

With the pure Photo mode, you get more natural detail rendition and overall finer detail where there's enough light to illuminate it. Highlights are severely clipped here, however, and shadows aren't developed any better.

Low-light samples, main cam (1x), Auto Night mode off

With the actual Night mode enabled, you get very similar results as in Photo mode with the Auto on. Minor differences can be spotted in the shadows, which get a cautious nudge in Night mode - nothing dramatic, but a welcome development given that there are no adverse effects.

Low-light samples, main cam (1x), Night mode

The 2x zoom setting will get you fairly decent images despite the lack of an actual 2x camera. With okay detail but quite a lot of noise and narrow dynamic range, these shots aren't great, but are ultimately usable at fit to screen if the 2x field of view is the goal.

Low-light samples, main cam (2x)

Night mode fixes things in the tonal extremes, and smooths out the noise, but does reduce fine detail in the process.

Low-light samples, main cam (2x), Night mode

The ultrawide camera of the Mi 11i doesn't particularly enjoy darkness, and in plain Photo mode captures very underexposed photos with narrow dynamic range and little detail. There's no Auto Night mode on this camera.

Low-light samples, ultrawide cam (0.6x)

The actual Night mode makes a dramatic difference and will get you far superior tonal development in both extremes. Scenes are much better exposed now and there is color and detail in the shadows. Not a whole lot of detail - the images remain soft when viewed from up close, but they'll do just fine for fit-to-screen consumption, unlike Photo mode ones.

Low-light samples, ultrawide cam (0.6x), Night mode

Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Xiaomi Mi 11i stacks up against the competition.

Xiaomi Mi 11i against the vivo X60 Pro and the OnePlus 9 in our Photo compare tool

Portrait mode

Portrait mode on the Mi 11i offers excellent subject detection. We saw no blunders along clothes, jawlines or ears, and even messy hairstyles were separated between very well and okay, depending on lighting and background.

Portrait samples

Selfies

The 20MP selfie camera can only shoot in its nominal resolution. The Samsung sensor that's being used is offered in both Tetrapixel and regular RGB configurations, but we reckon this one is the Tetrapixel variety, because we're not seeing 20MP level of detail even in the best of lighting conditions. Even so, detail is ample for the task, dynamic range is nicely wide and colors are very appealing, making for a really likable showing from the Mi 11i on the selfie front.

Selfie samples

Video recording

The Xiaomi Mi 11i records video up to 8K30 with its main camera - just like the higher-end models. The ultrawide cam is only capable of 1080p capture - it doesn't have the pixels for 4K.

4K video (bit rate is 50Mbps) out of the main camera is nothing short of excellent. You get a lot of detail, which is processed very maturely without heavy sharpening, and little to no noise. Dynamic range and contrast leave nothing to be desired either and colors are every bit as likeable as in stills.

8K is a bit harder to praise, which isn't so much a fault of the Mi 11i, as it is of the industry that's trying to ram it down our throats before it's entirely ready, or at all needed. Anyway, on a global scale the image looks very similar to the 4K capture, but pixel peeping reveals aggressive sharpening and overall not really pleasing detail rendition. It's kinda hard to justify the 800MB for a minute of video (110Mbps bit rate).

At 2x zoom you still get the option to shoot in 4K, sourced from the main camera. Pixel-level quality is virtually the same as the 8K in the native field of view, so not great. This does make more sense, however, for the sake of getting that tighter framing, plus files are a lot more manageable, being 4K (54Mbps, oddly).

The ultrawide's footage is nowhere near the main cam's standard, but as far as 1080p out of an ultrawide goes, this is a decent example. Dynamic range is noticeably narrower and colors are a bit oversaturated. Detail has a gritty oversharpened look, but there's a good deal of it for 1080p, and sharpness is great overall.

Stabilization is available on both cameras, but on the main cam it's limited to 4K - 8K footage will be shaky if the phone isn't put on a tripod. Where it is available, EIS is properly excellent. Camera shake from walking is ironed out nicely, pans are smooth with no abrupt transitions, pointing the phone in one direction results in entirely steady output.

All of that applies to both the main camera and the ultrawide, with the latter aided further by the inherent advantage of the shorter focal length.

Here's a glimpse of how the Xiaomi Mi 11i compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Xiaomi Mi 11i against the vivo X60 Pro and the OnePlus 9 in our Video compare tool