Xiaomi Mi 11X hands-on review

Design

The Mi 11X is a reasonably attractive phone. It features all the trappings of a modern smartphone, such as thin bezels, a small notch, a glossy glass back, and a sizable camera assembly on the back. The phone comes in three colors, Cosmic Black, Lunar White, and Celestial Silver. The silver has a unique finish that makes it shift hues depending upon the angle of the light hitting it.

The Mi 11X is also a fairly large smartphone. At 196g, it's also not particularly light. However, at just 7.8mm, the phone is quite thin, making it still relatively easy to use and carry.

The front of the phone has fairly thin bezels with aggressively curved corners. The camera hole at the top is centered and remarkably small. However, Xiaomi has put a silver reflective ring around the lens (like on some Samsung phones), which brings undue attention towards the camera and defeats the purpose of having a small, discreet cutout.

The sides of the phone are made out of plastic and have a two-tone finish. Most of the sides have a matte finish, but there's a hint of gloss running around the edges, and the top and bottom sides are entirely glossy.

The right side of the phone houses the power button and the volume button. The power button also doubles as a fingerprint sensor, although it's not the usual flat buttons we see that have this functionality. The button on the Mi 11X looks like a standard button with a raised design.

The top of the phone houses grilles for the loudspeaker, which also doubles as the earpiece. The phone does have an extremely thin grille facing the front, but the actual speaker seems to be somewhere inside the phone and not near where the grilles are. Also on top is the IR blaster.

On the bottom is a dual SIM tray on the left, a USB-C 2.0 port in the middle, and the other loudspeaker on the right.

The back of the phone is made out of the same Gorilla Glass 5 as the front. Our Cosmic Black variant didn't have any fancy pattern, just a glossy layer with a mirror finish that has an extreme affinity for fingerprints. The camera assembly in the corner has the triple-lens system with a third microphone and LED flash. The camera bump on this isn't as pronounced but it's enough to rock the phone on a hard surface.

The build quality of the phone is unremarkable. The plastic frame isn't particularly offensive but it also doesn't feel great to touch. The IP53 rating is also one of the barest minimum ratings you can get and while it's better than no protection at all, it also doesn't guarantee much. Despite that, the phone still feels reasonably premium and well worth the asking price.

Display

The Mi 11X has a 6.67-inch, 2400x1800 resolution AMOLED display. The display supports a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and HDR, although it's only an 8-bit panel.

Under the MIUI display settings, the user has the option to change the color calibration. By default, the display is set to produce oversaturated, vivid colors and can also modulate the contrast under bright sunlight for better visibility. You can optionally change it to the original color preset, which will set the display to the correct color profile for the currently viewed content.

Display settings

You can also dig deeper and set the color space, color temperature, RGB values, contrast, gamma, hue, and saturation manually. This is a fairly elaborate set of options and can be useful if you intend to perform a manual calibration in the future, but you will need additional hardware to verify your results.

The color performance in the original color preset is excellent and the display looked great with a variety of content. Because it adjusts the color space based on the content, the display is always using the correct color profile, and so everything largely looks as it should. While we didn't test this particular unit for color calibration, you can check out our Poco F3 review for stats on the color performance.

The display on the Mi 11X can get reasonably bright both indoors and outdoors. However, the issue with the display is not whether it can get bright but rather if it will stay that way. The highest brightness level that you can manually set cannot be sustained by the display for more than a short amount of time.

If you are indoors in a relatively cool environment, you can sustain the maximum brightness for a few minutes but eventually, the display will drop brightness when it gets warm. If you are outdoors under the sun, it takes just a few seconds for the phone to immediately drop the brightness by a serious amount, making it hard to see, especially if you are trying to use the camera. Similarly, if you are playing games, the brightness drops significantly when the phone starts heating up, and then it drops again when it gets even hotter. By the end of it, you can barely see what's happening on the screen, even if you are indoors.

Display at max brightness before and after it overheats

This has to be the most aggressive brightness control that we have seen implemented on a smartphone display and makes the maximum brightness just something to adorn the spec sheets. The maximum brightness level is usually inaccessible when you most need it, like when you're outdoors under the sun.

The display is capable of a maximum 120Hz refresh rate but is set to 60Hz by default. Even if you set the display to 120Hz, based on the app and the content, the refresh rate can drop down to 90Hz or 60Hz. The display will also drop down to 60Hz if you stop interacting with it momentarily.

Refresh rate setting

Unlike some other Xiaomi models, the Mi 11X does not support additional refresh rates. There are no 30Hz, 48Hz, or 50Hz modes for 24, 25, 30, 48, or 50fps content. All video is played back at 60Hz regardless of the frame rate, which can result in telecine judder.

Moreover, the phone will also drop down the refresh rate of the display to 60Hz in popular video apps such as Netflix or YouTube, which means even the app UI is locked to 60Hz, not just the video playback. This is a departure from other Xiaomi phones that support adaptive refresh rates, such as the Mi 10T Pro, which supports full 144Hz for the app UI and adaptive refresh rates for the video playback.

The good thing is, unlike OnePlus, Xiaomi keeps the maximum display refresh rate unlocked for games to take full advantage of. Unless a game specifies a particular refresh rate, it will run at the maximum refresh rate of 120Hz.

The touchscreen supports a 360Hz touch sampling rate. The display was pretty responsive in our use, including in gaming. However, our unit occasionally registered some ghost touches and other times ignored intentional presses. This seems like something that can and should be fixed in software.

The Mi 11X offers a bunch of video-related features, which let you control the audio and visual aspects of the videos played on the device. This includes options to increase the clarity of the sound and even add live color filters to the video. One such feature is MEMC, which is supposed to reduce motion blur in the video. On other devices, this feature works by doubling the frame rate of the video by inserting alternate interpolated frames but on the Mi 11X, it didn't seem to be doing anything. Toggling this feature left the video frame rate untouched and the video itself looked no different.

Display features

The Mi 11X is capable of playing HDR10 and HDR10+ content. The display is just 8-bit, so it can't display the full range of colors in HDR content but for most parts, colors still look great. The real issue is with the brightness; while the display is at its maximum brightness, the content looks great. However, as mentioned before, the display cannot sustain this brightness for longer than a few minutes so after some time it will drop down, which will essentially turn your HDR video into SDR.

Video features

Overall, the display on the Mi 11X offers really good image quality, and the 120Hz refresh rate makes it a pleasure to use. However, we wish Xiaomi had included the adaptive refresh rate feature for video playback and that the display was usable at maximum brightness for more than a few minutes.

Battery Life

We didn't conduct a full battery life test on the Mi 11X as it's likely identical to the Poco F3 that we have reviewed in the past. However, in our usage, the Mi 11X lasts about a day or so with around 20 hours of usage on a single charge.

Battery life

The phone comes with a 33W fast charger. Xiaomi claims 52 minutes to charge the phone completely, but it took just over an hour in our test with the always-on display enabled. Unfortunately, there's no wireless charging option on the Mi 11X.