Xiaomi Mi 5X review: Popularity contest

Popularity contest

GSMArena team, 19 September 2017.

Gallery

The Xiaomi Mi 5X comes with the Mi Gallery app that shows the camera row by default, but the second tab includes all images and videos on the phone. You can set up a photo backup with your Mi Cloud account.

There is a new smart image search, but it's currently not available to everyone. It is supposed to search your images by keywords thanks to the new machine learning process.

The Gallery app - Xiaomi Mi 5X review The Gallery app - Xiaomi Mi 5X review The Gallery app - Xiaomi Mi 5X review
The Gallery app

The integrated editor offers various effects, filters, and enhancements, plus fun stuff like stickers and doodling.

Editing an image - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Editing an image - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Editing an image - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Editing an image - Xiaomi Mi 5X review
Editing an image

Music player

The MIUI music player is a custom app with a well laid out, easy to navigate interface. The player has cool effects, transitions, and transparent elements, especially on the expandable Now Playing section. Lyrics are supported, too.

The music player - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Albums - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Now Playing - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Audio settings - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Audio settings - Xiaomi Mi 5X review
The music player • Albums • Now Playing • Audio settings • Audio settings

Xiaomi Mi 5X offers customizable equalizers within the phone's Settings menu - there are a few default presets already available for use. You can also try Xiaomi's MiSound enhancer, which comes into play when you use headphones, and especially, a Xiaomi-branded headset.

Video player

MIUI 9 comes with a separate video app. It supports paid streaming content for China only, but you can opt to disable it. Local content is here, of course. There's no subtitle support here, but DLNA is on board.

The paid content for China - Xiaomi Mi 5X review The simple video player - Xiaomi Mi 5X review Now playing - Xiaomi Mi 5X review
The paid content for China • The simple video player • Now playing

FM radio

The FM radio requires a headset to be connected, but can play sound either through this or through the loudspeaker. The app can record audio and there's a sleep timer.

FM Radio - Xiaomi Mi 5X review FM Radio - Xiaomi Mi 5X review
FM Radio

Audio output impresses

The Xiaomi Mi 5X demonstrated perfectly clean output when hooked up to an active external amplifier. Its loudness was among the highest we’ve seen too rounding up a rarely great performance in the first half of our test.

Volume remained just as impressive with headphones and the degradation was minimal too, so we were in for another excellent showing here. Stereo quality was the only notably affected reading and even that was above average for the occasion.

TestFrequency responseNoise levelDynamic rangeTHDIMD + NoiseStereo crosstalk
Xiaomi Mi 5X+0.15, -0.04-90.191.30.00170.0085-82.3
Xiaomi Mi 5X (headphones attached)+0.15, -0.04-90.091.10.0160.043-64.9
Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017)+0.01, -0.03-92.892.80.00320.031-92.3
Samsung Galaxy J7 (2017) (headphones attached)+0.23, -0.15-92.191.80.0130.223-77.3
Sony Xperia L1+0.10, -0.11-93.692.90.0090 0.013-93.8
Sony Xperia L1 (headphones)+0.79, -0.10-92.991.90.010 0.420-53.1
Nokia 5+0.02, -0.03-94.392.80.0035 0.019-91.9
Nokia 5 (headphones)+0.00, -0.09-92.489.90.0041 0.016-68.6
Xiaomi Redmi 4+0.06, -0.02-94.390.80.0024 0.0089-94.0
Xiaomi Redmi 4 (headphones)+0.06, -0.04-93.890.60.035 0.044-79.5

Xiaomi Mi 5X frequency response
Xiaomi Mi 5X frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.

Reader comments

I know it's been 6 years but yet the Mi A1/5X (they share the same codename as tissot, but the other model is daisy. like the 9a is dandelion but the 9at is dandelion_eea ect,) is still good in 2024/25 as the lineageos supports it OFFICIALLY and...

What if I'm not interested in gaming?

  • dx aadil
  • 25 Apr 2018
  • GXm

it is not good company but features are best