Xiaomi Mi 6 review: Social climber
Social climber
Gallery
The Xiaomi Mi 6 comes with a custom 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.
The Gallery app remains unchanged
The integrated editor offers various effects, filters, and enhancements, plus fun stuff like stickers and doodling.
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 cares about streaming as much as your offline library
Xiaomi Mi 6 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
Videos are launched from the gallery. There's no subtitle support here, but DLNA is on board.
The simple video player
A surprisingly powerful video editor hides here - it can trim videos and add filters, text labels, or even a soundtrack (from a predefined library of tracks or your music library).
The advanced video editor
Excellent audio output
The Xiaomi Mi 6 did splendidly in the first part of our audio test. When hooked to an active external amplifier it delivered very loud and yet perfectly accurate output.
Plugging in a pair of headphones damaged the stereo quality but not too much and introduced a tiny bit of intermodulation distortion (that's basically only detectable with dedicated equipment such as ours). The output remained excellent and the volume was still very high so a great performance overall.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -94.3 | 94.3 | 0.0039 | 0.0068 | -90.9 | |
| +0.08, -0.03 | -93.9 | 93.8 | 0.011 | 0.110 | -68.1 | |
| +0.04, -0.00 | -92.5 | 92.5 | 0.0016 | 0.0072 | -92.8 | |
| +0.03, -0.03 | -92.3 | 92.3 | 0.0056 | 0.060 | -77.2 | |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -93.5 | 93.3 | 0.0042 | 0.0092 | -92.7 | |
| +0.12, -0.32 | -92.6 | 93.2 | 0.0072 | 0.219 | -67.0 | |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -93.3 | 93.3 | 0.0059 | 0.0095 | -94.4 | |
| +0.01, -0.02 | -93.4 | 93.4 | 0.0067 | 0.020 | -56.3 | |
| +0.01, -0.04 | -93.0 | 94.8 | 0.0019 | 0.0080 | -93.5 | |
| +0.25, -0.02 | -92.7 | 93.0 | 0.192 | 0.175 | -59.5 | |
| +0.06, -0.10 | -92.4 | 92.3 | 0.0015 | 0.0093 | -80.9 | |
| +0.03, -0.11 | -92.3 | 92.3 | 0.0011 | 0.012 | -77.0 |
Xiaomi Mi 6 frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Reader comments
- Drugar
- 02 Feb 2023
- swm
I have had this phone since 2016, and it still works like the first day. bravo xiaomi!
- geko95gek-XDA
- 17 May 2022
- S4%
I had this phone in 2018, pretty sure it was the Ceramic model! I also liked the blue one too but probably couldn't get my hands on it. I vaguely remember the camera being pretty good! I have a picture of a cat. 🐱
- Shuki
- 28 Feb 2021
- MrB
I've got this one for almost 3 years, it's really good. Camera, functionality, power. A shame though 64gb is not enough.