Xiaomi Mi 8 SE review

Toned-down dual camera setup

We've been raving on about the flagship nature of the Mi 8 SE, for a less than flagship price, pretty hard, thus far. However, as you can imagine, Xiaomi didn't manage to break the economy of smartphone manufacturing in some mysterious way. Corners had to be cut to get to the $350 price point. Noteworthy among these is the main camera setup - a noticeable step down from the regular Mi 8.

Instead of a symmetrical dual camera setup with optical zoom capabilities, the Mi 8 SE gets a 12MP main shooter, accompanied by a much simpler 5MP, f/2.0, 1.12µm secondary camera, dedicated to depth sensing alone. Still, the main camera is not all that bad and has a few extra perks. For one, it is positioned behind a decently bright f/1.9 lens and has a pixel size of 1.4µm. It is quite reminiscent of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 AI Dual Camera's setup, but with a gyro-EIS for stabilization added on top.

The camera has the modes arranged side by side for you to change by swiping left and right. Sadly, swiping up/down doesn't switch between front and rear camera - there's a button for that. There are toggles for flash mode, HDR, and AI (sigh...), a set of filters and a hamburger shortcut to the settings.

Camera interface

A manual mode is at your disposal too, and in here you can adjust white balance (presets and light temperature), pick a shutter speed (1/1000s to 16s) and ISO (100-1600). You can also set your own focus (in 1-100 'units' between close-up and infinity). Unfortunately, focus peaking is oddly missing on the Mi 8 SE, whereas the regular Mi 8 has it.

Manual mode

Image quality

Judging photo and video capture quality on mid-rangers is probably one of the hardest tasks nowadays. Generally speaking, "potato cameras" are thankfully a thing of the past and most phones, even budget ones, produce serviceable results - which are good enough for social media purposes. That being said, the Mi 8 SE captures perfectly satisfactory stills - definitely good enough for the average user and just about what can be expected at its reasonable value price point.

Xiaomi Mi 8 SE: camera samples

As for some particular issues we have with the samples - noise is a bit too much, even in good lighting conditions. You can clearly see the suppression algorithms working over-time and while they appear to be doing a generally good job, the overall amount of corrections, needed across the frame, leaves to soft photos.

The Mi 8 SE also has some issues with properly determining and maintaining a consistent white balance from frame to frame, even when there are no changes to the outside lighting conditions. Most colors come out a bit over-saturated to our eye. The dynamic range is also pretty limited. HDR does help with that quite a bit, but we have a few grudges with the way it works.

HDR: Off • Auto • On • Off • Auto • On

HDR: Off • Auto • On • Off • Auto • On

HDR: Off • On • Off • On • Off • On

While there is an HDR Auto mode, it rarely triggers when it's needed. You could go ahead and use the manual mode instead. However, there might be a better option - AI camera. The way it works is by analyzing the scene and then tweaking quite a few camera settings accordingly. We aren't sure how many "scenes" Xiaomi's AI officially recognizes, but clouds, foliage, pets, flower, and scenery are definitely in there, so the basics are covered. You can tell that the AI has stepped in when the AI icon in the camera UI gets replaced by a different icon indicating the recognized scene.

AI mode: Off • On • Off • On • Off • On

AI mode: Off • On • Off • On • Off • On

The best part in our books, however, is that AI camera appears to be toggling HDR on and off as well and doing a distinctly better job than the Auto HDR mode. In fact, in 90% of the cases, AI mode managed to improve our shot, so we would just advise you to leave it on constantly.

Low light shots came out fine, but not really impressive in any way. Like you have probably guessed, the general noise issues with the Mi 8 SE are even worse in these conditions. AI mode does appear to help a bit, even if through a slightly higher exposure and color saturation, on average.

Low-light photos are a bit on the noisy side as well. Without any OIS at its disposal, the Mi 8 SE does need a slightly steadier hand, to avoid blurry shots - every second shot or so was blurry due to camera shake.

Xiaomi Mi 8 SE low-light photos

AI mode seems to be your best bet for auto HDR and other corrections in low light, as well.

Panoramas are a mixed bag. On the one hand, the resolution is plenty and the level of detail is OK. However, stitching is pretty lackluster.

Xiaomi Mi 8 SE panorama sample

Once you're done looking at our real-life samples, be sure to check out how the Mi 8 SE renders are test posters in the studio. We chose the vanilla Xiaomi Mi 8 and the Nokia 7 plus, as initial competitors, but feel free to browse the extensive camera database.

Xiaomi Mi 8 SE in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The Mi 8 SE takes pretty decent portrait shots. The effect is convincing enough, but not really as precise and consistent to merit a second, dedicated camera. To be fair, Google definitely set the bar very high with its single-camera, software-only portrait implementation. Still, since the tech is definitely out there, we don't think it's an unreasonably high bar to set.

Portrait samples

Frankly, the biggest issue we had with the MI 8 SE and portraits has to do with inconsistent face detection. Any slight alteration to the framing or a manual exposure tap on the user's end can ruin the placement of the effect. Your best bet is to be persistent enough and to convince the subject to stay still for a few shots.

Selfies

Just like its vanilla sibling, the Mi 8 SE has a pretty nice 20MP, f/2.0 selfie snapper at its disposal. Oddly enough, this one is even rocking slightly larger 1.0µm pixels. Not that that really helps much in low-light conditions.

Selfie samples

Before you get too excited and run off to pick up a Mi 8 SE exclusively for Instagram selfie use, it is still a fixed-focus camera. If you do manage to position yourself within the fairly generous focus place, however, the resulting shots are very sharp and detailed, with realistic colors.

Selfie beauty filters: Off • Medium • Max

There are plenty of beauty filters in the selfie mode, as well. The AI option seems to do a fairly decent job, if you are into that sort of thing. If not, be sure to go in and disable it, since it is on by default. Beyond that, you can also fiddle with the strength of the enhancements to your facials shape, skin and eyes. Nothing too over the top, even when you crank the filers to the max.

Selfie portrait samples

The selfie cam can take portrait shots as well and pretty decent ones at that.

Video recording

The Xiaomi Mi 8 SE can capture videos at either 4K@30fps or 1080p@30fps. Unfortunately, there is no 60fps mode, regardless of resolution. We can't really expect the former from a mid-ranger, but the latter would have been a nice addition.

4K clips have a standard AVC plus stereo AAC stream configuration, inside an MP4 container. You can choose between the older and more compatible h.264 encoder and the more efficient h.265 one. The former outputs a video stream of just over 41 Mb/s and a framerate hovering pretty close to the 30 mark. 1080p gets recorded with around half the overall bit rate, which was more was still enough for Xiaomi to shine, even at FullHD.

That's an area that often gets neglected on modern, 4K-capable handsets. With the Mi 8 SE, you still get plenty of detail and good dynamic range, even at FullHD.

Naturally, things only get better at 4K resolution. A lot more fine detail makes it into the final video. The only real criticism we have towards the two samples has to do with the slightly over-saturated color pallet. Still, many people do prefer that punchy look. And it definitely showcases the Super AMOLED panel on the Mi 8 SE.

Other than that, the Mi 8 SE captures flagship-grade video. Well, minus the optical stabilization of its bigger sibling, that is. Unfortunately, that also got stripped out in the pursuit of cost-saving. Xiaomi did leave in EIS.

While it works really well in 1080p, toggling it in 4K appears to have absolutely no effect. The frame doesn't get cropped at all and the clips objectively don't become any smoother. Yet, the Mi 8 SE does leave the EIS toggle available at both resolution settings. The vanilla Mi 8 had the same issue when we reviewed it, so, perhaps, its a shared software bug, or rather omission on Xiaomi's part.

As usual, we're providing you with unedited short samples to download and examine. There's one shot in 2160p (10s, 52MB), as well as a 1080p one (10s, 26MB).

Finally, be sure to check out how the Mi 8 SE's rendition of our studio charts compares to that of other phones we've tested.

2160p: Xiaomi Mi 8 SE in our Video compare tool

For the sake of thoroughness, we are including 1080p database entries for the MI 8 SE, as well.

1080p: Xiaomi Mi 8 SE in our Video compare tool