Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite/Mi CC9 review

Display

The Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite features one of the most popular screens on the market throughout the past year - a 6.39" Super AMOLED with a waterdrop-shaped notch and extended 1080p resolution. The actual pixel count is 1,080 x 2,340 that makes for 403ppi density and 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The panel is protected by a flat piece of Gorilla Glass 5.

Some units, probably not the global models, may come with pre-applied screen protectors, but we can't confirm this as ours lacked such thing.

The screen has an excellent brightness for an OLED panel of 440 nits - that's in line with what Xiaomi promises (430 nits). And it can go as high as 600 nits in bright light if you leave it on Auto, also matching Xiaomi's official promise.

Xiaomi offers three different Contrast settings. With the Automatic contrast set to on, the screen output is tuned for accuracy in the DCI-P3 color space, and we measured an average deltaE of 3.8. Only in this mode, you can choose the color saturation (default, warm, cool) and the Delta E of 3.8 was measured with the Default preset. Choosing warm will offer an even more accurate presentation with an average deltaE of 2.5.

The Standard Contrast setting corresponds to the sRGB color space, and we also recorded an average deltaE of 3.0 for color accuracy, meaning it's a pretty great one.

Finally, the Increased Contrast makes the colors pop at the expense of reproduction accuracy.

Battery life

The Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite is powered by a 4,030mAh Li-ion battery. It supports Qualcomm's Quick Charge, and the supplied 18W charger fills 40% of the entirely depleted battery in 30 mins.

The Mi 9 Lite posted an excellent endurance rating of 106 hours and great scores across the board. The screen-on times are excellent - we measured 13 and a half hours runtime in our web browsing test and north of 17 hours in our video playback test. The standby performance was on par with the Mi 9T phones and overall - a very good one.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

Speaker test (old, new one below)

The Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite has a single bottom-firing speaker. It scored a Very Good mark in our loudness test, though some high-pitched tones are common. When playing music from YouTube, the speaker sounds (subjectively) quieter than suggested by the score.

Speaker test (new)

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Audio quality

The Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite delivered the expected perfect accuracy with an active external amplifier, but even here its loudness was below average.

Plugging in our standard 32oHm headset caused a rather big increase in stereo crosstalk, and we also recorded some intermodulation distortion. The frequency response got slightly shaky, and the loudness dropped even further. All in all, the Mi 9 Lite certainly won’t be the audiophiles’ first choice.

Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite frequency response

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