Xiaomi 17T Pro Review – Trusted Reviews

Design

• Familiar design
• Premium build and materials
• Lovely colour options

If the Xiaomi 17T Pro looks familiar, that’s because it is; it largely shares the look of its predecessor, the Xiaomi 15T Pro. It keeps the familiar combination of rounded edges and flat corners, both very en vogue at the moment, giving it a nice feel in the hand, especially with a fibreglass-finished rear that adds a nice bit of texture to the mix. 

There are a few telltale differences in design if you squint hard enough – the camera bump, for example, has flat edges compared to the slightly rounded alternative from last year, and the bezels are even thinner – but at a glance, there’s nothing that new here.

Still, it feels every bit like a premium phone with the combination of an aluminium frame and the aforementioned fibreglass rear, and with IP68 dust and water resistance, it’ll survive a dunk in the pool or a trip to the beach without complaint. It also has Gorilla Glass 7i protection up front and comes with a pre-applied screen protector for added peace of mind. 

A thin and light phone, however, it is not. I already thought last year’s Pro model was a tad on the thick side at 8mm and 210g, but the 17T Pro tips the scales at 8.3mm and 219g. It is an increase, but not one that I’ve noticed – beyond the fact that it’s a solid presence in the hand, anyway. 

The 6.8-inch screen does mean that it’ll be a little too big for some, but that’s where the Xiaomi 17T comes in, offering much of the same experience – including the same camera setup – with a slightly more compact 6.6-inch screen.

I’m a big fan of this year’s colour options, arguably more so than the 15T Pro, with Deep Violet, Deep Blue, and Black variants to choose from. The Deep Blue finish I was provided for review is striking, even if it does look very similar to the iPhone 17 Pro’s Deep Blue finish. 

Screen

• Big screen with vanishingly slim bezels
• No LTPO
• Fingerprint reader is very low down

The screen is a familiar affair, effectively sporting the same screen as the Xiaomi 15T Pro – albeit with a few new tricks. It’s probably a good thing that, like the 15T Pro, it has a pretty phenomenal screen for the price, packing a spacious 6.83-inch AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate. 

It looks and feels every bit premium, especially with even slimmer bezels than the 15T Pro, measuring in at an almost impossibly slim 1.29mm thick, and it’s universal around the screen. It’s clean, and the phone feels more immersive as a result – even with its completely flat screen.

It’s still not LTPO-enabled, so it can’t hit the lowly 1Hz refresh rate for more optimised use – I feel like that’s a bit of a wasted opportunity here – but I can manually select apps I’d like to run at the full 144Hz. It’s pretty smooth in my experience, though it does inexplicably revert to 60Hz in some apps, causing slight jitter for no real reason. 

Colours are refreshingly muted by default, looking more natural, but if I preferred a more saturated look for my app icons and games, I could tweak the colour palette in the Settings menu.

That’s not the only thing I can tweak either; updates to Xiaomi’s Eye Care suite introduce an upgraded reading mode that, in addition to tweaking the colour temperature to reduce blue light in the evenings – complete with a reactive graph showing how much of a reduction I’ll be getting – I can add an e-ink-like texture to the screen. 

It’s subtle, but it adds a bit of grain, and I can go one step further by enabling the black-and-white mode for evening use. It’s a neat trick, and though the black-and-white mode isn’t for me, the added grain does feel like it’s doing something good for my eyes during those late-night scroll sessions. 

It’s also both exceptionally bright and dim, with a peak brightness of 3500nits for HDR playback and a minimum brightness of just 1 nit – the brightness of a single candle – for night-time scrolling. As expected, HDR content looks fantastic here, and though the peak brightness only covers a small portion of the screen, it’s still plenty bright enough for direct use in the sun – even during the current heatwave here in the UK. 

My only complaint is with the fingerprint reader; it’s not that it’s inaccurate – it pretty much unlocks first time, every time – but rather its placement. It’s much further down the screen than most other phones, making it quite awkward to access depending on how I’m holding the device. 

Cameras

• Almost identical camera hardware to Xiaomi 15T Pro
• 50MP main with a big sensor
• 50MP 5x periscope performs well

Xiaomi has touted big camera upgrades as a key part of the Xiaomi 17T series, but in reality, they apply more to the regular Xiaomi 17T. That phone finally gets the same large 50MP main sensor and 50MP 5x zoom as its Pro sibling – but comparing the Pro models, there’s very little that’s actually new here.

The 50MP main camera has a new Light Fusion 950 sensor compared to the 900 on the 15T, but in terms of specs, they’re pretty evenly matched; both measure in at a fairly large 1/1.31 inches, offer 4-in-1 pixel binning tech, and OIS. The 900 actually has an ever so slightly wider f/1.62 aperture than the 17T Pro’s f/1.67, but that’s not going to be noticeable in actual use. 

Instead, most of the improvements focus on the software side of things. Xiaomi has introduced what it calls Leica Live Moment, essentially live photo support, along with support for 4K@60fps video capture in the portrait video mode. Neither is exactly new or groundbreaking in the wider smartphone market, just new to Xiaomi’s T series, but they’re nice to see at the price point.

With all that said, the core camera experience feels pretty similar to that of the 15T Pro – though that’s not really an insult. As with the Xiaomi 15T Pro at the time, the 17T Pro’s collection of Leica-tuned lenses shines when compared to similarly priced phones like the Samsung Galaxy S26 and Google Pixel 10. 

The main camera’s 50MP Light Fusion 950 sensor is properly high-end, and it shows; photos come out crisp and detailed with impressively wide dynamic range, so there’s plenty of information in both shadows and highlights. The Leica tuning on top really elevates things further, and with such a large sensor, even darker shots aren’t much of a challenge.

Just like Xiaomi’s ‘proper’ flagships, there’s also access to Leica Vibrant and Leica Authentic modes, and they can dramatically shift the character of images when you lean into them. 

However, old complaints remain: the camera can still go a little too contrast-heavy, occasionally producing shots that feel a bit on the darker, moodier side in tricky indoor evening lighting. It’s something to do with Xiaomi’s camera tuning – it’s a common complaint from me – and it’s easily fixed with a quick edit, but it’s an additional step nonetheless.

The 50MP 5x telephoto does a great job at closing the distance without relying on lossy digital zoom. As with most zoom lenses, it performs best in well-lit conditions where it can crank out impressively clean, sharp images with colour tuning that’s pretty much in line with that of the main sensor, though it can handle dimmer scenarios with gusto. Don’t expect low-light miracles however; it still has an f/3.0 aperture after all.  

I can punch it all the way up to 120x, compared to 100x of its predecessor, but as with most 50MP telephotos, the results at this level are mushy and not really worth sharing. But at lower zoom levels, like up to 10x, it does a decent job of holding onto detail and fighting off signs of obvious processing. 

Xiaomi could’ve had an easy win here by upgrading the accompanying ultrawide lens, but instead, it sports the same comparatively low-res 12MP, 120-degree ultrawide as the 15T Pro. It feels a bit stripped back compared to the main and telephoto shooters, especially with niceties like autofocus missing. 

It is perfectly capable of delivering fun, expansive shots in good daylight that I’m happy to share on social media, but once the light drops, the limitations become much clearer. Details drop off, textures get mushy and, overall, things look noticeably darker and muddier than what I see from the main, or even telephoto, lenses. 

Performance

• MediaTek Dimensity 9500 power
• Solid everyday performance
• Stays cool in longer gaming sessions

Xiaomi’s T series has always matched its flagship brethren in the performance department, and that’s just as true with the 17T Pro – though it’s not a massive jump. 

The Xiaomi 15T Pro came with the Dimensity 9400+, a mid-cycle upgrade of the 2025 flagship Dimensity 9400, while the 17T Pro makes the jump to the now-flagship Dimensity 9500 – complete with the same 12GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of storage. 

There is, of course, a difference in performance between the two – benchmark tests show an uptick in both single-core and multi-core CPU performance – but it’s not a large enough difference to notice in daily use.

That said, the Xiaomi 17T Pro is a slick mover. As with other flagships using the same chipset – including the Oppo Find X9 Pro – apps open instantly, games run flawlessly, and camera processing is rapid. I made it feel even faster by tweaking settings like app transition speed; it feels truly responsive in its fastest mode.

It can get a little warm when I play games, but with Xiaomi’s proprietary 3D IceLoop System at work, it didn’t feel like there was much of a reduction in overall performance in games like The Division: Resurgence. I’d love to put some numbers to that claim, but Xiaomi has blocked the 3DMark app we use for GPU testing, so it’s all very anecdotal for now. 

That all said, it’s very good performance for the cash, in line with what we’ve seen from other flagship-level phones like the Galaxy S26. 

In terms of connectivity, there’s Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and dual-SIM connectivity, but again, that’s the same as the older model.

What is new is Xiaomi’s Offline Communication tech, which essentially allows for short-range voice calls between supported Xiaomi devices without a network, but it isn’t satellite connectivity – it just uses Bluetooth, and I can’t really imagine many situations where that’d be all that useful. 

Software

• HyperOS 3 based on Android 16
• Highly stylised OS with a few nice touches
• Too much bloatware for the price

Xiaomi’s HyperOS 3 isn’t exactly what I’d describe as stock Android 16, but it does have plenty of strengths. 

Like most other Chinese OEM skins, it’s massively customisable, from minor elements like app icons to lock screen customisation and more – and yes, it comes with its own Theme Store packed with (in my opinion) garish options, should you want them.

It’s an easy operating system to get along with generally – the Settings menu is laid out nicely, the quick settings icons look familiar, and it offers great interoperability with other Xiaomi devices. 

Of course, there’s also the usual sprinkling of AI tools on offer. These range from the vaguely helpful, like AI speech recognition, to the nearly never used, like AI writing tools, alongside the (much more helpful) Gemini and Circle to Search. It’s a solid set of tools, but there’s nothing particularly new or groundbreaking on offer here. 

That said, it’s not the perfect experience, with a few issues cropping up during my time with the phone. 

These range from small niggles, like the fact that notifications take up way too much space in the shade without displaying much text, to bigger problems like being spammed by Xiaomi-branded apps about new (read: crappy) games available to install. 

I’d expect the latter on a much cheaper blower, but not something at the 17T Pro’s price point. It’s easy enough to disable the notifications, but I shouldn’t really have to.

There’s also a lot of bloatware, both Xiaomi-branded and third-party, ranging from a ‘Game Centre’ app that’s essentially a cheap game storefront to a folder of random games and apps that was sat on the homescreen when I first set it up. Most of these can be uninstalled, but like with notifications, I shouldn’t have to do the legwork on a phone that costs flagship-level cash. 

I also find that Xiaomi’s software is quite aggressive with background app management, so much so that some notifications were either delayed or didn’t show up at all. I also had times where multiple notifications from the past hour come in all at once, which isn’t ideal for anyone. I can change the battery settings to allow them to run all the time, but this has to be done manually, one by one. That’s what we Brits call a right pain.

All that said, it’s not a bad experience overall – animations are polished, it looks slick and it has nice-to-have features like XL folders on the home screen – you just need to tweak a few bits first. 

Battery life

• Massive 7,000mAh battery
• Easy all-day battery life, if not close to two
• 100W charging doesn’t need Xiaomi-branded charger

While much of the Xiaomi 17T Pro experience feels familiar, there is a big step forward in battery life compared to the 15T Pro. At 7,000mAh, it’s not only a sizeable jump from the 5,500mAh of its predecessor, but it’s actually the biggest battery of any Xiaomi smartphone – outside of China, anyway.

And, as expected, a battery that size delivers exceptional battery life. All-day battery life is delivered pretty much regardless of what I’m up to, with a healthy dose of scrolling through TikTok, texting on WhatsApp and a spot of gaming regularly leaving me with 40-50% left in the tank. For some, this could be a two- or even three-day phone.

Of course, some of that is down to the rather aggressive background power management mentioned earlier, but still, if longevity is the goal, the Xiaomi 17T Pro nails it.

What’s better is that charging is not only faster – 100W, compared to 80W – but it also supports 50W and 100W PPS charging alongside its HyperCharge-branded charging tech. 

It’s one of a growing number of Chinese phones that offer not only proprietary charging methods requiring specific chargers but also broader support for fast charging in general. Considering the phone doesn’t ship with a charging brick in most regions, it’s an absolute win.

I didn’t have a HyperCharge-branded charger to hand, but when using the Anker Prime 240W, charge speeds stalled around the 50W mark – so it’s clear that not all chargers support the rapid charging here. Still, even with that charger, it managed 53% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 68 minutes – and 50% is about equivalent to a day’s use for most. 

That said, the 50W wireless charging does require a HyperCharge-branded charger and doesn’t support regular Qi2 – we’re not quite there yet. 

Should you buy it?