Review: Xiaomi 14

As China’s largest phone maker, Xiaomi makes excellent Android smartphones, boasting some of the best hardware. If you fancy something different from the latest Samsung or Apple, the Xiaomi 14 might be for you. With a versatile camera, lovely display, and top-notch specs in a relatively compact package, this refined Android smartphone will suit most folks.

While Xiaomi reserves the truly cutting-edge stuff for its Ultra model (coming soon), the Xiaomi 14 is no slouch. More pocket-friendly in both senses, this is an elegant all-rounder with Xiaomi’s revamped HyperOS over Android 14. At first glance it looks much like last year’s Xiaomi 13, but improvements across the board make the Xiaomi 14 more tempting.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Photograph: Simon Hill

The Xiaomi 14 is similar in size to my Pixel 8 and iPhone 14 Pro, but the design is closer to Apple’s phone, with flat edges around the frame. The dominant, square camera module at the top left of the back has a stepped design. It’s not too heavy at 193 grams and is a fine size for most folks to manage one-handed. The curved glass on the back is a fingerprint-resistant matte black on my review unit, but it also comes in white or a more interesting green.

The Xiaomi 14 feels durable and scores an IP68 rating for water resistance. Gorilla Glass Victus protects the flat screen. The USB-C port and SIM card tray are on the bottom edge, and there’s a power button with volume rocker above on the right spine. Overall, it’s a classy, refined design, albeit quite conservative.

The 6.36-inch AMOLED display has a camera cutout at the top and a fingerprint sensor under the screen at the bottom. I found the fingerprint sensor very responsive. The screen is a highlight. It sports a 2,670 x 1,200-pixel resolution, giving you a sharp 460 pixels per inch (matching the iPhone 15 Pro). It has a dynamic refresh rate capable of going from 1 Hz up to 120 Hz for smooth animations and scrolling, and to save on battery life where possible.

The display was bright enough for me to read outdoors in direct light and can reach 3,000 nits peak brightness for highlights. The Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support make this a solid phone for movie watching. The stereo speakers offer Dolby Atmos and boast surprising depth. I watched a few scenes from Dune and Blade Runner 2049 to put it through its paces, and it looked and sounded good enough on the Xiaomi 14 that I was quickly sucked in.

Slick performance comes courtesy of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, ably backed by 12 GB of RAM. You also get a generous 512 GB of storage, and it’s the latest, speedy UFS 4.0. The Xiaomi 14 has enough power to multitask or play the most demanding games without stutters or dropped frames. After almost two hours of Grimvalor and Defense Zone HD, it remained cool.

Playing 20 minutes of Asphalt 9: Legends used 4 percent of the battery. Rated at 4,610 mAh, you can expect the Xiaomi 14 to get through all but the busiest days, but you’ll want to charge every night. The 90-watt charger and USB-C cable in the box can fully charge the Xiaomi 14 in just over half an hour. This phone also supports up to 50-watt wireless charging, but you need Xiaomi’s wireless charger (£60) to get that rate.

Connectivity is top-notch. The Xiaomi 14 supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. It also supports a good spread of bands across 5G and 4G. It maintained a strong signal here in the UK, and should be fine in Europe, but folks in the US should check with their carrier, and it does lack mmWave 5G bands.

Photograph: Simon Hill

One of the main reasons you might consider a Xiaomi phone is its photography prowess. The rear camera in the Xiaomi 14 combines three 50-megapixel lenses. The main lens boasts a 1/1.31-inch sensor, an f/1.6 aperture, and a 23-mm focal length. The telephoto lens offers 3.2X optical zoom with an f/2.0 aperture and 75-mm focal length. And there’s an ultrawide lens with an f/2.2 aperture and 14-mm focal length. All your bases are covered with this trio.

The main camera here boasts a fast shutter speed for capturing action, is capable of a very pleasing natural bokeh that blurs the foreground or background when you focus on a subject, and has a large enough sensor to make the most of low-light conditions. Xiaomi works with Leica to tune its camera hardware and software, and you can choose the Leica Authentic or Vibrant style. I prefer the realistic colors of Authentic.

The color matching on the ultrawide and telephoto lenses is solid. Tap 0.6X for the ultrawide, 1X or 2X uses the main lens, and the 3.2X optical zoom is the telephoto. I found that I could zoom up to 10X and still get a reasonably good-quality shot. There is also a Pro mode with the option to tweak everything and shoot in RAW.

The 32-MP in-display selfie camera is fine for video calls and selfies. You can actually get a bit of natural bokeh with it, but the portrait mode is always ready to step in. Speaking of portrait mode, the Master-lens system lets you jump between close-up and full body shots, and offers a range of focal lengths from 35 mm up to 90 mm to get the portrait style you want. I got mixed results, but it’s worth playing around with.

Photograph: Simon Hill

The big catch with Xiaomi phones is always the software. The Xiaomi 14 comes with Google apps and the Play Store out of the box, so it’s easy to install your favorites, but there’s also a ton of bloatware, and several Xiaomi apps are set up as defaults. The Xiaomi 14 will get four years of Android updates and five years of security patches.

While the new HyperOS improves on MIUI and sits atop Android 14, you will need to tweak settings to get Xiaomi’s user interface the way you want. The default style still feels a bit like iOS, and the Xiaomi 14 might be a good pick for someone switching from iPhone to Android. It is mercifully less busy than MIUI, but some of the simplification has gone too far. I found deciphering the icons in quick settings quite tough. Luckily, it is highly customizable.

Price could be a stumbling block for the Xiaomi 14. This is not a budget phone. You should look at Xiaomi’s sub-brands, Redmi and Poco, if you want to bag a bargain. The Xiaomi 14 is Xiaomi’s most polished, compact flagship. It starts from €999 in Europe or £849 in the UK, so competition in this price bracket includes the iPhone 15 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus. Many of the best Android phones, including the Pixel 8 Pro and OnePlus 12, can be had for significantly less.

Ultimately, the Xiaomi 14 is an excellent Android phone with no obvious weaknesses. Folks who prefer a more compact phone but don't want to scrimp on specs should consider it. While I have enjoyed using the Xiaomi 14, it lacks that special something to quicken the pulse, and I am already eyeing the 14 Ultra looming on the horizon.