Xiaomi Mi 11X Review: A great budget flagship from Xiaomi with mediocre cameras priced aggressively!!

Xiaomi offers a great budget flagship in the form of Mi 11X.

Xiaomi has created a storm in the smartphone industry with its budget and mid-range smartphones that pack all the bells and whistles and have seen massive success. They have the Mi-series which is their premium offering and last year was the first debut of Xiaomi Mi 10 (Review) and later they came up with the Xiaomi Mi 10T and the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro (Review).

This year the company launched the Xiaomi Mi 10i (Review) was launched which is an affordable 5G mid-range smartphone and now the Mi 11 series has come up to give stiff competition to other smartphones. It includes the Mi 11X, Mi 11X Pro, and the massive Mi 11 Ultra. The Xiaomi Mi 11X strikes a good balance between the three as it is the cheapest of all and packs some very good specifications for the price.

It packs in a flagship-level performance with the Snapdragon 870 chipset which is a slightly overclocked version of the Snapdragon 865 launched in 2020. Other than that you are getting a 120Hz AMOLED display, a striking new design, a good set of cameras, and much more. So is it worth buying for an asking price of Rs.29999? Let's find out in the full review.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Design:

The Xiaomi Mi 11X sports a glass sandwich design with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 both on the front as well as the back. The back has a frosted finish that catches lesser fingerprints and this frosted finish does not have a texture or pattern as such. But you will see a hue of colors especially if you choose the Celestial Silver color variant which shines when holding the smartphone at different angles.

The Cosmic Black color variant only has a glossy finish at the back which catches a lot of fingerprints and is slippery so with this color variant, it is better to use it with a plastic case. The camera has a rectangular shape that houses the quad cameras with the LED flash. The camera bump is not much felt as it is very slightly protruded which is a good thing as it would not wobble while keeping flat on the table. 

The back has an IP53 rating which makes it splash and dust resistant to some extent. The sides have a plastic frame where on the right side, there is a power button that doubles up as a fingerprint scanner and volume buttons. The left side of the smartphone is clean and on the top, there are the secondary noise-canceling microphone, an IR Blaster, and a speaker grille that acts as stereo speakers.

The bottom has a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. There is no support for microSD cards for storage expansion which may not be a problem as the base variant ships with 128GB storage. Sadly, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack so you are left with wireless earphones only. 

On the front, there is a single punch-hole camera at the center on the top and to the side, the bezels are minimum. The weight distribution has been done well as the smartphone weighs around 196 grams and is 7.8mm in thickness which makes it very slim and good to look at. Overall, in terms of build and design, Xiaomi has done a good job for the price except for Cosmic Black which is glossy.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Display:

The Xiaomi Mi 11X has a 6.67inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) E4 Super AMOLED display which is a good upgrade over the Xiaomi Mi 10T series launched last year that came with an IPS LCD display. This display has better reproduction compared to other AMOLED displays as it consumes power less than 15-percent compared to E3 panels and this AMOLED display also supports MEMC technology.

As it is an AMOLED display, the color reproduction is good with deeper blues and blacks, viewing angles are great and the calibration can be done from the settings where you can change between Saturated, Original color, and Auto where the Auto mode is set to default. You can set the color temperature from warmer to cooler depending on needs.

The brightness has been calibrated well as the Xiaomi Mi 11X has a standard brightness of 900nits and a peak brightness of 1300nits when the Sunlight Mode is turned on. Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility but when you set it to 100 percent brightness, it does not stay there for a longer time as after a span of 10-15 seconds the brightness gets lowered as the smartphone also heats up slightly. 

Maybe Xiaomi could fix this issue through a software update but when it comes to indoors, the brightness can go very low thus not affecting the eyes while viewing during the night and you do get the Reading Mode as well as the Blue Light Filter. However, the display lowers its brightness while playing heavy games or running certain benchmarks.

This display like the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (Review) has a 120Hz refresh rate which makes it very smooth during gameplay, scrolling of webpages, and during multi-tasking. There are two options available where you can switch between the standard 60Hz or the 120Hz as there is no Adaptive refresh rate where the display scales from 40, 60, 90, or 120Hz depending on the application running in the background.

This creates a big difference when compared to the Adaptive Refresh rate on the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro which has an IPS LCD panel and this feature is well suited for the LCD displays. But combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, there is a 360Hz touch sampling rate which means the touch response is faster during gaming and also while switching between applications. 

Other features of the display are the support for HDR10 and HDR10+ contents, Widevine L1 using which you can stream HDR contents from OTT platforms and the standout feature is also the MEMC technology where the display upscale the frame rate of the video while watching. For example, you are watching a 30fps video, this particular feature will convert it into a 60fps video.

Overall, the display is great for watching content but slight issues regarding the problems with peak brightness need to be resolved and Xiaomi has done a great job by putting an E4 AMOLED display at this price segment.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Performance:

The Xiaomi Mi 11X is powered by the latest and powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset which is an upgraded Snapdragon 865 chipset where the Prime core has been clocked at 3.2 GHz instead of 2.84GHz on the Snapdragon 865. This is a similar chipset that powers the OnePlus 9R, Vivo X60, and Vivo X60 Pro (Review) as well as the newly launched iQOO 7.

The general performance is excellent as all the tasks like opening/closing of applications, scrolling through webpages, and playing games felt smoother. This chipset is much more efficient as it built on a 7nm process and the Adreno 650 GPU handles the gaming experience well. All heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends, etc ran smoothly without any stutter or frame drops at the highest graphics settings.

With the faster chipset, the 360Hz touch response while playing Call Of Duty felt much faster as the controls felt easier with no delay in touch response. After a long time of gaming, the back of the smartphone does feel warmer to quite some extent. Xiaomi has implemented the LiquidCool 2.0 technology to dissipate the heat while gaming but still the back does feel warmer.

Though the back feels warmer, there were no signs of overheating like on the OnePlus 9 Pro (Review) where the cameras after longer usage, heats up the back to a larger extent. The Xiaomi Mi 11X is available in two options that include a 6/8GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128GB UFS 3.1 storage. I wish Xiaomi could have provided a 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model also. 

In terms of benchmarks, on Antutu v8, the smartphone scored around 659014 which is quite impressive and almost closer to the Snapdragon 888 device that scores 701229 as seen on the OnePlus 9 Pro. Also in CPU throttling tests, the Xiaomi Mi 11X throttled to 68 percent of its peak performance. 

This chipset also supports 5G and Xiaomi has provided only two bands of 5G here and maybe they can increase those bands in the future software update so it is future proof also. Xiaomi has provided a perfect chipset for the price but if it can overcome some healing issues, it makes up for the flagship-level performance and gaming.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Software:

The Xiaomi Mi 11X runs on MIUI 12.0.3 with Android 11 out of the box. As always we have found MIUI to be a lot cluttered with ads and a lot of third-party applications pre-installed but in the Mi-series of smartphones, there are no ads present but the GetApps throws in a lot of notifications and also shows a list of other applications that needs to be installed on the system.

There are a couple of third-party applications like Amazon, Flipkart, Linkedin, Prime Video, and Mi-specific apps like Mi Credit, Mi Community, and Mi Pay of which some can be uninstalled and others cannot be disabled or uninstalled and hopefully Xiaomi fixes this with the MIUI 12.5 update which they have said about earlier. 

But as usual, the user experience feels faster due to the presence of the Snapdragon 870 chipset inside, and combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, multitasking between applications is smoother. The RAM management is not so good as when the smartphone has six to seven applications running and after some time they reload and this maybe MIUI is doing to save on battery life.

You get all the Android 11 features which include the Smart Controls for controlling devices, enhanced security for apps accessing the location using GPS, and as usual have the Android 10 navigation gestures and Digital Wellbeing. The Control Center is present where the right swipe shows the controls and the left swipe reveals all the notifications.

Like other Xiaomi smartphones, there is a Google dialler, messaging app and when you swipe from the left of the home screen, there is a Google Discover present. Other features include the quick ball, one-handed operation, and second space which is quite good additions. Overall, the software experience is good but needs a lot of improvements in terms of the removal of bloatware and minor bugs.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Cameras:

The Xiaomi Mi 11X has a quad-camera setup that includes the 48MP f/1.8 Sony IMX582 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, a 5MP f/2.4 macro camera, and a 2MP depth sensor. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.5 camera. However, this is a sort of downside as Xiaomi uses a 2-year older sensor on its main camera with the Sony IMX582 sensor compared to either the Sony IMX682 sensor or the 108MP Samsung ISOCELL HM3 sensor on the Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro.

The main camera takes images with good details with a decent dynamic range which means the dynamic range is not wider and the contrast and white balance are just average. The color looks oversaturated and far from natural many times. There is quite an amount of noise in the background and when you zoom into the image, you can see in loss of details and noise.

When you zoom in:

The 48MP resolution mode helps to click in great images with sharp details and but it does apply the crop to a larger extent to reduce the level of noise and generate more natural colors. It is always better to use the 48MP mode rather than the regular mode where the camera uses 4-in-1 pixel binning resulting in 12MP images by default.

When coming at night, the main camera does a decent job in terms of dynamic range and colors with a considerable amount of noise in the background with a lot of oversharpening. The colors are oversaturated with poor details in shadows. Turning on the Night Mode improves the dynamic range thus reducing noise and also improves the details and the exposure up to a larger extent.

The 8MP ultrawide camera has a larger 119-degree field of view as it takes images with good and wider dynamic range but the details are not so sharp as that of the main camera and the colors look slightly oversaturated and when you look around the edges of the images, there is a lot of edge distortion and even if you zoom into the image, there is softness and noise in details.

The images from the ultrawide camera have a decent dynamic range and the colors look washed out. The details do not look sharper as there is a lot of softness present around the edges. There is a dedicated Night Mode also on the ultrawide camera which does improve the color saturation and dynamic range but the level of noise remains unchanged and this does not make such a big difference as such.

The 5MP macro camera has autofocus and can do a 2x zoom just like we saw with the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max. The colors look good with very little noise and since it has autofocus, it can go very close to a subject around 2-3 cms compared to the 2MP fixed focus macro cameras on other smartphones. The dynamic range is good.

The 2MP depth sensor does a good job in terms of portraits. The dynamic range is good with more natural-looking skin tones but still the edge detection needs improvement and the level of noise is slightly on the heavier side when you zoom into the portraits. The background blur is well maintained.

On the front, there is a 20MP camera that does a good job in terms of selfies in both skin tones and dynamic range. The skin looks natural if you remove the skin smoothening which is enabled by default. The noise is present in the background much and if you switch to portraits the dynamic range and the edge detection are good but the bokeh effect is not so good.

In terms of videos, the rear main camera of the Xiaomi Mi 11X can record up to 4K at 30fps which is a sort of downgrade compared to the other cameras like the 48MP Sony IMX586 or the 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor which can record 4K videos at 60fps. 

The 4K videos from the camera have a good dynamic range but have more noise and the stabilization is not so good as it lacks OIS which may not be a concern as even the flagship OnePlus 9 (Review) also lacks which is priced higher compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X but EIS is present when you switch to 1080p resolution.

The ultrawide camera can, however, cannot record in 4K and is only restricted to 1080p at 30fps. The main camera when switches to 1080p at 60fps, the video footage comes out with better details and the dynamic range is quite wider but the colors look oversaturated and there is some noise present in the background. The same almost goes for the ultrawide cameras as the subjects look softer and have more noise in videos.

There is a Super Stable Mode which is only restricted to 1080p at 60fps which results in more stabilized videos with less noise and but to maintain better details it does use cropping heavily to maintain a good stabilization in videos. The 5MP macro camera can also record 1080p at 30fps with good details and dynamic range.

On the front, there is only 1080p at 30fps support and the videos from the front camera have good details with decent dynamic range. There is also a dedicated Night Mode for videos which takes videos from the front camera with a low amount of noise and the details look good but if you do not use the Night Mode, there is a lot of noise and barely you can see yourself as there is a lot of overexposure.

Overall, the cameras are good but not so good when compared to other smartphones and do a decent job.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Battery Life:

The Xiaomi Mi 11X has a 4520mAh battery that which is the right capacity of battery considering the Snapdragon 870 chipset. The battery can easily last for two days with normal usage with the display set to standard 60Hz and if the display switches to the 120Hz refresh rate, it can last one and half day with normal usage and if you use it heavily like gaming, watching social media, it can last a one single day with some charge left.

The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours which is really good considering the AMOLED display, the chipset is built on an efficient 7nm process and MIUI provides great optimizations for battery life. To save battery life, there are different power-saving modes.

However, the Xiaomi Mi 11X comes with a 33W fast charger bundled in the box which Xiaomi provides with almost all the smartphones in the Redmi and Mi series. This charger takes around 0 to 60 percent within half an hour and a full charge takes around 55-60 minutes which is quite fast but still slow when compared to 65W fast charging on other smartphones.

The battery life is very good but the charging speeds could have been faster.

Xiaomi Mi 11X Audio Quality:

There are a set of stereo speakers on the Xiaomi Mi 11X where both the loudspeaker and the earpiece on top together provide a good sound experience in terms of loudness and bass levels. There is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound effect but it lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack like most of the manufacturers are removing it today.

Xiaomi does provide a USB Type-C to 3.5mm headphone jack audio connector inside the box which is a good addition. The sound quality is good but could have been louder compared to other smartphones having the stereo speaker setup.

Verdict:

Overall, the Xiaomi Mi 11X is a great budget smartphone to buy as it has almost everything with it. The build feels good with the glass back with an IP53 rating, the 120Hz AMOLED display is great for media consumption, performance and gaming are the best in the price segment with the powerful Snapdragon 870, good battery life, and the audio quality are good as it has a stereo speaker setup.

However, things that are not so good are the camera which is just average when you compare it with all other high-end specifications of the smartphone and when you compare it with the competitors, the cameras fell short as you are getting on the older sensor and there is no support for 4K at 60fps. Then the software experience with MIUI is not what you would call clean as there is a lot of bloatware pre-installed.

There are no ads present which is a good thing but other user interfaces like Stock Android, OxygenOS are much better and well optimized for usage. The battery life is good but the charging speeds are slightly slower as the smartphone industry has moved to 65W fast charging solutions in the mid-range segment also. 

Undoubtedly, the performance and gaming are good but the smartphone does get warmer after long hours of gameplay and Xiaomi needs to improve the throttling speeds also. The audio quality is good but could have been better and coming to 5G, there are only two bands supported till now as more bands could have been supported and it depends on the manufacturer which can be increased by a future software update.

As an overall package, if cameras are not your biggest concern, then in all other areas the Xiaomi Mi 11X does a good job but not extraordinary and this makes it a great budget flagship to buy in the market considering that flagship performance and gaming that comes with the Snapdragon 870 chipset.