Xiaomi 14 Series Review The King of Size in 2023, Standing Firm in the Moment of Crossing to the High-end.

Xiaomi 14 Series Review Reigning Supreme in 2023 with Unmatched Size and High-end Sophistication

【Mobile China Review】After the release of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, major smartphone manufacturers are destined to engage in another battle, and the first to strike is Xiaomi, a brand that is about to experience a breakthrough moment in both software and hardware this year. The Xiaomi 14 series globally debuts the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, which, under Xiaomi’s tuning, unleashes the most powerful performance on the planet and helps Xiaomi achieve its own breakthrough moment in the high-end market.

After partnering with Leica, Xiaomi made a qualitative breakthrough in imaging. With the Xiaomi 13 series, Xiaomi has already established a strong association with imaging in many people’s minds. The slogan “Unleash Your Passion, Real Leica” has been widely acclaimed. In the Xiaomi 14 series, the imaging capabilities are more comprehensive and professional, fully showcasing the wonderful sparks that Xiaomi and Leica have collided. On the system level, Xiaomi has also “honed its sword for thirteen years” and successfully developed Xiaomi Impulse OS under the expansion of MIUI. This marks the beginning of a fully interconnected ecosystem for people, cars, and homes and sharpens a sword for the Internet of Things.

The brand new Xiaomi 14 series has made comprehensive leaps in imaging, performance, design, and system. The duo of Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro are destined to make the last two months of 2023 particularly lively, and even in the first half of next year, they may still dominate the market. Let’s step into the mobile phone world together and take a look at the unparalleled techniques of the Xiaomi 14 series.

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Xiaomi 14 continues the design of the standard small-screen version, with a screen size of 6.36 inches, which is exceptionally compact. The four narrow bezels and straight screen are also a boon for lovers of straight screens. If you observe closely, you will notice that the bezels of the Xiaomi 14 are very, very narrow. This is thanks to the pixel internal routing technology used in the entire series, which integrates the panel fanout routing into the display area, creating narrow bezels and enhancing visual aesthetics.

Xiaomi 14 Pro is equipped with a 6.73-inch fully equal deep curved screen, also known as a four-curved screen. The back is also designed with four curves, creating a perfect axial symmetry when viewed from the side, making the screen and back appear to float on the surface of the device. It is worth mentioning that the Xiaomi 14 series also uses straight-edged frames, which differentiates it from most flagship models on the market and offers a distinctive feel. Those who love it can’t let go of it, while those who don’t love it don’t even want to touch it. You can experience the feel of it at experience stores after the release of the Xiaomi 14 series.

In terms of body size and thickness, Mi 14 measures 71.5mm x 152.8mm x 8.29mm, weighing 193g, while Mi 14 Pro measures 75.28mm x 161.43mm x 8.49mm, weighing 223g. Due to the substantial build of the Mi 14 Series, it is difficult to reduce the weight, but it comes with a top-notch experience.

As an example, Mi customizes the Huaxing C8 luminescent material for the screen, boasting the industry’s highest peak brightness of 3000 nits. The entire series is equipped with 1-120Hz LTPO, providing both smoothness and power saving. Moreover, the Mi 14 series supports 12-bit color depth, displaying 68 billion colors and professional original colors. Whether it is color richness or accuracy, it ranks among the best in the industry. In terms of eye protection, Xiaomi has also made careful designs for the 14 series. Mi 14 adopts full DC dimming, while Mi 14 Pro adopts either DC or 1920Hz PWM dimming, and it also has a new rhythm eye protection function, combined with AI auto brightness, providing users with a comprehensive eye protection experience.

While flagship devices continue to improve glass hardness, Mi 14 Pro introduces the Mi Dragon Crystal Glass, which greatly enhances drop resistance and scratch resistance, thereby extending the device’s lifespan and providing users with more peace of mind and security. For flagship products, technological attributes are undoubtedly important, but practicality is still paramount. Mi Dragon Crystal Glass achieves this effect based on technological innovation.

In terms of color schemes, the Mi 14 we received still uses a very simple and elegant white color, which complements the small screen and provides a unique feel. Moreover, the white metal frame adopts the PVD physical vapor deposition process, making it the industry’s first high-gloss process using aluminum alloy as the base material. The Mi 14 Pro in Rock Green color adopts a specially modulated color, presenting a clear and transparent texture. In addition, Mi 14 also has an exclusive color called “Snow Mountain Pink,” combining second-generation technology nano leather material with pink, which might capture the hearts of many girls at first sight.

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Beyond the screen, the Xiaomi 14 series is actually most impressive in terms of imaging. This time, the whole series adopts Leica SUMMILUX lenses and utilizes the Light and Shadow Hunter 900 sensor, bringing imaging to a whole new level.

The Light and Shadow Hunter 900 sensor has a size of 1/1.31 inches, 50 million pixels, and a fusion of 1.2μm/2.4μm large pixels. It also features dual native ISO Fusion Max and full-pixel omnidirectional phase detection autofocus 2×2 OCL. Although Xiaomi didn’t mention whether it’s from Sony or Samsung, it’s clear from the specifications and name that it has an outstanding ability to capture light, which is the foundation for the excellent imaging power of the Xiaomi 14 series.

In the Leica lens lineup, SUMMILUX represents a large aperture, with a maximum aperture value of f/1.4-f/1.7. Among them, the aperture of the Xiaomi 14 is f/1.6, which allows 180% more light compared to the previous generation. The aperture of the Xiaomi 14 Pro is f/1.42, which is currently the largest aperture in smartphones and can be considered as having a huge lead.

Let’s take a look at this set of night scene samples. The larger aperture and increased light intake of the Xiaomi 14 series result in better night scene performance, with cleaner images, better colors, and impressive noise control. Night photography is a breeze with this phone, as it captures great photos effortlessly.

And everyone should know that when the aperture is larger, not only does it have a sufficient amount of light entering, but it also allows for faster shutter speeds, which is crucial for capturing moments.

Using this set of sample photos as an example, the moment a person jumps up is clearly frozen, including objects thrown upwards, all can be captured in a freeze frame. When taking photos of pets or dynamic moments in daily life, the Xiaomi 14 Series performs exceptionally well.

Of course, another benefit of a large aperture is that it creates a more natural background blur. This physical blur is more pleasing compared to algorithmic blur, as seen in the close-up shots below. This is made possible by the 1024-level variable aperture used in the Xiaomi 14 Pro. The Xiaomi 14 Pro is equipped with a 1024-level variable aperture, allowing the aperture value to be freely adjusted within the f/1.4-f/4.0 range, resulting in a significant improvement compared to the previous generation. As a result, the Xiaomi 14 Pro not only adapts to different lighting conditions during shooting, but also creates hexagonal bokeh and star flare effects, making it hard not to love.

In terms of the lens combination, the Xiaomi 14 series adopts a three-camera system with four focal lengths. The Xiaomi 14 features a 50-megapixel main camera with an f/1.6 aperture, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. The Xiaomi 14 Pro features a 50-megapixel camera with a variable aperture ranging from f/1.42 to f/4.0, a 50-megapixel telephoto camera, and a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, supporting a 5cm super macro. This combination covers the commonly used focal lengths of 14mm to 75mm, and Xiaomi also provides a 2x focal length option in high pixel mode. Personally, I prefer using the 2x zoom for daily photography as it allows for better composition and produces better results.

To better unleash the imaging power of the Xiaomi 14 series, Xiaomi has applied professional ALD coating, which reduces ghosting and flares optically, greatly enhancing the performance in night scene photography. The use of telephoto lens allows the Xiaomi 14 series to not only capture distant scenes, but also take close-up macro photos as close as 10cm, better meeting users’ needs with this telephoto lens.

In addition, if you like to take photos of panoramic views, the powerful hardware configuration of the Xiaomi 14 Series combined with the second generation Leica color science can easily capture stunning shots.

In the previous generation products, Xiaomi focused on promoting multi-camera consistency. The Xiaomi 14 Series continues to maintain excellent color consistency across different focal lengths. The integrated optical module of the Xiaomi imaging brain simultaneously analyzes the frames from the main camera and the secondary camera, providing consistent automatic exposure and automatic white balance information for all cameras.

Undoubtedly, the performance of the Xiaomi 14 Series is also a point of concern, as it is the first device to debut with the third generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform globally. The performance of this chipset will also influence the market trend for the next six months.

In terms of specifications, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform CPU adopts a 1+5+2 core architecture, with a maximum frequency of 3.3GHz, a 30% increase in peak performance, and a 34% decrease in power consumption under the same performance; the GPU is Adreno 750, supporting hardware ray tracing, with a 35% increase in peak performance and a 38% decrease in power consumption under the same performance; AI power consumption is reduced by 43%.

In the AnTuTu benchmark test, the Xiaomi 14 scored a total of 2,004,612 points, surpassing 99% of users in all four sub-items. This score is currently the only model on AnTuTu to exceed 2 million points.

In the GeekBench 6 test, the Xiaomi 14 achieved a single-core score of 2167 and a multi-core score of 6802, showing a significant improvement compared to the previous generation product.

In the 3D Mark test, the two test scores reached 12071 and 9425 respectively, surpassing 99% of devices, with impressive performance.

We also tested the frame rate performance of three games: “King of Glory,” “League of Legends: Wild Rift,” and “Genshin Impact” on the Xiaomi 14. From the frame rate charts, it can be seen that almost every game can run at a full frame rate, and the overall gaming experience is very smooth. After playing “Genshin Impact” for half an hour, the body temperature was maintained at 43.9℃, showing excellent temperature control. It’s worth mentioning that the Xiaomi 14 series also achieves 2K rendering in “Genshin Impact,” with a significant improvement in resolution. It’s worth experiencing, but it may generate more heat, so it is recommended to use a cooling clip. This time, the Xiaomi 14 series with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 can be said to be fully loaded with performance.

Temperature Chart for Genshin Impact

At the system level, the Xiaomi 14 series is equipped with the latest Xiaomi Surge OS, an operating system that connects to the next generation. Simply put, Xiaomi Surge OS has seen improvements in three aspects: basic experience, interconnectivity, and AI capabilities. This makes it a complete ecosystem operating system for people, cars, and homes. You can watch more about this in our upcoming video review.

The Xiaomi 14 series, launched by Xiaomi at the end of 2023 as its flagship product for the year, is not only an update to its own product line, but also a powerful remedy to compete with Apple’s iPhone 15 series and Huawei’s Mate60 series in the high-end market. In this high-end market war without gunpowder smoke, the Xiaomi 14 series is quietly making its debut. With the Xiaomi 14 series, we can see Xiaomi’s strong commitment to users, with a completely new imaging configuration, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, and relentless refinement of the screen and feel. Overall, the Xiaomi 14 series has the potential to become Xiaomi’s flagship in the high-end market, marking a moment of firm footing.

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