The Xiaomi 14 series has now been officially unveiled for the global market, a couple of months after the Chinese premiere. The launch in Barcelona caught many of us off guard, as Xiaomi decided to keep the 14 Pro version China-only, and launch the Xiaomi 14 Ultra globally. You can check out our dedicated Xiaomi 14 Ultra review for more detail, but here we will focus on the vanilla Xiaomi 14 model.
This is probably one of the very few times when a company launches a non-pro model that is so well-rounded that the said company needed to skip the Pro and jump directly to the Ultra in order to differentiate the two. This, of course, is pure speculation, but the fact of the matter is that the vanilla Xiaomi 14 has a lot going on for it. So, let's dive straight in.
Xiaomi 14
What we like
Snappy performance
Decent camera system
Super-fast charging
What we don't like
Expensive
Limited availability
HyperOS might not be everyone's cup of tea
7
PhoneArena Rating
7.1
Price Class Average
Battery Life
6.1
6.7
Photo Quality
6.9
7
Video Quality
5.9
6.1
Charging
9.1
7.9
Performance Peak
7.5
6.6
Performance Daily
7.5
7.3
Display Quality
7
7.8
Design
8
7.6
Wireless Charging
8.2
7.8
Biometrics
7
7.2
Audio
7
7
Software
6
7
Why the score?
This device scores 1.4% worse than the average for this price class, which includes devices like the Xiaomi 14T Pro, Honor 200 Pro and Google Pixel 8
As seen in the rating widget abov, thee Xiaomi 14 total score is lower than one might expect. That is not because of a flaw, but because we have implemented a new rating system at PhoneArena that gives readers a better idea of the performance of a phone across different categories. Remember to look at the scores and compare them to the average for the class, and we believe you will find these scores tremendously useful. Learn more about the new PhoneArena Review Scoring system here.
A retail box done the right way (Image by PhoneArena)
It's refreshing to see that some companies haven't bent over due to pressure from the industry and still supply their customers with a full package regarding the retail box. In the case of the Xiaomi 14, you're getting a 90W fast charging brick, a USB-C cable, a plastic back cover to protect the glass back from scratches, and a SIM ejector tool.
Five years ago, this retail box would've passed as not a big deal, or even a bit scarce, as there were earbuds bundled inside and whatnot, but in the modern smartphone reality, this is pure lavishness.
Xiaomi 14 Specs
Top silicon and camera tricks
Xiaomi 14
Size, weight
152.8 x 71.5 x 8.2 mm 193g
Display
6.36" OLED 1-120Hz dynamic 3,000 nits peak
Processor
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
RAM, Storage
12GB/256GB 12GB/512GB
Cameras
50MP main (f/1.6) 50MP ultra-wide f/2.2 50MP 3.2X telephoto f/2.0
32MP front
Battery
4,610 mAh
Charging
90W wired 50W wireless
The things that catch the eye in the table above are the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, coupled with a healthy amount of RAM and storage. The cited 3,000-nit peak brightness is indeed an eyebrow-raiser, and the charging speeds also look very promising. These are all just specs on paper, though, scroll down to the test portion of the review to see the actual results.
Xiaomi 14 Design & Colors
Flat screens for everybody!
The design of the Xiaomi 14 series follows in the footsteps of its predecessor. We have the flat screen and curved back, the rectangular camera isle, and the premium aluminum frame. The phone feels great in the hand, mainly due to its compact size. The trend with flat displays is getting strong but we like it that way, as there are less distortion, and flat displays are generally easier to use.
Xiaomi 14 Gallery
The color of the year seems to be green, and to be exact, it's Jade Green or all its nuances. We saw a couple other launches featuring this color, and the Jade Green option looks rather stylish on the Xiaomi 14. If you fancy a more traditional look, there's a black version and a white one. But seriously, the green one looks quite fresh in person. We saw it in Barcelona during the launch, but unfortunately, we received a black one for testing. But it is what it is.
Xiaomi 14 colors:
Black
White
Jade Green
Xiaomi 14 Display
Brightness wars
We have a bright and vivid OLED, 1-120Hz LTPO screen (Image by PhoneArena)
The vanilla Xiaomi 14 comes with a 6.36-inch AMOLED screen with 1200 x 2670 resolution and 460 PPI. This one also boasts 3,000 nits of peak brightness and a dynamic 1-120 Hz refresh rate. The modern smartphone world has moved away from display resolution (remember the 4K display on the Xperia Z5 Premium?) and decided to make display pixels burn as bright as a supernova.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
That being said, no one ever complained from a display being too bright, especially on a sunny day, so we like this new trend. The actual brightness is most of the time different from the number in the PR text but we have our own test that measure the brightness across the whole screen. The Xiaomi 14 was able to push out almost 1000 nits in our test, so it's not bad, but far from the advertised 3,000 nits, and also behind what the Galaxy S24 was able to pull out.
The color temperature and accuracy are both pretty good, and in real-life conditions you probably won't be able to tell the difference in brightness compared to let's say the Galaxy S24. The Xiaomi 14 is bright enough even in direct sunlight, so no issues on that front.
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Xiaomi 14 Camera
Pro-grade camera on a non-Pro phone?
The Leica camera system (Image by PhoneArena)
The Leica-branded camera systems of the Xiaomi 14 series come with a couple of cool new features. There is a new LightFusion 900 image sensor with a relatively large size of 1/1.3" and an impressive 13.5 EV native high dynamic range. The ultrawide camera has also been redesigned on both the Xiaomi 14 and the Ultra. The resolution is now 50MP. The third snapper in the system is a telephoto (3,2x optical), featuring Leica's 75mm floating lens technology and allowing users to focus from 10cm to infinity.
Let's get to the samples!
Main Camera
Samples from the main camera look decent with good level of detail and fairly good dynamic range as well. The colors are pretty natural, and might even look a bit bland to people used to boosted or oversaturated colors from other smartphone brands. To be fair, the lighting conditions weren't perfect during our test, so that might've contributed to some extent.
Going indoors to avoid the storm coming our way, we snapped a few low-light samples, and those look pretty good, again very accurate color representation of what we saw with our own eyes, good dynamic range and level of detail.
Ultrawide Camera
The new 50MP ultrawide camera manages to produce shots with similar qualities to the ones we took with the main one. The tonality is pretty similar, as well as the overall level of detail. The dynamic range is probably suffering a bit, compared to the main shooter, but overall, Xiaomi did a great job with the ultrawide camera on the 14, especially avoiding big jumps in quality when switching between the other lenses.
Zoom Quality
2X
3.2X
5X and 10X
The Xiaomi 14 features a dedicated telephoto camera, but it's not of the fancy periscope variety. It comes with 3.2x native optical magnification and can do 5x and 10x using some digital help as well. The 2x samples use sensor crop to provide optical-like zoom level, and even though the results aren't bad, we liked the native 3.2x zoom samples a lot better. Speaking of which, the 3.2x images look sharper and with more detail retained. You can go all the way up to 10x but you quickly start to lose detail and quality.
Again, one thing worth mentioning is the overall tone and feel of the images taken with the telephoto. They match pretty closely the main and ultrawide camera, which is a pretty important and sometimes overlooked aspect of a smartphone camera system.
Selfies
The 32MP selfie camera samples can be found above, they look good but nothing to write home about. We found them to be a little on the softer side, and sometimes lacking the dynamic range to faithfully represent the scene. But overall, for you normal Instagram and TikTok selfie endeavors, the front camera of the Xiaomi 14 will do the job.
Video Quality
Here's a quick test of the Xiaomi 14 and its video recording capabilities. The phone can do 8K at 30fps but for all intents and purposes 4K should be enough for the majority of people out there. You can zoom in and out while recording, switch between the different lenses, and the quality is pretty decent across the board. Maybe not at the level of big guns such as the iPhone 15 Pro Max but still not bad at all. What do you think about it?
Xiaomi 14
PhoneArena Camera Score
BEST 157
142
PhoneArena Photo Score
BEST 162
150
Main (wide)
BEST 85
79
Zoom
BEST 28
24
Ultra-wide
BEST 25
24
Selfie
BEST 30
24
PhoneArena Video Score
BEST 153
135
Main (wide)
BEST 80
75
Zoom
BEST 27
16
Ultra-wide
BEST 23
20
Selfie
BEST 28
24
As you can see from our sophisticated and pretty detailed camera rating widget, the Xiaomi 14 does a really great job and it's right up there with a camera champions such as the Google Pixel 8 Pro (just one point difference), and the Oppo Find X7 Ultra, a designated camera phone. You can find more about our new camera rating procedure here.
Xiaomi 14 Performance & Benchmarks
Cream of the Qualcomm crop
Testing! Testing! (Image by PhoneArena)
Just like its bigger brother, the Xiaomi 14 comes with the latest and greatest Qualcomm silicon onboard. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 performs as expected, and the synthetic benchmarks put the Xiaomi 14 right where it belongs, on par with other flagships such as the Galaxy S24 and the iPhone 15.
The phone handles sustained load pretty well, without much throttling or getting uncomfortably hot. In real-life day-to-day use, the Xiaomi 14 is smooth and snappy. You won't notice any performance drop, hiccups or stutter, everything works fast and flawlessly.
The storage situation is as follows: The vanilla Xiaomi 14 is available in two memory configurations both featuring an ample 12GB of RAM and either 256 or 512GB of storage. There's no microSD card slot, so if you want to go higher on the storage side, you need to jump straight to the Ultra model (available with up to 1TB of storage).
Xiaomi 14 HyperOS
Another cool addition to the new features of the Xiaomi 14 family is the transition from MIUI to HyperOS. The Xiaomi 14 runs Android 14 out of the box, with the aforementioned HyperOS on top.
AI algorithms and neural network processing on-device is the new hype in smartphone software, and the Xiaomi 14 series is no exception. LLM (Large Language AI models) can be found across the OS and integrated into various applications to help users get more while doing less.
AI Subtitles is one such feature, enabling real-time transcription with subtitles, as the name suggests, when you consume video content. There's also AI Album Search, a cool option that allows you to search images inside your album just by describing them to the AI. You can use AI Portraits to turn your images into portraits or completely new composition.
Finally, there's a much more advanced AI algorithm, called Xiaomi HyperMind, that is supposed to learn from your everyday habits and automate them. Say you're using your phone to turn on your smart bulb at a certain time and in a certain color. After some time HyperMind will in theory do this for you without any input.
Most of these features were installed on just a handful of demo devices during the official unveiling in Barcelona so we couldn't test them in depth, but Xiaomi promises to bring them to the devices with feature patches as soon as possible.
The Xiaomi 14 comes equipped with a 4,610mAh battery, which might seem small, compared to big flagships such as the Honor Magic 6 Pro (5,600mAh silicon-carbon cell) but don't forget that the Galaxy S24 rocks an even smaller 4,000mAh battery. So, let's see how this little flagship performs in our battery benchmarks.
Looking at the results, there are some pretty interesting conclusions to be had. First, the LTPO screen management on the Xiaomi 14 is pretty good, and this certainly helped with the browsing result of over 16 hours. Which, while not breaking any records, is pretty impressive for a phone of this size and specs. To be fair to the Galaxy S24, the Samsung phone managed to replicate the result with its smaller 4,000 mAh battery, so that's another thing to keep in mind.
The video streaming score is unexpectedly low (we might have to run this one again), but the gaming test returned more than 10 hours of uninterrupted joy and fun, which again is a pretty good result. The Xiaomi 14 was able to beat not only its competitors in this test, but also its bigger sibling, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
On the charging front, we have 90W fast wired charging support and 50W wireless. Xiaomi cites 31 minutes for a full 0 to 100% cycle and we were able to kind of verify that. In our charging test, the Xiaomi 14 went from 0 to 100% using the bundled 90W charger in 39 minutes. You get 50% in just 15 minutes, and half an hour on the cable will get you 90%, so it's amazingly fast!
Xiaomi 14 Models
Xiaomi has a tradition of launching the vanilla and Pro versions of its series and then later offering an Ultra model to showcase some super-cool features. This year the company turned things upside down, reserving the Pro model for China, and launching the Ultra model globally, so it's a trade-off of sorts. We're getting a better camera system globally, but no fancy titanium.
There's still a chance for the Xiaomi 14 Pro to make it outside of China in some shape or form, but it's pretty slim. The vanilla Xiaomi 14 is now pretty potent in and of itself, so if you want something more Pro-grade, you should check out the Ultra. Bear in mind that the latter also comes with an ultra price tag.
Xiaomi 14 Competitors
Obviously, Xiaomi is gunning for the recently launched Galaxy S24 series, given the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and all the AI tricks onboard.
Another indirect competitor series is, of course, the iPhone 15, with the usual caveats applying here as well. Xiaomi phones are hard to get in the States (near to impossible), and being Android devices, they mostly compete with other fellow Android phones. That being said, we can definitely see people choosing a Xiaomi 14 instead of an iPhone 15, so there's also that.
Xiaomi 14 Summary and Final Verdict
The Xiaomi 14 doesn't come cheap (Image by PhoneArena)
The Xiaomi 14 is one hell of a phone! It's compact, fast, its screen is bright and accurate, the battery life is super solid, and the fast charging will put a smile on your face. The camera system is also pretty decent, not at the level of the bigger brother, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, but still on par with direct competitors such as the Galaxy S24 and the iPhone 15 (adding a dedicated zoom lens to the equation too).
So, what are the drawbacks? First, the price. The phone isn't cheap at 999 euros. Pricewise it's actually closer to the iPhone 15 Pro, and the Galaxy S24 Plus than to their respected vanilla versions. The other thing is the availability of the phone. Even though its officially a global model, getting one in the US will be a difficult endeavor.
But if you're sick and tired of the same old Samsung and Apple duopoly, and want to try something rather different, the Xiaomi 14 is a great choice. An expensive choice, for sure, but great nonetheless.
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Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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