Xiaomi Mi 10 review: is the world's cheapest Snapdragon 865 smartphone 'delicious'?

Launched in mid-February, before the Galaxy S20 was introduced, the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro duo has attracted a lot of attention from technology users around the world as well as in both Vietnam market, not only because of what Mi 10 stands out, but also from the gradual change of the Xiaomi family as it is gradually orienting its smartphones in the higher-end segment, with higher prices. , thereby helping its new smartphone models get better and better year by year.

At present, both Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro have been sold in Vietnam market as notebooks from China with prices ranging from 14.5 million VND for the standard version and about 17 million for the Pro version. Of course, due to the domestic version, the device will not be pre-installed in Vietnamese as well as the Google Play store that users will need to install manually.

In the framework of this article, we will go into a detailed review of the Xiaomi Mi 10 standard version after more than 1 week of use and to see, with in the price segment 14-15 million VND Mi 10 is real. It's a sensible choice right now when it comes to design, camera, performance and battery life!

Design - Good, but not really "quality"

First, unbox the Xiaomi Mi 10 to see what's inside the box. The version we have on hand is a special version of Peach Gold Mi (Peach Gold), with 8GB RAM and 128GB ROM.

If you look over, you will probably see that Xiaomi Mi 10 looks like a Mi Note 10 Pro, Xiaomi's mid-range smartphone previously launched, especially on the back as well as the location of the camera cluster of Xiaomi. machine. Even the 108MP main camera of Mi 10 is brought up from the Mi Note 10 with the same sensor that we will mention in the Camera section of this article.

Overall, in terms of design language, perhaps no one will complain because this is already a pretty design, and it is not outdated. Therefore, it is understandable that Xiaomi reused the design language this time. Recently, Xiaomi has a habit of reusing the design, so maybe we will go into more details than talking about the design overview of the device.

Say no "quality" is also the reason for it. As a high-priced flagship, the Mi 10 has some minus points in design, not from the way Xiaomi designs its products, but from the quality of its processing. Mi 10 is finished from two glass sides with a metal frame in the middle. This type of "sandwiching" design will not be worth mentioning if Xiaomi is more concerned about the quality of product processing. The contact parts between the two glass sides and the frame of the device are not necessarily stick together, but will leave a small gap.

This gap will not be a big deal, but for some users, they feel uncomfortable because these gaps can completely allow dust to enter, and once the dust has entered It is hard to get out.

The same thing happens to the area adjacent to the main camera to the back of the device. In such areas, dirt is easy to get in.

Another minus point comes from the machine itself when this year Mi 10 has a great thickness and heavy weight. Last year, the Mi 9 weighed only 173g and 7.6mm thickness, so far this year, the Mi 10 has a volume of up to 208g and up to 9mm thick. This makes the Mi 10 when held in the hand really heavy and very thick, not to mention the main camera cluster of the machine is also protruding quite a lot.

The version that we have in hand is the pink version and seems to suit the wings of women more, but women, perhaps few people prefer holding a thick and heavy smartphone in their hands. Many people will think that heavier and thicker will hold a dress as well as equip a higher capacity battery, but not everyone likes it. If possible, Xiaomi design the Mi 10 with the same weight and thickness as last year's Mi 9, if possible, upgrade a bit of battery life.

Camera - 108MP: Good hardware, good software

Camera is a major user attraction on this year's Xiaomi Mi 10 duo. Unfortunately, the standard Mi 10 has an unimpressive camera hardware when compared to the Pro version. Even the Mi 10's camera lacks a telephoto lens, which is worse when compared to the cheaper Mi Note 10. Because of the lack of a telephoto lens, Xiaomi had to add a 2MP depth camera to the Mi 10 to enable it to take better photos of the background.

As such, it can be said that the Mi 10's 108MP camera will handle most of the shooting tasks (besides the super wide-angle camera). So how does the 108MP camera show on the Mi 10?

First, it must be made clear that the 108MP sensor that Xiaomi uses for the Mi 10 is the Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX 108 MP sensor, which is "pristine" from the Mi Note 10 series. At the moment, Samsung only produces two 108MP sensors, HMX and HM1, of which HMX is the sensor present on the Mi 10 duo and HM1 sensor is the sensor present on the Galaxy S20 Ultra (which we There will be a direct comparison between 2 108MP cameras of the two devices in the near future).

The hardware is the same thing, the only change probably comes from software and image processing algorithms. Overall, the photos taken from the Xiaomi Mi 10's 108MP camera still have an extremely good quality: vibrant colors, fine details, smooth HDR processing, photos that tend to be brighter than they actually are.

Some pictures taken from the 108MP camera of Mi 10.

In bright enough conditions with the ideal light, the camera on Xiaomi Mi 10 excelled at its task. However, under some "more challenging" conditions, this camera began to show certain weaknesses.

For example, when shooting in strong backlit conditions, the image is quite dark and has a heavy purple border in the dark areas (as shown below). This is mostly caused by the lens of the device is not high quality and irreversible purple fringing.

The camera application of Mi 10 also has a built-in 108MP shooting mode. With this mode, the machine will produce images at a resolution of 12000 x 9000 quite large and space-consuming (each image is from 15 - 25MB). Of course, image detail will perform very well with the 108MP mode, but if you really need to zoom in on very small details then use this mode, otherwise the normal Auto shooting mode is also too. Enough with most needs already.

For portraits, there's no telephoto camera, so the Mi 10 uses a 108MP wide-angle camera with a 2MP sensor to measure depth for portraits. Mi 10's algorithm for image processing and background separation is quite good, not too much blurry, but because the angle is too wide, the portrait photo is not really "similar" to the portrait photo.

In low light conditions, Mi 10 also has a built-in Night Mode. However, in this mode, it is not understand why the image comes out with colors pushed too harshly than usual, making the overall image becomes not really quality, despite the details and brightness Mi 10 Very well handled.

Performance: Snapdragon 865 still leads the pack

Perhaps performance is a factor that we will not overestimate in this article, because at the moment this is already the most powerful mobile chip. Judging with Antutu and Geekbench 5, the device gives a very high score, nothing to blame.

However, users should also note that because the Snapdragon 865 chip is still quite new, some heavy games have not been optimized to maximize the power of this chip. So if you're using Mi 10 and the game is not really smooth, wait a little longer for game developers to optimize for the new chip, as well as Xiaomi update the MIUI operating system to optimize. performance of Mi 10.

Battery life

If you don't know, the Mi 10 has a 4780mAh battery, which is higher than the 4500mAh battery on the Pro version. And with such a high-capacity battery, users probably do not need to worry about the battery life on the Mi 10. The battery of Xiaomi devices in recent years has not disappointed users.

In fact, with most user needs when unplugging charging at 8am and ending a working / studying day at 6 - 7pm, Xiaomi Mi 10 can fully meet a full day of use. , and even redundant if not performing heavy tasks such as continuous gaming.

Compared to the "brother" Pro, perhaps the Mi 10 only loses in fast charging technology when the device is only equipped with 30W charging capacity instead of 50W as on Mi 10 Pro. Even so, 30W is already quite fast. The plus point of Mi 10 when charging is that both the device and the charger are not too hot, only slightly warm while fast charging.

Conclusion: Should you buy Xiaomi Mi 10?

Perhaps here you also have the answer to this question. With a certain minus point coming from the software (such as no Vietnamese, no Google Play support .), maybe Xiaomi Mi 10 is not a smartphone for ordinary users. This smartphone will only be for a small portion of tech-savvy users in general, or Xiaomi fans in particular.

However, if you have a bit of technological knowledge (to install Google Play) and are not afraid to use English, the Xiaomi Mi 10 is a good smartphone that can meet all your needs, Especially when considering in the price range of about 13-14 million, an extremely attractive price for a smartphone equipped with Snapdragon 865 chip, not to mention other factors such as camera or battery life, There is also no point to blame.