Xiaomi 13T Pro long-term review

Cameras

The 13T Pro, along with the 13T, are the first ever Xiaomi T-series devices to come with Leica camera branding, and that strongly hints at a significant uptick in quality compared to their predecessors.

The Pro comes to the party with a 50 MP main snapper with OIS, a 12 MP ultrawide, and a 50 MP 2x telephoto. We are very happy to see the 8 MP ultrawide of the 12T Pro relegated to the history books, alongside the mostly decorative 2 MP macro cam. A proper zoom snapper is finally here in the T series, but we'll of course have to see how it fares in real life with our samples.

The peculiarity of having to choose one of two Leica modes for all shots remains - it's now no longer relegated to the non-T flagship Xiaomis. So when you first enter the camera app, it will ask you whether you prefer Leica Vibrant or Leica Authentic. Whatever you choose, you can then easily switch between them with a single tap in the viewfinder. But you do have to choose, there's no 'default' mode, which in itself may turn some people off.

Let's make it as simple as possible. If you like 'the Samsung look' with colors that 'pop' to levels that are slightly exaggerated compared to real life, go with Leica Vibrant. If you're more into moodier, artsier-looking photos, Authentic is for you. These are just general, vague terms, mind you - of course it doesn't mean that the former will necessarily deliver all the pop you want, or the latter will instantly elevate your shots to never before seen levels of artistry. But we feel like it's a good shortcut to keep in mind.

There are actually some visible differences between the two modes, but only for daytime shots. Overall, the Vibrant mode will generally be brighter and have punchier colors, while the Authentic mode targets more accuracy in colors and most of the time has a darker look. The pronounced vignetting we've seen in previous Xiaomi Leica co-branded phones is gone, now you have a very subtle effect that is easy to miss unless you go looking specifically for it.

Since these modes do result in visible, if not huge differences between shots, we decided to give you samples from both so you can compare and figure out which look you enjoy more. Let's start with the Vibrant shots from the main camera. As we've already mentioned, this mode will give you punchy colors which 'pop' more than they did in the real-life scene, but most people seem to prefer this anyway. There's plenty of detail here, good sharpness that doesn't go overboard, and noise is minimal.

Daytime Vibrant shots from the main camera

The Authentic mode has a softer vibe (which isn't to say the images are soft, it's just the vibe they give off), with more accurate colors, deeper shadows, and a darker tone. Interestingly, Auto HDR triggers way more for Vibrant shots than for Authentic ones, in the same scenes.

Daytime Authentic shots from the main camera

The ultrawide delivers better images than the 12T Pro's 8 MP camera, let's just start with that. They look good in Vibrant mode but detail levels aren't very high. Noise is low, dynamic range is decently wide, but contrast is sometimes lacking depending on the scene you're capturing.

Daytime Vibrant shots from the ultrawide

Switch to Authentic mode and you'll get more realistic colors, an overall less processed look, and a tad more contrast.

Daytime Authentic shots from the ultrawide

The zoom shots in Vibrant mode are very good in terms of color 'pop', contrast, and dynamic range, but detail levels are below what the main camera can achieve owing to the smaller sensor here. Intricate details and foliage do suffer from oversharpening more times than not.

Daytime Vibrant shots from the telephoto camera

The Authentic mode darkens the exposure, makes the colors more accurate, and tones down the sharpening somewhat.

Daytime Authentic shots from the telephoto camera

At night the Xiaomi 13T Pro still offers you the two modes - Vibrant and Authentic - but the differences between them are incredibly small, much more so than during daytime. For this reason we've shot all our samples in Vibrant mode.

There's Auto Night Mode on offer for all three cameras, and there's a handy red indicator in the viewfinder telling you when it kicks in and how long the exposure will take. On manual Night Mode you get no such indication which is a bit of a shame.

Anyway, the general gist of Auto Night Mode vs. manual Night Mode seems to be that they are overall incredibly close for the main camera, but the manual one results in shots that are a tad brighter and sharper - that may or may not be preferable to you depending on the vibe you're going for, as sometimes the manual Night Mode images do seem a bit too sharp.

The auto mode shots are amazing. These aren't the best we've seen, but they are very good and just a tad worse than those produced by much bigger sensors fitted to phones costing a lot more than this one. Detail is rich, noise isn't visible, dynamic range is nicely wide, and colors are well saturated without feeling like we're getting too much saturation. Highlights are handled well too.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

As we've already mentioned, Night Mode is very close to auto Night Mode, and when it does do something more, it brightens up everything and adds some sharpness.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

The ultrawide struggles at night without Auto Night Mode or manual Night Mode. Almost half of the time it also produced incredibly grainy - literally grainy - shots as you can see in some of the samples below but we're hoping this was just a bug. Even when that's not the case, the output isn't great. There's a lot of noise reduction and it sometimes smears details. On the other hand, the dynamic range is reasonably wide for an ultrawide, and the colors are good.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

With manual Night Mode shots always seem to look better, so we'd recommend going this route in low-light conditions for the ultrawide camera. The exposure is longer in this mode than in Auto Night Mode, and you can see that there's more to work with here.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide

The zoom shots with Auto Night Mode come out very good, with nice colors, good dynamic range, excellent noise reduction, but - as with the daytime shots - lower detail levels than what comes from the main camera. Still, these are very much usable, and they're quite close (if not all the way there) in quality to the main camera's shots, which is high praise.

Nighttime zoom samples

Manual Night Mode tends to oversharpen the most when it comes to zoom shots, so we'd steer clear from it. Unlike what we've seen for the ultrawide, for the zoom camera we'd recommend sticking with auto mode with Auto Night Mode turned on, as that's how we got our best results.

Night Mode zoom samples

Selfies are captured by a weird camera. The sensor has 20 MP resolution but it's pixel binning, so it should save 5 MP pictures, only the software then upscales these to 20 MP. It's a very convoluted way of doing things, and unfortunately detail levels do suffer from all this processing. The shots can also at times feel pretty soft. On the other hand, the colors are on point, noise is low, and dynamic range is okay.

As with all selfie cameras, at night we strongly suggest you use the screen flash feature and capture shots where there's still some amount of ambient light around. Even so, the softness that we mentioned might creep in during the day will be in full view at night, so these are definitely only usable between friends.

Selfie samples, day and night, Portrait Mode off/on

The Leica branding gave us high expectations about the Xiaomi 13T Pro's cameras, and - aside from the selfie snapper - they didn't disappoint. These aren't the best cameras on the market, but at the price this phone is going for right now, they are incredible. The selfie camera - we hope Xiaomi runs through its inventory of these 20 MP sensors quickly and then we'll get something better.