The Xiaomi 14 isn’t just a refresh of the previous model; it brings plenty of upgrades, including a better display and chipset, faster charging, and a completely revamped camera hardware.
Table of Contents
Design and build
The design here isn’t very different from what we’ve seen before from Xiaomi. The noticeable change is the beefier camera bump, which protrudes more from the back. The Chinese version can come in vegan leather, but the global version can only have a glass back. It’s easy to smudge, and it curves into the flat aluminum frame. Overall, the phone’s glossy finish leaves it a bit on the slippery side. Like last year’s model, the Xiaomi 14 has IP68 rating for protection against dust and water.
Dowload interesting ringtone for your phone: ringtonesonic.com
Display on Xiaomi 14
The display of the phone is a 6.36-inch 120Hz OLED, like last year, but now you get a higher resolution LTPO and Gorilla Glass Victus protection. The higher resolution amounts to 460 PPI, which is sharper than what we got on the Xiaomi 13’s 1080p display. Also, you now get support for 12-bit color depth. Other premium features such as HDR10 Plus and Dolby Vision are back too. Because this panel is LTPO, the 120Hz refresh rate is extra adaptive. When it comes to brightness, the Xiaomi can boost up to nearly 1,200 nits in auto mode.
Feature
Audio
The Xiaomi 14 has a pair of stereo speakers with very good loudness. Quality-wise, the speakers are great, with good-sounding vocals and heavier bass than competitors.
Fingerprint reader
There’s an under-display fingerprint reader. It’s very responsive, but we wish the placement was a bit higher up.
Storage
The Xiaomi 14 can come with 256 or 512 gigs or a terabyte of storage on board.
Software
The interface of the phone is Xiaomi’s new Hyper OS 1.0 running on top of Android 14. There are some changes in the design compared to MIUI, but for the most part, it’s pretty similar, and the system feels fluid and snappy as ever.
Something interesting about the Xiaomi 14 is that it has an IR blaster for controlling other devices, and it is hidden within the camera bump itself. For software support, the Xiaomi 14 should get at least four major OS updates and 5 years of security patches.
Chipset
On the chip side, the Xiaomi 14 features Qualcomm’s latest and greatest flagship silicon, the Snapdragon 8N3. It provides both better performance and power efficiency than the Snapdragon 8N2 in last year’s flagships, as well as better ray tracing for games. The Xiaomi 14 does a great job in benchmarks, sitting near the top of the charts. It even outpaces some other current flagships with the same chipset. However, the impressive benchmark scores describe the phone’s peak performance. When it comes to sustained performance over time, the Xiaomi 14 leaves more to be desired.
Battery life on Xiaomi 14
The Xiaomi 14 has a slightly larger battery capacity than last year at 4,610 mAh. The battery life is great, one of the best in class, with an overall active use score of 13 hours and 56 minutes. The Xiaomi 14 did a great job in 2 categories in particular: web browsing and video playback.
This year, there’s support for faster 90W charging instead of 67, and the charger comes in the box with it. We were able to charge the phone from 0 to 94% in 30 minutes, and a full charge took 35 minutes. There’s also support for 50W wireless charging.
Camera
The Xiaomi 14 brings substantial upgrades in camera hardware, bringing its cameras to a level closer to last year’s pro model.
Main camera
What you get on the Xiaomi 14 is a 50MP main cam with a large Omnivision sensor, a 50MP 3.2 times telephoto zoom, and a 50MP ultra-wide camera. During the day, the main cam delivers flagship-grade image quality; the photos come out at 12.5 megapixels due to pixel binning, and they have good sharpness and fine detail, wide dynamic range, and accurate colors. There is a 2x zoom, which is a digital crop from the main cam; the results are unimpressive for a flagship, though, and noticeably softer than the standard shots.
Video quality
You can record video with the main cam in up to 8K at 24 FPS and in up to 4K at 60FPS. With the other cameras, there’s support for electronic stabilization too. 4K video quality from the main cam is right up there with the very best; you get a wide dynamic range, well-developed shadows, good contrast, and no noise. Sharpness and detail are both excellent, and colors are natural. At night, the main cam’s 4K video maintains a very good dynamic range and level of detail, even in the darker parts of the scene.
Telephoto camera
Xiaomi 14 have the 3.2x telephoto camera. It produces excellent zoomed photos; they’re clean and detailed with wide dynamic range and no noise. Xiaomi also did a pretty good job at matching the telephoto’s processing with the main camera’s, and the images are similar in quality and rendition. We can’t say we like the portraits, though; they seem rather soft and rough around the edges.
The macro close-ups from this camera is pretty good; it can focus on subjects as close as 10 cm to produce nice and detailed macro shots. At night, the telephoto does an excellent job and matches the main camera’s overall quality; you get clean-looking photos with great detail and dynamic range. Zoomed 4K videos are nice; the dynamic range is excellent, and exposure is accurate. The footage isn’t quite as sharp as the main cam’s, though, and the detail rendition strikes us as being a bit artificial looking.
Ultra-wide camera
The ultra-wide camera is good as far as this type of camera goes, but still falls behind the other two cameras in quality. 4K videos from the ultra-wide are good, with wide dynamic range, accurate colors, nice contrast, no noise, and well-developed shadows.
The 32MP selfies appear natural with brightened skin, and the dynamic range is on point, but overall, they’re soft and have pale colors. This selfie cam can record 4K video, and the phone has two mics at the front and another two at the back.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi 14 brings you a great screen and speakers, the latest chipset, excellent battery life, and fast charging, and you get a solid and versatile camera experience too.
There are some drawbacks: the lack of autofocus on the ultra-wide and the underwhelming thermal management. But despite all that, the Xiaomi 14 is one of the most capable compact flagships out there, and it’s worth recommending.
