Mi 11X Pro: 3 reasons to buy and 3 reasons to skip this flagship phone

Xiaomi has made a strong comeback into the upper mid-range and high-end smartphone market in India with the launch of the Mi 11 series. The new lineup brings with it three devices, the Mi 11 Ultra, Mi 11X, and the Mi 11X Pro. As we have already seen, the range-topping, Mi 11 Ultra, offers excellent performance and gives tough competition to the best in the Android world, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Mi 11X, on the other hand, comes out as one of the best smartphones for Rs 30,000. But what about the Mi 11X Pro? Well, we have reviewed the smartphone, and here are three reasons why you should buy the Mi 11X Pro and three reasons why you shouldn’t.

3 reasons why you should buy the Mi 11X Pro

Gorgeous display

The Mi 11X Pro features a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with full-HD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. Our in-house reviewer, Nitansh Rastogi, describes the display of the Mi 11X Pro as “a godsend for entertainment lovers”. That should pretty much explain to you how good the screen is. In our review, we found that the display of the Mi 11X Pro has a high brightness level. Being an AMOLED display, it has an impressive contrast ratio. The 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling, navigating, and playing games a delight on the smartphone.

What is even more interesting here is that while most flagship-grade smartphones currently have a display with a punch-hole mounted to the top-left corner of the screen, the Mi 11X Pro has a center-mounted punch-hole on its display. It not only makes the device look more symmetrical but it is also better for gaming as it won’t obstruct the controls on your screen as much as a left-mounted punch-hole does. 

Smooth performance

The Xiaomi Mi 11X Pro packs the flagship smartphone chipset from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 888. It is the most powerful, if not, one of the most powerful chipsets in the Android smartphone world. Plus you get the fastest memory available for smartphones at the moment, the LPDDR5.

So, as you can imagine, the Mi 11X Pro offers excellent performance. According to Nitansh, the Mi 11X Pro is “blazing fast”. If you are someone who plays graphics-intensive games or does heavy multitasking, the Mi 11X Pro will impress you with its powerful performance.

Long battery life

Smartphones with flagship-grade hardware usually have powerful processors and a large screen with a high refresh rate. This tends to have an adverse effect on the battery life. And we usually see people complaining about poor battery life on their upper mid-range and high-end smartphones. Fortunately, that is not the case with the Mi 11X Pro.

The phone’s 4,520mAh battery might not seem a lot but it offers “great endurance” according to our reviewer. The Mi 11X Pro managed to offer around 24 hours of battery backup with around 5 hours of screen-on time on moderate usage. So, you don’t have to worry about charging the Mi 11X Pro frequently. A single charge will get you through a day.

3 reasons why you should buy the Mi 11X Pro

No telephoto sensor

If you are buying a flagship-grade smartphone, you’d want it to come with all the bells and whistles including a full-fledged rear camera setup that has an ultrawide and telephoto camera along with the primary sensor. Well, this is where the Mi 11X Pro disappoints.

While the phone comes with an excellent 108MP primary camera at the rear and a decent 8MP ultrawide sensor, it misses out on a telephoto lens altogether. If you want to close-up images, you wouldn’t be as impressed with the Mi 11X Pro as its other features.

Could have offered faster charging

The charging speed of smartphones has evolved drastically over the past few years. Today, we have phones that feature jaw-dropping 120W charging. Even mid-range smartphones like the Realme 8 Pro feature 50W charging. Unfortunately, the Mi 11X Pro comes with only a 33W charging speed.

Sure, 33W charging isn’t slow by any means but when you consider that phones cheaper than Mi 11X Pro have 50W charging, you do wish that the phone had a faster-charging speed. In our review, we found that the Mi 11X Pro charges from 10% to 100% in about an hour.

Slightly unwieldy

There’s no doubt that the Mi 11X Pro looks great with its symmetrical design and eye-catching color options. However, the device could have been better in terms of ergonimics. The rear camera hump of the Mi 11X Pro protrudes quite from the body of the smartphone. Due to this, the phone wobbles when you keep it on a surface. The issue will continue to persist even if you use the case bundled with the smartphone.

The next issue with the design of the Mi 11X Pro is to do with its size. Owning to a large screen, the Mi 11X Pro is quite seizable, which makes the device uncomfortable to hold in long periods of usage. In our review, Nitansh says “my left hand got numb because I was exchanging messages with a friend for about an hour, using the phone with both hands”. That being said, this issue persists with most flagship smartphones out there.