Xiaomi 13 Lite

Verdict

A slim, mild and sleek-looking cellphone that doesn’t break the bank. Positive, increased efficiency is offered for the cash, however the Xiaomi 13 Lite balances digicam tech, energy, design and price properly.

Introduction

The Xiaomi 13 Lite is a extra inexpensive different to the Xiaomi 13. However you won’t guess that from a look. This could appear a costlier cellphone in some methods, at half the value. 

It has curved entrance glass, is thinner, and has a extra advanced-looking entrance digicam. “Lite” doesn’t imply low cost on this case. 

Xiaomi as an alternative goals to supply a flagship-like expertise for a lot much less cash. It doesn’t do too badly both. Positive, there are some little price range bits in each space: the design, digicam, efficiency and so forth. 

Nevertheless, all of them make sense when squared in opposition to the price, making the Xiaomi 13 Lite a great possibility if you would like a slim, mild and slick-looking cellphone that doesn’t break the bank. 

It prices £449 or €499, for the model with 128GB storage. I’ve been despatched the 256GB mannequin, which isn’t obtainable direct from Xiaomi’s UK retailer on the time of overview. They each have the identical 8GB RAM, although, so all of the impressions right here ought to apply equally to each variations. 

Design and display screen

• Slim, mild and slick-looking
• Glass back and front
• Glorious show outside visibility for this class

The Xiaomi 13 Lite is without doubt one of the most expensive-looking telephones you’ll discover at its value. It’s very slim at 7.2mm thick, and each the front and back panels are curved glass — that is the design fashion of a flagship cellphone, not a mid-tier one. 

Positive, curved entrance glass appears to have gone out of trend a bit just lately, in favour of plain outdated flat glass that doesn’t endure from pooled reflections or slight color shift. However these sandwiched curves don’t half make a cellphone really feel mild and slim. The Xiaomi 13 Lite appears and feels elegant. 

There are a couple of cuts to make this fashion occur, although. Whereas the entrance glass is Gorilla Glass 5, the rear is an unnamed toughened glass. The perimeters are additionally plastic, a lot as they appear precisely just like the metallic end of some Samsung Galaxy telephones. 

Cellphone firm Nothing managed to provide a full metallic and Gorilla Glass 5 cellphone to the same price range, the Nothing Cellphone (1). Nevertheless, it has a flat show, is considerably thicker and was the corporate’s first cellphone. It wanted to push the envelope in a means the Xiaomi 13 Lite doesn’t. 

Like various mid-tier skinny telephones, the Xiaomi 13 Lite additionally solely has a single speaker. It’s pretty loud, has sufficient mid-range content material to keep away from voices and podcasts sounding skinny, however doesn’t have any bass. That is possible as a lot a sacrifice associated to dimension and weight as price range. 

The Xiaomi 13 Lite has a quick in-screen fingerprint scanner too, nonetheless the principally flashy fashion. This cellphone isn’t all about floor, however Xiaomi has targeted extra on the surface-level stuff than a lot of the competitors. This doesn’t lengthen to good water resistance, although. It’s rated at IP53, which means it in all probability gained’t die within the rain, however you positively shouldn’t drop it in a puddle. 

The Xiaomi 13 Lite has a 6.55-inch display screen of 1080p decision. That is simply what you’d count on when spending this a lot cash, however with an added curve at both sides. Contentious as these bent shows are, the curvature isn’t all that extreme and doesn’t trigger apparent picture high quality points past the way in which it aggregates reflections. It additionally makes the display screen borders seem extra-small. Beautiful.

That is an OLED panel, and so unsurprisingly has powerfully wealthy color and wonderful distinction. I discover its default “vivid” setting a bit too scorching, however there are modes for individuals who choose a extra blandly grounded fashion. 

It’s all good things, if abnormal nowadays. The one Xiaomi 13 Lite shock is sort of how vibrant its display screen acquired once I went outdoors to take images. It’s simply vastly brighter than a OnePlus Nord 2T, another I’ve a whole lot of time for. 

After testing it with my colorimeter, I discovered it reaches 920 nits in vibrant situations. That is really slightly above the 900 nits Xiaomi quotes. It additionally says the precise most is 1000 nits, which I think about it might hit with some HDR content material.  

Both means, this wonderful outside brightness contributes to the sense you’re utilizing a flagship-like cellphone. 

The Xiaomi 13 Lite has a 120Hz refresh fee too, however excessive refresh charges have been so frequent for thus lengthy this tech is not attention-grabbing. Upgrading from a very outdated cellphone? This one will really feel much more clean in operation due to the excessive refresh fee.

Efficiency

• Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is an efficient performer for a cellphone of this fashion
• Xiaomi software program has some irritating quirks
• No points with overheating

The Xiaomi 13 Lite runs Android 12 and has the identical MIUI interface you’ll discover on the corporate’s different telephones. It’s largely high quality, even when it does include some crapware preinstalled. 

Nevertheless, I nonetheless dislike Xiaomi’s strategy to the drop-down notifications display screen, regardless of utilizing the corporate’s telephones nearly completely for the final three months.

The usual Android strategy is you flick right down to see your notifications, flick down once more to get to the function toggles – Wi-Fi and so forth. In Xiaomi’s MIUI, you flick right down to see your function toggles, and the left-to-right to get to your notifications. I don’t assume it’s intuitive, and for those who swipe the incorrect means you find yourself banishing notification playing cards. 

Its energy button Google Assistant gesture can also be means too eager. An influence press on turns into a digital assistant summon on the 0.5 second mark. It’s means too straightforward to do the latter. 

These are all niggles, although, and will in all probability not sway your shopping for resolution an excessive amount of. And, sure, you’ll be able to disable the facility button Assistant gesture. I did.

The Xiaomi 13 Lite in any other case runs properly, and is reasonably highly effective. It makes use of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, which has attracted comparisons to the Snapdragon 778G utilized in telephones just like the Nothing Cellphone (1). 

Its CPU energy is fairly much like the Snapdragon 778G’s, however its graphics efficiency is significantly better, sitting nearer to that of the Snapdragon 860. Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless a means beneath the MediaTek Dimensity 1300 or Snapdragon 870 of the Poco F4 5G and OnePlus Nord 2T. 

For a style-led cellphone, this isn’t dangerous. It simply outpaces the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G on graphics efficiency. Excessive-end video games run properly.  

There’s not even a whiff of throttling right here both. Utilizing 3DMark’s stress take a look at, its lowest rating was 99.6% of the best one — excellent consistency. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 could not set data, nevertheless it causes far fewer warmth points than the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. 

Digicam

• Good main digicam {hardware}
• Barely oversaturated color from most important digicam
• Succesful selfie digicam array

The Xiaomi 13 Lite has three cameras on the again, two cameras on the entrance. It’s a reasonably respectable array for a mid-price cellphone. 

Our centrepiece is a 50MP main rear digicam. It doesn’t have OIS or optical picture stabilisation, nevertheless it does use the most effective sensors you may ask for at this degree, the Sony IMX766.

You’ll additionally discover this one within the OnePlus 10T, the OPPO Discover X5 Professional and the Xiaomi 12. It has the chops to cope with nearly any scenario. Whilst you may have a look at its predecessor the Xiaomi 12 Lite’s 108MP sensor jealously, I fee this yet one more extremely. Megapixel counts have by no means meant that a lot past 12MP, in comparison with sensor high quality.

Handheld night time photos look nice if you use the computational Night time mode, element is sound and the photographs typically maintain up properly even if you zoom proper down into the pixels. Difficult textures like far-away grass typically look very stable. These will usually look super-synthetic or like pure mush although lesser digicam {hardware}. 

It’s not a complete smash for the Xiaomi 13 Lite’s most important digicam, although. Its processing routinely oversaturates color slightly. This will get a lot worse for those who swap the “AI” mode on, however barely overhyped greens in grass stay, as do blue skies.

The Xiaomi 13 Lite isn’t fairly in Realme territory, the place the home fashion is that of an 8-year-old drunk on Haribo, however I’ve seen extra restrained outcomes from Xiaomi in recent times. I count on it’s as a result of Xiaomi thinks of this as a youthful individual’s cellphone, and “these loopy youngsters love their color” — or some related sentiment.

You’ll be able to see the distinction if you swap to the ultra-wide, which reveals rather more pure color saturation. The excellent news: you’ll be able to repair it with a nudge of the saturation slider in any photograph enhancing app. A little bit further color saturation is never offensive anyway.

This additionally helps to cover the purple tinge that may seem in greys and browns by the Xiaomi 13 Lite’s most important digicam. 

The Xiaomi 13 Lite’s ultra-wide seems to make use of an 8MP Sony IMX355 sensor, as seen within the Pixel 3’s entrance digicam. It’s not dangerous. Distortion on the corners of the body isn’t too dramatic, The notion of element through the day is sweet for a low-res sensor, and the cellphone’s HDR optimisation kicks in simply because it does in the principle digicam. Simply don’t count on miracles at night time. 

Our final digicam is a 2MP macro. It’s fairly poor, like all cameras of such a decision. 

The entrance cameras get extra consideration than you may count on at this degree. The Xiaomi 13 Lite has a 32MP Samsung GD2 imaging digicam and an 8MP depth digicam. 

My first assumption was the 8MP can be used for one of many three subject of view choices within the app — 0.6x, 0.8x and 1x. Nevertheless, after trying on the photos it does appear the 8MP digicam is used primarily for the portrait mode, to separate topic from background when synthetic background blur is utilized. The Xiaomi 13 Lite does appear to be higher than most at finessing object detection in these photos. There’s a lot of selfie enjoyable available right here, and the face-manipulating filters are disconcertingly highly effective as ever.

Video is OK, with out trying nice on paper. The Xiaomi 13 Lite has a most seize mode of 4K/30. There’s no 4K mode with 60fps seize. Nevertheless, this 4K/30 prime mode is correctly stabilised utilizing EIS. For informal seize, if a digicam mode isn’t stabilised, it would as properly not exist.

Battery life

• 67W charging is mid-tier, nonetheless quick
• No wi-fi charging
• OK however unremarkable battery life

The Xiaomi 13 Lite has a 4500mAh battery and helps 67W charging. This lets it attain 100% cost in 43 minutes, and it hits 50% in 20 minutes.

Whereas not Xiaomi’s quickest, it’s nippy and makes use of the identical wired charging customary because the Xiaomi 13. It loses wi-fi charging, although, which is one thing I’m joyful to see dropped at this degree. 

Battery life is essentially unremarkable, which once more isn’t any shock when the Xiaomi 13 Lite clearly trades away from battery capability with the intention to attain its 7.2mm thickness. I discover I sometimes end the day with lower than 20% cost left. 

This isn’t a cellphone you’ll be able to hammer, and nonetheless count on to final till midnight. It’s going to be extra noticeable in the summertime months for those who spend extra time outdoor and the Xiaomi 13 Lite lets rip with its 920-nit show extra usually. Nevertheless, in March 2023 in gray London, I haven’t typically needed to give it a top-up to final till bedtime.

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