Xiaomi 17T Pro Review: Fewer Innovations, But Still a Huge Amount of Value for 17 Thousand

This year, Xiaomi named its 17T series “Telephoto Master” and built the entire campaign around one thing — the periscopic telephoto lens. Marketing loves to paint every new product as a revolution, so when the Xiaomi 17T Pro in black version arrived on my desk, I expected either a big leap or a big disappointment. The reality is more sober, yet I quite liked the phone after a few days. Let’s go through why.

Black is a Safe Bet

I’ll be honest: if you placed the 17T Pro next to its predecessor, I probably wouldn’t distinguish them. The body has the same rounded sides with flat corners, the same aluminum frame, and the same fiberglass back, which feels nice in hand and doesn’t get smudged with fingerprints. The only tangible change is a smaller and flatter camera island, which no longer has a beveled edge all around. This doesn’t detract from the appearance; rather, it enhances it.

This year, Xiaomi has intensified its color options — Deep Blue and Deep Violet have a beautiful metallic sheen, and reviewers are drooling over them. My black version, in contrast, is an introvert. It’s elegant, but also somewhat invisible, so if you want a phone that people will notice, go for the blue. Black is simply a safe choice for those who don’t want to fuss about color.

What I must commend is the overall impression of the build quality. The phone feels more expensive than it is, has IP68 rating, Gorilla Glass 7i protective glass, and in the box, you’ll also find a black case and a pre-applied screen protector. However, it’s quite a hefty device. With dimensions of 162.2 × 77.5 × 8.25 mm and a weight of 219 grams, it’s a phone for large hands. After a few days, I got used to it, but I wouldn’t recommend it for people with smaller palms. The only truly unpleasant minor detail is the fingerprint reader — Xiaomi placed it quite low, so reaching for it with your thumb is harder than one would expect. The reader itself is very good, though, despite being optical and not ultrasonic. Responses are instantaneous, and even with a slightly dirty finger, I had no problem unlocking the phone.

The Display Can Dazzle and Save Your Eyes

The display is another item that Xiaomi simply carried over from last year — and I’m not complaining, because even then it was among the best in this price range. It’s a 6.83″ AMOLED with 1.5K resolution and a 144 Hz refresh rate. The bezels around it are thin and symmetrical, the panel is perfectly flat, and the whole thing looks very premium.

The brightness is dazzling — the manufacturer promises up to 3500 nits at peak, and I truly had no problem outdoors in the sun. But I’m more impressed by the other end of the spectrum: the panel can dim down to 1 nit, which makes reading in bed at night a pleasure, not an assault on the retina. Xiaomi built an entire narrative around eye protection for the display under the Vision Care umbrella, boasting quadruple TÜV Rheinland certification (low blue light, flicker elimination, circadian rhythm friendliness, and intelligent protection). Whether it will truly save your eyes after years, I’ll leave to the scientists, but DC dimming and high-frequency PWM are present and certainly won’t do you any harm.

The only thing that disappoints me about such an expensive phone is the absence of LTPO technology. The display therefore cannot drop to an energy-saving 1 Hz, but “only” to 30 Hz. In practice, this won’t kill the battery, but it’s a minor detail I would expect in this class. Moreover, 144 Hz is realistically only utilized in a handful of applications — mostly it’s more of a spec sheet number than something you’d notice daily. In the system, the phone always runs at a maximum of 120 Hz.

Dimensity 9500: Power to Spare

Under the hood, the flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9500, manufactured with a 3nm process, beats, along with 12 GB RAM and, depending on the configuration, 256, 512, or 1024 GB of UFS 4.1 storage. Yes, in pure gaming benchmarks, the latest Snapdragon might slightly outperform it, but in real life, it doesn’t matter. The phone is swift in all circumstances, applications launch instantly, and there’s no talk of any lag.

I also tried more demanding games, and the 17T Pro handles them at smooth frame rates without throttling performance after a while. The frame does get warm, but that just means the 3D IceLoop cooling system with a vapor chamber is dissipating heat where it should. With the included case, the heat barely reaches your fingers. I was also pleasantly surprised by the stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos, which play loudly and with better bass than is common in this class, and the strong, precise haptics, which make even ordinary typing a pleasure.

Connectivity includes Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth, NFC, and dual SIM. An interesting feature is Offline Communication, which allows short voice calls between Xiaomi phones even without a network — but it uses Bluetooth, not satellite, so don’t expect anything excessive from it. It’s more of a curiosity in the feature set.

The Telephoto Lens is King, Xiaomi Should Have Replaced the Ultrawide This Year

Here lies the heart of the entire phone. While the setup is again taken from the 15T Pro, if it worked last year, it works now too. The main sensor has 50 Mpx, an aperture of f/1.67, and a large 1/1.31″ chip, a size offered by many flagships costing much more. The result is sharp, detailed images with a nice dynamic range, both day and night. Add to that Leica tuning and Vibrant and Authentic modes, allowing you to choose between a realistic or a more pleasing result.

The real star, however, is the 50Mpx 5× periscopic telephoto lens with a 115mm focal length and optical stabilization. Five-times optical zoom is a rarity in this class — most competitors settle for three times — and Xiaomi capitalizes on it. It brings distant subjects in cleanly and sharply, creates beautiful compression for portraits, and thanks to focusing from as close as 30 centimeters, it can even handle semi-macro shots. Just a note: if you want to shoot close-ups, it’s worth turning off automatic lens switching in the settings, otherwise the phone tends to jump back to the main sensor. Digitally, you can go up to 100×, but consider that a curiosity — beyond 20×, it’s more or less unusable mush, just like with the competition.

The 12Mpx ultrawide lens remains a weakness. It has lower resolution, a small sensor, and most importantly, it lacks autofocus, making it unsuitable for details and visibly struggling in poor light. During the day, it serves for social media, but next to the excellent main camera and telephoto, it feels like a poor relative. Similarly, the 32Mpx selfie camera is solid but lacks autofocus — for group selfies, it sometimes doesn’t focus all faces as it should. A new feature across the series is Leica Live Moment, an equivalent of Live Photos that captures a short movement before pressing the shutter. Personally, Live Photos don’t appeal to me, but those who like them will appreciate that they also work in portrait mode and with all Leica styles.

Where the 17T Pro truly crushes the competition is video. The main sensor can handle 8K at 30 fps and 4K at 120 fps, and you can shoot in a logarithmic Log profile up to 4K/60 fps on both the main and telephoto lenses. You can even upload your own LUT profiles. For a seventeen-thousand-crown phone, this is an unexpectedly rich offering for creators.

Battery for a Day and a Half, Blazing Fast Charging

This is the biggest real innovation. Thanks to silicon-carbon technology, a 7000 mAh battery fits into the body — according to the manufacturer, the largest in the history of international Xiaomi models. Last year’s 15T Pro only had 5500 mAh, so it’s a significant leap.

Battery life is, of course, excellent. The 17T Pro easily lasts a day, and with normal use, it comfortably got me through to the second morning. Nevertheless, I have slightly mixed feelings: with such a large battery, I honestly expected more. Some competing phones with smaller batteries last similarly. Perhaps this is due to not fully optimized software at the time of testing, so there’s a chance that future updates will improve it further. I’m not complaining; I just expected a miracle from seven thousand milliamp-hours and got “only” a very good result.

Charging, on the other hand, is blazing fast. The phone can handle 100 W via cable, so you’ll get from zero to over 50% in about half an hour, and a full charge takes around 70 minutes. What’s great is that the 17T Pro also supports fast charging with the PPS standard from third-party adapters, so you’re not solely reliant on the original. There’s also 50W wireless charging — but for that, you’ll need an official Xiaomi stand, as a regular Qi pad won’t provide such speed.

HyperOS 3: A Beautiful System with Nasty Habits

The phone runs on HyperOS 3, built on Android 16. The system is swift, easy to control, extremely customizable, and has a few clever features — its own version of Dynamic Island, sophisticated lock screens, and a decent array of AI functions including Gemini and Circle to Search. Visually, there’s a clear inspiration from Apple, but it works well.

What annoys me, however, is the bloatware and ads. After the first power-up, I had to clean up pre-installed games and apps, and after a few days, Xiaomi started sending me notifications with tips for “great” games to download. On a cheap phone, I’d shrug it off, but on a seventeen-thousand-crown device, I’d expect a cleaner environment. Fortunately, it can be turned off and uninstalled, but one shouldn’t have to. The second minor hitch is the rather aggressive background app management, which occasionally caused notifications to arrive with a slight delay. However, this happens on all Xiaomi/Redmi phones, not just the 17T, and it’s not a major issue.

On the other hand, the update policy deserves praise: Xiaomi promises 5 major Android versions and 6 years of security patches, so the phone is covered until approximately 2031. While it falls slightly short of Samsung and Google, it’s more than a solid commitment.

Who the Xiaomi 17T Pro is For

Let’s face it: the Xiaomi 17T Pro is not a revolution. It’s last year’s 15T Pro, to which they added a larger battery, a newer chip, and faster charging — and a higher price tag. Those who own the predecessor have no reason to switch.

But when I look past the marketing talk about the “Telephoto Master,” I’m left with a phone that I simply like. It has one of the best cameras in its class, a top-tier display, power to spare, excellent video, and a battery that won’t leave me stranded. The build quality feels more expensive than what Xiaomi charges. At a price of 16,999 CZK, it’s still one of the most interesting offers at the intersection of the upper mid-range and flagship categories — later, the phones will get quite a bit more expensive, with the 256GB version going from 17 thousand to 20,490 CZK. Additionally, until the end of June, Xiaomi has included introductory bonuses, including a trade-in program and a gift for a published review, specifically a Xiaomi Electric Scooter 4 Lite (2nd Gen) worth an additional 6,999 CZK. This, by the way, is one of the best gifts I’ve ever seen with similar promotions.

If you’re looking for a stylish phone that takes great photos, lasts a long time, and won’t break the bank like a full-fledged flagship, the 17T Pro is easy to recommend. Just dedicate ten minutes to cleaning up the system right after unboxing.

Editor’s Rating: 91 %

Are you drawn to the 17T Pro mainly because of its telephoto lens, or would you opt for another flagship for similar money?