Xiaomi 17T Pro Review – great value Premium smartphone, it’s that simple

Xiaomi’s latest smartphone could easily turn the Australian mobile market on its head, on price and performance it’s perhaps one of the best bang for your buck smartphones on the market. But, given how tentative Aussies are to try anything new in this space, the Xiaomi 17T Pro is more likely to please the niche brand lovers and slowly attract a new fan base as the company really embeds itself into this market.

The EFTM Snapshot: Not the best from Xiaomi but all you could ever need. This “T” Series phone has an epic Leica co-engineered camera, battery life for days and a pretty simple and easy to live with design and style.

I’m not sure there’s much too this smartphone that needs discussing other than it’s battery life and that camera. In reality, like all $1,000+ smartphones it’s got the performance you need for 99.99% of all possible tasks. I felt the performance to be snappy and slick at every turn and for every app launch.

Battery Life.

The Xiaomi 17T Pro has a staggering 7000mAh battery. How long does it last? No idea, I never came close to troubling the bottom third of the battery. I’m going to bed with 50% battery. I woke up at 3,30am today, it’s almost 3.30pm right now and I have 73% battery.

For sure this is certified all-day battery life – as with any such claim, that depends on what you’re doing with it, however, you’d struggle to really pressure a battery this big. If you do, there’s great battery saver modes in the settings of the Xiaomi 17T Pro that would likely draw it even further out.

I love all the cool battery settings to, to give you ideas on what actions you can take to just eek out that every last bit of the battery power if needed.

Worries over, this is a winner.

Ok, let’s talk Xiaomi 17T Pro camera

Having epic zoom numbers isn’t new to Smartphones, I get that. Nor is AI processing or enhancement.

The Leica lenses here are built to rely on both at the heights of the zoom, and it does it well.

Across the zoom levels colour and clarity are good.

With a 5x Optical zoom on the Xiaomi 17T Pro – everything after that is hybrid, and while 10x is a tap to switch option, zooming to the 120x max is not as easy as you’d think. Pinch to zoom is slow, really slow, like you can count the zoom increments from 10 to 120. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but we got there in the end.

Ultra-wide at 0.6x

1x Standard Wide

Then there’s a 2x

5x

and the 10x

Before we pinch to get into that 120.

And that’s impressive.

Seriously, none of us had any idea that chair said Zinger until we got this zoom.

Of course, there’s some hella AI going on here, and you can see that from the 10x onward, a kinda smoothing in the cloths and outlines.

And I only really tested the Xiaomi 17T Pro at Origin. Personal family shots in normal light are excellent, there aren’t many cameras that can’t handle that.

I was interested to see how this handled the low light scenes, the fast moving night sport.

The light show at Origin – amazing.

And then, the on-field action, 10x – really impressive

But, certainly some AI smoothing going on there on the players in shot.

The Xiaomi Design

Unremarkable is the best description of the Xiaomi 17T Pro here, and that’s good.

A protective case comes in the box with your Xiaomi 17T Pro, winning, and this magenta colour looks like it could be the colour of 2026 – we’ll see.

What you get here is the modern smartphone, square edged, camera island, nothing to see here.

The cameras on the Xiaomi 17T Pro are arranged in 4 circles like the Number 4 on a dice, in a square like island, and the island (sorry “plateau”) isn’t as big and chunky as your mainstream brand flagships either – so that’s a win.

No where near as heavy as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but not thin or sexy in any way – it’s just good, plain and simple.

I found the screen to be vibrant at all times, and phone call quality as excellent too.

Should I buy the Xiaomi 17T Pro?

Yes, no question. But to get to that point you first need to be either ready to switch to Android, or from another Android brand. That’s what trips many people up.

I suspect Xiaomi’s biggest gains will come from other second tier brands like Oppo – if you were willing to get an Oppo you’ll for sure be happy to use a Xiaomi.

But converting folks from Apple and Samsung is a whole other ball game – in Australia – we’re just utterly stuck in our ways, loyal and lazy is how I describe it.

However, I can say in simple terms my couple of weeks as a Xiaomi 17T Pro user have been excellent, not a hassle in the world, not a thing I couldn’t do.

Well worth it – especially given it’s a sub 00 phone.

Xiaomi 17T Launch Deals

The device launches here at end of financial year, so Xiaomi is trying to get some launch orders with a few deals.

Order online from “MI” as they call it, you’ll get a 0 discount, as well as a bonus gift (9.7 inch tablet).

Xiaomi 17T Availability

The devices go on sale at Xiaomi today, and the deals last till end of day June 30.

Side note, there are also some added buyer benefits on the 17T series, with 3 months of Google AI Pro, 3 Months of YouTube Premium and 1 compliementary screen replacement within the first six months of ownership – not bad!

Web: Xiaomi

Full specs of the Xiaomi 17T Pro