Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: the king of the camera phones

Xiaomi 14 Ultra: Two-minute review

The past few years have seen the temperature quickly rise in the camera phone market. For many months in 2023, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra ruled the roost, until the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, with its Leica-powered camera technology, came along to shake things up. The latter phone was usurped by the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra earlier this year, but now Xiaomi is back with the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, a handset that proves Xiaomi’s commitment to producing the best camera phone.

With four rear cameras – including two telephoto lenses – and a 32MP front-facing camera, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra has everything you need. Images are captured on a new 1-inch sensor that delivers a truly step-less variable aperture with intermediate stops between f/1.6 and f/4.0. This guarantees incredible results in low light and produces a level of detail that has never before been possible on a smartphone. The phone’s sensor handles highlights equally well, with detail maintained even when you’d expect it to be blown out.

The quality continues with the phone’s design. A high-strength aluminum frame and Xiaomi Shield Glass provide all the strength and protection required to stand up to day-to-day wear. The softness of nano-tech vegan leather on the rear helps to give a nice tactile experience, too.

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s 6.73-inch LTPO AMOLED display with Xiaomi Shield Glass continues this thread of quality, offering a 3200 x 1440 pixel resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate that’s fantastic for watching videos and gaming.

One of my only gripes with this phone’s design is that the weight of the rear camera notch makes it impossible to hold and operate with one hand. Annoyingly, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra kept tipping out of the top of my hand.

The performance of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is another one of its strengths. The phone’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset is an impressive CPU with very few limitations, and enables apps to keep running with very little downtime.

All in all, then, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is a fantastic phone. Whether it’s worth the money will depend on how much you intend to use your phone for camera and video work. Considering some of the best beginner DSLRs can be picked up for a similar price, potential customers will need to weigh up whether they want their phone and camera in one package. If the answer is ‘yes’, then the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is hard to beat.

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Price and availability

• Priced from £1,299
• Released in the UK February 2024
• Not available in US

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is available in the UK for £1,299. This will get you 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, with no other options to choose from. This incredible camera phone is yet to be released in the US or Australia.

One of the 14 Ultra’s direct rivals is the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is currently retailing in the UK for £1,349, so Xiaomi’s price is a little cheaper. A 256GB version of the S24 Ultra can be picked up for £1,249, which means the Xiaomi 14 Ultra sits squarely in the middle in terms of price.

This phone is very much for photography enthusiasts. If you don’t need the next best camera phone, but rather a great everyday phone, then check out one of our best phones of 2024.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Specs

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Design

• High-strength aluminium frame
• Xiaomi Shield Glass
• Nano-tech vegan leather

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is beautifully designed and engineered with some of the best materials seen on any flagship phone at the moment. The case is dominated by a sizable circular notch that protrudes out of the back. Inside are four amazing Leica cameras alongside a flash, with everything protected by strengthened glass. 

There’s no denying that the phone looks great, but I have a couple of problems with it. The first is that I was scared of breaking it. The 7 or 8mm protrusion means that every time you put the Xiaomi 14 Ultra down, you’re in danger of scratching the glass. This is not something you want to be concerned about, especially when the cameras are the main selling point of the phone.

The second problem I have is that this camera notch makes the top half of the phone significantly heavier than the bottom half. This wouldn’t be a problem, save for the fact that it’s almost impossible to hold the phone in one hand and type with that same hand. Every time I tried, the phone just flopped out of the top of my hand. Not great at all. I appreciate that Xiaomi wanted to keep the overall weight down, but some extra weight towards the bottom would have helped to counter this issue.

Aside from the problematic notch, the overall design is incredibly impressive. It’s beautiful to look at and masterfully engineered. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is made from a brand-new 6M42 high-strength aluminum frame, Xiaomi Shield Glass, and next-generation Xiaomi nano-tech vegan leather. 

It sounds impressive, and believe me, it is. I tried bending the phone, and it didn’t budge a bit. The material choices not only keep everything safe but also increase durability. The strength represents a doubling of rigidity compared to the Xiaomi 13 Pro.

The back of the device is covered in a new material developed by Xiaomi called nano-tech vegan leather. It is resistant to both wear and dirt, increasing overall durability. At the end of my tests, which took around a month, there were no visible marks on it at all. Now, I think if you took a fingernail to it, you’d quickly scratch it but that’s the payoff with a textured surface like this.

The power button and volume rocker are located on the right-hand side of the phone and are nicely positioned for easy access. The power button has a textured finish, which is a nice touch and helps users identify it without looking.

The device lacks a range of different colors to customize the user experience. Xiaomi has instead opted to only ship it in either black or white.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Display

• 6.73-inch LTPO AMOLED with Xiaomi Shield Glass
• 3200 x 1440 px resolution (20:9 aspect ratio)
• 120Hz Refresh rate

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra boasts a gorgeous 6.73-inch LTPO AMOLED, which absolutely looks the part. The display is almost edge to edge, with pixels running right up to the point when the glass starts to curve off towards the aluminum edges. This is achieved by stacking multiple layers and thereby introducing the required flexibility at the edges. It works really well, and it blends seamlessly into the frame.

The display has 522 PPI and a 3200 x 1440 pixel resolution, which works out at a 20:9 aspect ratio. This is noticeably larger than the 2670 x 1200 resolution on the Xiaomi 14. I would love to have seen the resolution pushed up to 4K, especially for a phone labeled ‘Ultra’.

The inclusion of an LTPO panel with a variable refresh rate significantly improves light efficiency and power consumption. The technology allows for refresh rates of anything between 1 and 120Hz. The top end is perfect for gamers needing the quickest refresh speeds. It performs really well and delivers buttery smooth graphics, whatever you’re using the phone for.

At 3,000 nits, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra delivers a higher peak brightness than even the iPhone 15’s Super Retina XDR OLED panel. At this brightness, the display is still visible in the brightest of environments.

All of this next-level technology is protected by Xiaomi Shield Glass, which not only provides the necessary transparency but also superior strength and drop resistance. I had no concerns and was glad to see the glass survive a few knocks.

• Display score: 4.5 / 5

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Software

• HyperOS out of the box
• Runs on top of Android 14
• Four years of OS updates, five years of security updates

As with all of the Xiaomi 14 Series, the 14 Ultra takes on HyperOS. This is Xioami’s new interface, which looks very much the same as its old OS, MIUI. To be fair, Xiaomi has rebuilt it from the ground up, resulting in significantly more fluid and responsive transitions. These changes are most welcome, as MIUI was beginning to struggle on recent new phone releases.

The adoption of HyperOS is not all uneventful, though. One of the primary benefits is that it helps integrate the 14 Ultra into the wider Xiaomi ecosystem, which includes wearables, tablets, and even the Xiaomi Car in 2024.

The user experience is very different from almost all other Android phones, with Xiaomi ditching the long-established app drawer. This isn’t a problem, though, and if anything, it helps to simplify what can often feel like an over-cluttered interface. 

One of the other big changes is that Xiaomi has followed swipe-down gestures found on iOS devices, with the top left and right corners delivering different results. I love that particular functionality on my iPhone, and it’s great to see other phone manufacturers taking note.

As is the case with almost all Android phones, the 14 Ultra and its HyperOS include a lot of apps that could be considered bloatware. Unfortunately, this is not just the case for third-party apps; it has seeped into Xiaomi’s homegrown apps too. I like to get rid of as many of these straight after setting up a new phone but Xiaomi doesn’t allow for some to be removed, which is frustrating.

There are, of course, some things that I love about HyperOS. One of the most significant positives is its gallery app, which integrates natively with Google Photos. This helps to keep your photos backed up without requiring much human intervention.

If you’re interested in digging deeper into everything that HyperOS offers, Xiaomi has a dedicated page for all things HyperOS.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Cameras

• Main 50MP f/1.63-f/4.0 23mm focal length
• Floating telephoto 50MP f/1.8 75mm focal length
• Periscope 50MP f/2.5 120mm focal length
• Ultra-wide 50MP f/1.8 12mm focal length
• Front 32MP f/2.0 90° FOV

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is pretty impressive in most areas but here’s where it gets really special. Quite simply, it boasts the best cameras of any phone, ever. 

It all begins with an all-new Leica 1-inch sensor for the main camera. The 2023 model already had a very capable 1-inch sensor but the newer one provides a truly step-less variable aperture with intermediate stops between F1.63 and F4.0. Leica continues to dominate this area of the market and the results are stunning, with fantastic low-light performance and unrivaled image quality.

Above all, I was most impressed by the sensor’s ability to handle such a wide dynamic range. Rather than blowing out highlights, it was able to sensitively control them and retain the necessary detail. It was the same story with the darker areas. Noise is also kept to a minimum in low-light areas.

Images were noticeably crisper and more vibrant compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which I was using for comparison shots. Images captured using the latter were much flatter, which might be preferable to photographers wanting more color grading control in post-production. The Xiaomi defaults to a Leica Vibrant profile but this can be swapped out for Leica Authentic. This seemed equally vibrant in my estimations.

Moving from inside to outside, the main camera system is located in a circular notch that protrudes out from the rear. This provides four different lenses, ranging from a 120mm periscope down to a 12mm ultra-wide. In between, there’s a 75mm telephoto and a 23mm main. 

All of these lenses produce outstanding results, but I was most impressed by the bokeh that all four lenses were able to generate. It’s clean, predictable, and all generated in-camera.

The telephoto and periscope cameras provide an almost unbelievable level of zoom, something that is rarely seen in mobile phone cameras. Having become accustomed to digital zooms that reduce detail and introduce noise, it’s a breath of fresh air to be able to access such long focal lengths at the press of a button.

Pro mode on the rear camera makes it possible to change all the settings that you would expect to find on any DSLR, including aperture, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance. Providing this level of fine control could have led to an overwhelming interface but Xiaomi has done a fantastic job of making settings and dials incredibly user-friendly and intuitive.

The front-facing camera offers a lower but still impressive 32MP lens, and is fixed at f/2.0. There is little to distinguish between the rear and front cameras, which is a testament to what Leica and Xiaomi have achieved. Images from the front camera are as sharp as a pin and auto-focus is bang on every time.

Video quality is equally good, with 4K resolution possible up to 120 fps. Being able to slow footage down up to four times gives an impressive amount of flexibility when video editing in post-production. It is possible to increase the resolution to 8K but this results in a drop in frame rate to 30 fps. So, even though the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is primarily targeted at stills photographers, there is still plenty to attract amateur or indie videographers.

• Camera score: 5 / 5

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform
• GPU: Qualcomm Adreno GPU
• 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM

The 14 Ultra follows in the footsteps of the Xiaomi 14 with the inclusion of Qualcomm’s flagship mobile silicon Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This is an identical CPU to what is found in almost every flagship phone of 2024 including the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Oppo Find X7 Ultra, and the Honor Magic 6 Pro.

The CPU is boosted by a Qualcomm Adreno GPU to help with graphics processing. As a result, this is one of the most powerful phones on the market. Everything about the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is quick, from the fingerprint scanner to app loading and switching.

HyperOS manages performance like a pro, with power profiles that keep all your favorite apps under control. There is a dedicated ‘performance mode’ but I never found a need for it.

With its 120Hz display and powerful processors, the 14 Ultra is also sure to appeal to gamers. I didn’t experience any performance drops and loading bars were few and far between. Game Turbo helps increase performance with the ability to prioritize networking latency, touch response input, and, of course, boost performance at the expense of power consumption.

• Performance score: 4.5 / 5

Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Battery

• 5000mAh (typ) battery
• 90W HyperCharge
• 80W wireless HyperCharge

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra sports a slightly beefier 5000mAh battery than the Xiaomi 14, which uses a 4,610mAh cell. Wireless charging is also possible up to 80W, rather than only 50W. Wired charging still tops out at 90W, but that’s to be expected.

Advertised charging speeds are 33 minutes for wired and 46 minutes for wireless. I wasn’t able to test the latter, but the wired charging time is relatively accurate. Such quick charging times are incredible and will help ensure you’re never out of juice for long. To get these speeds, you’ll need to make sure ‘boost charging speed’ is activated in the phone’s settings menu.

The phone offers four different battery modes, including performance, balanced, battery saver, and ultra battery saver. You can expect to enjoy two or even three days of average use from the battery. If you are regularly gaming or streaming videos, then this will naturally reduce in time.

There’s also a really nice ‘Battery check-up’ feature that will not only tell you what can be done to increase battery life, but also how much time you’ll gain for each individual action taken. I found this incredibly helpful, especially when I had a low battery but couldn’t get to a charging point.

• Battery score: 4.5 / 5

Should you buy the Xiaomi 14 Ultra?

Buy it if…