Xiaomi 14 Ultra
The best camera phone you can buy, and now with a price that brings it into the reach of mortals
“The main camera puts an all-new 23mm Leica lens in front of a one-inch, 50-megapixel sensor, and the results are stunning”
SCORE ★★★★★
PRICE £832 (£999 inc VAT) from xiaomi.com
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra isn’t exactly new – it first appeared in the UK back in February. However, the steep £1,299 launch price put it in an exclusive price bracket. Now it’s had a significant drop to £999, making it a rival to the latest iPhone Pro and Pixel Pro handsets, or a cheaper alternative to Samsung’s top-tier Galaxy S24 Ultra ( see issue 354, p58).
At the new price, it’s a good deal. The phone comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and the camera provision is unrivalled: the rear of the case is dominated by a sizeable circular protrusion that houses four 50MP Leica cameras.
The design isn’t wholly ergonomic. The large camera assembly makes it top-heavy, and when I tried to use the phone one-handed I found it tended to flop out of the top of my hand. I also worried about scratching the large glass covering that sits over the lenses; in the event, the strengthened Xiaomi Shield glass survived my month of testing without a blemish, but I still feel uneasy about what could happen over a year or two of use.
Overall, though, it’s a good-looking design. Its aluminium frame is solid in the hand, and the back is covered in hardwearing “nano-tech vegan leather”, which didn’t pick up any marks during my testing. The only real compromise is a lack of colour options: the phone only comes in black or white.
The front of the phone is almost entirely covered by a 6.7in AMOLED display. Its 3,200 x 1,440 resolution translates into an impeccably sharp 522ppi, and with a peak brightness of 3,000cd/m2 it literally outshines almost every other phone, including the iPhone 15. The variable refresh rate automatically scales between 1 and 120Hz, providing the best possible balance of efficiency and smoothness.
On the software front, Xiaomi’s new HyperOS platform looks like the old MIUI OS, but feels more fluid and responsive. The layout differs from other Android-based phones – notably, Xiaomi doesn’t use an app drawer – but it’s clean and easy to navigate. It also includes a set of bundled Xiaomi apps, which are of mixed quality. The gallery app integrates neatly with Google Photos, and helps keep your photos backed up with minimal human intervention, but others are redundant. Annoyingly, not all of them can be uninstalled.
But the primary attraction of this phone is its extraordinary camera setup. The main camera puts an all-new 23mm Leica lens in front of a one-inch, 50-megapixel sensor, and the results are stunning. My test shots displayed terrific tonal detail, probably helped by the camera’s variable f/1.63 to f/4.0 aperture; bright areas were never blown out, while darker areas were clean and well defined. I’d say the Xiaomi’s main camera even beats the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra’s, producing images full of vibrancy.
For closer framing, you can switch to the fixed 75mm telephoto lens, or the periscope zoom that goes up to 120mm. Having grown accustomed to digital zooms on smartphones, I loved the long optical zoom range, and image quality was again excellent. An ultrawide camera rounds out the roster with a 122-degree field of vision and a minimum focus distance of 5cm for macro photography. While all cameras work well in point-andshoot mode, optional pro controls let you manually set the aperture, ISO, shutter speed and white balance.
The CPU in the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is the same one found in almost every current high-end phone, namely Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This ensures everything feels quick, from the fingerprint scanner to loading and switching apps. Even in demanding games I didn’t experience any performance drops, and loading bars were few and far between. The Game Turbo app adds options to boost performance further, at the expense of battery life.
If you’d rather save energy, you can stick to the balanced, battery saver or ultra battery saver power modes. In balanced mode I got two full days of average use from a single charge, and recharging is a breeze: an empty battery can be refilled in only 33 minutes using the supplied 90W wired charger, and there’s also support for 80W wireless charging. A handy battery check-up feature not only helps you preserve long-term battery health but gives tips on making your remaining charge last as long as possible.
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is hard to fault, and the new lower price only sweetens the deal. Performance and specifications are up there with the best, the screen is fantastic, and the premium design and build quality are only slightly marred by the unbalanced weighting.
More to the point, this is arguably the best camera phone ever made, at any price. It takes high-resolution photos that are crisp, detailed, vibrant and beautifully free from noise; if you’re a photography enthusiast looking for a high-quality camera that’s conveniently built into a smartphone, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is hard to beat.
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC 16GB RAM Adreno 750 graphics 6.7in 120Hz AMOLED screen, 1,440 x 3,200 resolution 5G 512GB storage IP68 quad 50MP/50MP/50MP/50MP rear cameras 32MP front camera Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 NFC 5,000mAh battery USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 Android 14 with Xiaomi HyperOS 75 x 9.2 x 161mm (WDH) 220g 2yr warranty