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Xiaomi isn’t being coy about the camera capabilities of its new 17T series.
“Nothing in its class comes close,” reads the latest advertisement for the Xiaomi 17T and Xiaomi 17T Pro, both of which are being described by the Chinese tech giant as no less than “The Telephoto Master.” That’s big talk for a pair of devices positioned directly below the Xiaomi 17 and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, but as sub-flagship smartphones go, Xiaomi might actually have a point.
Only really the Honor 600 Pro and OnePlus 15 can rival the Xiaomi 17T Pro and its cheaper sibling for zoom hardware in the upper-mid-range price bracket — all four phones have 50MP telephoto sensors — but neither offer the 5x optical zoom range boasted by Xiaomi’s new devices (for reference, the Xiaomi 15T Pro already uses a 50MP 5x telephoto lens, but the Xiaomi 15T can only manage 2x optical zoom).
The second reason for Xiaomi’s enthusiasm is its ongoing partnership with Leica. You get the same Leica image processing on the 17T series as you do on the flagship Xiaomi 17 series, and the German brand’s signature color science — which is particularly suited to street and portrait photography, as you’ll see below — can be applied to all lenses and focal lengths.
So, is the Xiaomi 17T Pro really “The Telephoto Master”? I took the new phone to Vienna to answer that very question, but here’s an early spoiler: as a loud and proud iPhone Air user, I’ve never missed having a telephoto lens more.
Hitting the streets
When testing the Xiaomi 17T Pro’s telephoto lens, I used the phone in its out-of-the-box state; I didn’t toggle any advanced settings, nor the 50MP resolution option. I also stuck to the Leica Authentic preset, rather than the punchier Leica Vibrant style, which tends to skew too far towards the artificial for my liking.
The photos below were captured at the phone’s fixed 115mm-equivalent focal length (5x), and are my unedited favorites of around 500 snaps taken during my time in Vienna:
Now, those photos were shot using Auto-HDR, so what you see may vary depending on your device’s display. But hopefully you can visualize just how well the Xiaomi 17T Pro reckons with the challenges of light and color in difficult scenarios.
In every example, the details are sharp, and the colors are vibrant; there’s definitely a Leica flavor to the latter element in each photo, but the colors don’t look outright unreal, as they might have done if captured using the alternative Leica Vibrant profile.
As you can see in the photos of the man at the crosswalk and the lamppost in front of the Schönbrunn Palace, the 17T Pro is also particularly adept at maintaining detail in instances where there isn’t one subject to focus on (i.e., there’s a deep depth of field).
That’s not to say the details are universally perfect. If you zoom in on the photo of the Neue Burg museum, for instance, you’ll notice a strange smoothening effect that makes the building looks like it’s wrapped in a protective net; between the trees to the left of the garden picture (where the woman is sitting on the bench), there’s an unnatural, almost angelic glow, which obviously wasn’t present in reality; and in the photo of the museum hallway, the signpost text is a little garbled, which is a tell-tale sign of botched AI intervention.
This post-processing trickery has become a feature of Xiaomi, Honor, and Oppo phones in recent years, and while it’s certainly different from the approach taken by, say, Apple, it does result in some decent (and, crucially, subtle) detail enhancement most of the time. If you go looking for errors, though, you’re sure to find them.
For portraits, I switched from Leica Portrait to Master Portrait, as the former tends to overexpose images. Here are a few examples of the Xiaomi 17T Pro’s 5x portrait capabilities:
As has been the case for a few years now, Xiaomi’s edge detection is supremely accurate — if you zoom in on the street performer’s chin or the loose hairs in the second subject’s beard, for instance, you’ll see that edge detection working overtime.
The bokeh is great across the board, too; I particularly like the seamless transition from detail to blur in the photo of the man with the camera.
To nobody’s surprise, the Xiaomi 17T Pro’s 10x zoom skills aren’t as good as its 5x ones, but you can still get some decent snaps at this sensor-cropped range:
Colors are handled just as well as they are at that fixed 5x optical distance, and while details are definitely softer at 10x, Xiaomi’s artificial smoothening isn’t all that noticeable unless you zoom in (see the tourists in the photo of the Schönbrunn Palace, for example).
The Telephoto Master?
All told, then, the Xiaomi 17T Pro is a capable and versatile shooter, and as we noted in our Xiaomi 17T Pro review, “the standout [feature of the phone] is the telephoto. The reach of the 5x lens sets it apart from the competition and provides some lovely compression when used for close-ups.”
For £799 (or £649 if you opt for the cheaper-but-identically-equipped Xiaomi 17T), I can’t think of a phone with better zoom capabilities (neither phone is available in the US or Australia), and as a regular user of the iPhone Air and iPhone 17, the Xiaomi 17T Pro has left me wishing for a dedicated telephoto lens on the rumored iPhone Air 2 and iPhone 18.
Does the Xiaomi 17T Pro earn its designation as “The Telephoto Master”? Considering the hardware offered by similarly priced competition, it's hard to argue against that claim. You'll get more pro-level features and better wide and ultra-wide performance from the very best camera phones on the market, but you'll pay more for the privilege of owning those phones. As a telephoto-first camera phone, the 17T Pro offers stellar value for money.
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