撰写[[[Foreword: Xiaomi 14 Pro came in the name of all-round leap]]]
In the history of Xiaomi’s mobile phone, "Shengbei" is actually a word that is not uncommon. After all, looking back, it is not difficult to find that there have been several obvious positioning and design improvements since the first generation of Xiaomi mobile phones.
For example, the pursuit of fuselage materials since Xiaomi 4, such as the "exploration version" technology started in Xiaomi 6, such as the image ability that has been significantly improved since Xiaomi 10, and has directly reached the forefront of the industry, and for example, in recent years, it has attracted a lot of attention from the outside world. Xiaomi and Leica have cooperated in mobile phone image optics, algorithms and adjustment.
It is undeniable that it is with this self-improvement that Xiaomi digital series models have already stood in the ranks of the "top image flagship" in the domestic mobile phone market. But it is precisely because of this that when Xiaomi shouted the slogan of "comprehensive leap-forward upgrade" at the end of 2023, it would make people care more.
How can Xiaomi make consumers feel that the product is "leapfrogging" again on the existing basis? What technologies and brand characteristics will the new Xiaomi digital series models carry?
After reading the Xiaomi 14 Pro evaluation brought by our Sanyi Life today, you may have a clearer understanding of this.
[[[Appearance: the narrowest frame of the mass production machine and a brand-new full-curved shape]]]
Seeing Xiaomi 14 Pro at first sight, I believe almost everyone will have the same impression, because its screen border is really narrow this time.
Indeed, the screen frame of Xiaomi 14 Pro may be the narrowest in the existing mass production machine, both in terms of parameters and perception. In particular, the width of the bottom frame is almost equal to that of other sides.
How is this done? According to the official information, on the one hand, Xiaomi 14 Pro uses the industry-advanced FIAA screen routing technology and integrates the panel routing inside the display area, so the screen border can be narrower.
On the other hand, Xiaomi 14 Pro also uses the exclusive "Millet Dragon Crystal Glass", which is filled with a large number of micro-crystals with a size of 25 nanometers, and the spread of fine cracks is avoided through interlocking results. Therefore, its anti-drop performance can reach 10 times that of ordinary mobile phone panel glass, and its scratch resistance is also 1.32 times.
Perhaps it is precisely because the glass material is special enough that Xiaomi 14 Pro is also ingenious in the shape of the screen this time. It can be seen that it adopts a very special "full-depth micro-curved screen" design, that is, the four sides and corners of the screen are slightly bent down with the same curvature.
What benefits will this design bring? To put it simply, it avoids the phenomenon of border thickening caused by the inconsistency between the curvature of the screen and the curvature of the glass, which often appears in the corners of the previous "four-curved screen", and makes the feel of the four-curved screen coexist with the ultra-narrow border characteristics of the straight screen.
[[[Screen: starting Huaxing C8 material, 3000nit brightest domestic screen]]]
Speaking of the screen, the screen panel that Xiaomi 14 Pro is equipped with this time is not simple.
From the basic parameters, it is based on the C8 luminescent material jointly developed by Xiaomi and Huaxing, with a size of 6.73 inches, a complete resolution of 3200*1440, and a 1-120Hz LTPO stepless variable refresh rate.
On the other hand, this screen also has 12-bit color rendering and the highest peak brightness of 3000nit in the industry, and uses the strategy of DC dimming above 80nit and high-frequency dimming below 80nit at 1920PMW.
In addition, in response to the requirements of professional users for color, Xiaomi 14 Pro supports professional primary color display in SDR and HDR modes. It not only solves the yellow problem of D65 of traditional OLED screen, but also supports cross-ecological display with the same color.
Finally, as a high-end model of Xiaomi digital series, Xiaomi 14 Pro naturally has a built-in master image quality engine derived from Xiaomi TV. It also makes it one of the few smart phones that can perform super-division, frame insertion, picture color adjustment and scene optimization on video playback.
That is to say, even if there are no members who open the major video streaming platforms, in theory, the effect of watching videos with Xiaomi 14 Pro will be better than other models.
[[[Details: Independent Shuangyang +USB 3.2, luxurious rear-view modeling]]]
After reading the front shape and screen parameters of Xiaomi 14 Pro, let’s take a look at the details of other parts of its appearance.
First of all, in the frame part, Xiaomi 14 Pro still uses aluminum alloy middle frame material this time, but on the one hand, it realizes the design of the same color of the frame and the back cover through vapor deposition process, and on the other hand, the straight edge shape matches the ultra-narrow front frame, which also brings the feeling of "the screen is suspended in the hand".
On this basis, the signature up-and-down independent double promotion of Xiaomi digital series models was not absent this time. It is worth mentioning that the upper speaker and earpiece of Xiaomi 14 Pro are two separate units, and the earpiece uses a micro-slit directional design, which can reduce the sound leakage and better protect privacy in public places.
At the bottom of the fuselage, the Xiaomi 14 series has been equipped with a USB3.2 interface. Among them, Xiaomi 14 uses the 5Gbps specification of USB 3.2 Gen1, and Xiaomi 14 Pro is upgraded to USB 3.2 Gen2, which is 10Gbps.
Finally, moving the line of sight to the back of the fuselage, we can see that Xiaomi 14 Pro is equipped with a huge, square rear three-camera module. At the edge of the module, there is a circle of fine, metallic connecting frames as decoration, which visually makes the bulge in the back-shot area less obvious, and also enhances the grade sense of the fuselage details to a certain extent.
After careful observation inside the rear-view module, it will be found that Xiaomi 14 Pro uses a lot of texture decoration under the cover, which makes it look more attentive and "not monotonous" in design. Especially compared with the previous model, this change is more obvious.
[[[Image: brand-new sensor scheme, Leica optical upgrade]]]
Since Xiaomi 12S series began to cooperate with Leica to develop imaging technology, it has now reached the third generation. Throughout this history, it is not difficult to find that Xiaomi has made great progress in the "stacking" of CMOS sensors, the optical design of lenses, and the algorithmic thinking of computational photography through cooperation with Leica.
Then the question is coming. What is the evolution of Xiaomi 14 Pro this time? The answer is actually very simple, because this time it wants it all.
First of all, in the CMOS scheme, the wide-angle main cameras of Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro are all replaced with brand-new "Light and Shadow Hunter 900" sensors. This is a 1/1.31 inch, 50 million pixels, and the single pixel size is as high as 1.2 microns.
Moreover, compared with other CMOS schemes, "Shadow Hunter 900" has a great functional feature, that is, it supports dual native ISO Fusion Max imaging. This is a combination of software and hardware imaging method, which takes two photos with different exposures in one frame through two different amplification circuits, and then fuses them through algorithms.
What are the advantages of this imaging method? To put it simply, it can take photos with high dynamic range without much frame integration, so it also takes into account the high tolerance, short exposure and quick snapshot.
It can be seen that, especially when shooting dynamic objects, Xiaomi 14 Pro’s "everything chasing focus" algorithm and the new technology of the sensor can complement each other, one ensures accurate continuous focusing, and the other makes the photographed photos clear, bright and ghostless.
On this basis, Xiaomi 14 Pro has several other image designs worthy of attention. First, it has a Leica SUMMILUX large aperture lens with three primary focal lengths of 14mm, 23mm and 75mm, in which the main aperture is as high as f1.42, which is the largest level in the current mobile phone.
Obviously, a larger aperture means more light, better Jiao Wai blur and better dark details. On this basis, the main camera of Xiaomi 14 Pro also has the 1024-level variable aperture technology from f1.42 to f4.0 this time. Please note that this is a real physical aperture, not the effect of algorithm simulation.
At the same time, the ultra-wide angle and telephoto of Xiaomi 14 Pro use JN150 megapixel CMOS. Among them, the 75mm telephoto also innovatively uses the internal floating focusing lens group, which has the focusing ability from 10cm to infinity, so it can take into account the shooting needs of telephoto+macro.
In addition, for the white balance consistency of the three cameras, Xiaomi 14 Pro has obviously been specially optimized. In fact, its performance in many scenes is even better than the top flagship model of the previous generation. This also makes us expect that its new algorithm accumulation can come to the old model in the future update, thus benefiting more users.
Finally, in terms of night scenes, the interesting thing about Xiaomi 14 Pro is that it no longer seems to pursue the shooting experience of "not turning around" excessively. Instead, the exposure time will be reasonably increased and shortened according to the current light conditions.
From our actual experience, this improvement undoubtedly improves the imaging effect in extremely dark light environment. Of course, from another perspective, this may also be brought about by the new anti-shake structure or algorithm progress.
[[[Performance: launching the third generation Snapdragon 8, entering a new generation of 2 million]]]
If you pay attention to the Xiaomi digital series models in recent years, you may know that the "Pro" version is usually the most performance-oriented product in the same generation.
This is not surprising. After all, Ultra with super-large cup is now obviously a professional image creation and a product with some business temperament. In contrast, the Pro version of the mug is more like a product for players.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this that Xiaomi 14 Pro upgraded its storage combination on the one hand, and launched a large-capacity version of 16GB+1TB, which can better play SoC performance and can hold more games.
On the other hand, it naturally launched the new flagship SoC—— just released by Qualcomm-the third generation Snapdragon 8.
In terms of architecture, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 can be regarded as the continuation and upgrade of the second-generation Snapdragon 8, which has achieved great success this year. On the CPU side, it adopts a "four-cluster" combination of 1*Cortex-X4 super-large core +3*Cortex-A720 performance core +2*Cortex-A520 energy efficiency core, which further increases the proportion of performance cores and slightly raises the frequency of all cores. At the same time, the new Adreno 750 GPU still supports hardware optical tracking this time, and the hardware specifications have also been upgraded.
In addition, in order to give full play to the performance of the new SoC, Xiaomi 14 Pro naturally adopts the latest generation of "full blood" scheme in the storage scheme.
From our measured results, the flash memory speed of Xiaomi 14 Pro has been significantly improved compared with the model equipped with UFS4.0 in early 2023. Especially in the aspect of random reading and writing that affects the opening of daily applications and the loading speed of games, the increase is particularly obvious.
Next, it is the actual measurement of CPU performance. According to the running results of GeekBench 5.5.1, the single-core performance of Xiaomi 14 Pro is about 13.7% higher than that of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 model, and the multi-core performance is about 44.1% ahead. Obviously, the further increase of the "large nuclear ratio" has played a great role in it.
3DMARK optical tracing performance test
3DMARK 4K heavy load test
As for GPU rice, the measured light tracking performance of Xiaomi 14 Pro is significantly ahead of the second-generation Snapdragon 8 and Apple’s A17 Pro, both of which are about 44.4%. In the non-light-chasing heavy-duty scene, the performance advantage of Xiaomi 14 Pro is about 35.9%. But no matter in which mode, the new platform has proved its overwhelming graphics performance strength.
Finally, in the official version of Ann Bunny evaluation V10.1.0, our 16+1TB Xiaomi 14 Pro ran an amazing comprehensive score of 2200563. This is almost 37.5% higher than the average level of the second generation Snapdragon 8. It can be said that it instantly dwarfs all the "leading editions" and "customized editions" of the previous generation. The replacement of the consumer electronics industry is so horrible.
[[[Game measurement: high quality without pressure, 2K native rendering arrival]]]
Since the theoretical performance has been ridiculously high, I believe many friends, like us, are curious about the performance of Xiaomi 14 Pro in the actual game. Then, before it’s too late, let’s go to the game test.
Smooth quality 90 frames "Peace Elite" average frame rate 89.5 average power consumption 3515.8mW.
The average frame rate of 120 frames of the glory of the king with extreme picture quality is 119.7, and the average power consumption is 3636.4mW
First of all, there are two e-sports mobile games with less load. Obviously, they don’t pose any pressure for the third generation Snapdragon 8, and the power consumption of the whole machine is at a relatively low level, even less than 4W.
The highest quality Tianyu has an average frame rate of 56.8 and an average power consumption of 4295.3mW.
The highest quality "The Original God" has an average frame rate of 58.5 and an average power consumption of 4475.1mW.
Next, there are two high-quality RPGs with significantly greater pressure. Although Xiaomi 14 Pro is not a professional gaming phone, the pressure to cope with both is still not great. And the most important thing is that the power consumption is also well controlled, so as to reach the level of 4W.
The highest quality "Collapsed Star Dome Railway" has an average frame rate of 58.6 and an average power consumption of 6166.3mW.
Continue to increase the pressure, we used the full highest quality "Collapse of the Star Dome Railway" to see the high-load game performance of your Xiaomi 14 Pro. Under the pressure of this game, the overall power consumption of Xiaomi 14 Pro has exceeded 6W, but the frame rate can still be close to full.
The average frame rate is 57.9 and the average power consumption is 7549.3mW for the highest quality "The Original God" 2K rendering.
Finally, Xiaomi 14 Pro also took the lead in supporting the picture rendering of "The Original God" at the native resolution of the screen. That is to say, after selecting the "High Quality" mode in the system "Game Acceleration", the game will be rendered with a screen native resolution of 3200*1440. At this point, the rendering performance requirements of the game screen will become several times that of the default mode. But even so, we can see that the third-generation Snapdragon 8 has withstood the pressure in this situation, and there is no shortage of computing power.
From this point of view, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 really proved that it has a very high game performance "upper limit" this time. At the same time, it is also likely to become a beginning for high-quality mobile games to truly usher in the era of native screen resolution.
[[[Fast charge: 120W surge second charge, suitable for "fast blood transfusion"]]
In the case that the image is raised, the running score is invincible, and the game performance is refreshing, Xiaomi 14 Pro is also quite innovative in fast charging this time.
According to the official information, it uses a self-developed fast charging+power management chip scheme consisting of two surging P2 and one surging G1. Among them, two surge P2’s carry the wired second charging energy conversion function of 120W, and surge G1’s load monitors the working state of the battery and provides more accurate power statistics.
After we consumed the power of Xiaomi 14 Pro to only 1%, we began to charge it with the 120W GaN fast charging head included in the package.
It can be seen that five minutes after the start of charging, the battery display of the mobile phone has reached 28%. In another five minutes, the power will show 59%, showing an almost linear growth rate.
In the end, it took us about 21 minutes to complete the whole charging process from 1% to 100%. Judging from its charging logic, there is almost no attenuation in the charging speed before 90% power. In other words, this model adopts the charging logic of "quick blood return", which is more suitable for gamers or performance enthusiasts who need to charge for only three to five minutes and then start using their mobile phones again.
[[[Summary: It’s not a "makeover", but it’s already different]]]
To be honest, when Xiaomi first started to preheat the Xiaomi 14 series, we once thought that it might be a product with great changes.
However, we have to say that after testing Xiaomi 14 Pro, we found that on the one hand, it has indeed achieved a "leap-forward upgrade" in many aspects such as body material, screen material, image sensor and performance. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to call it redefining the quality level and product image of Xiaomi digital series "Big Cup".
But on the other hand, friends who are familiar with Xiaomi’s mobile phone can actually see Xiaomi’s consistent product design ideas of stacking materials and pursuing a sense of technology from Xiaomi 14 Pro. In particular, it is still a sincere pricing in the industry, which is enough to make consumers excited.
However, the most important thing is that it is not difficult to find the innovations of Xiaomi 14 Pro this time. From the screen to the image, from the shell material to the fast charging system, it obviously has more independent technical elements. Perhaps this will become a very important sign, a sign that Xiaomi is truly becoming a "brand of technological innovation" and starting to lead the direction of the mobile phone industry.