So the Xiaomi 12 has a starting price of RM2,899, which is about USD 661, and the Xiaomi 12 Pro starts at RM3,899, which is roughly USD889, so we are looking at a whopping RM1,000 or USD 228 in price difference, so is that extra money really worth it? Let’s find out in this comparison review, shall we?

 

Hardware

Let’s start with the phone’s specs and the hardware when using these two phones daily.

As mentioned in my first impressions video, it was nice that Xiaomi didn’t shorthand the non-Pro variant, and since these two phones are Xiaomi’s flagship, both are using the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Chipset, while the chipset which is notoriously known for being very hot, but we are looking at a 4nm chip with 5G chipset on both of the phones and Adreno 730 GPU.

Then in terms of the build quality, both had the same exact build and finish but due to the difference in size, expect the Xiaomi 12 to be lighter as the specs sheet mentions that the Pro is at 205 grams compared to only 180 grams.

And while I am very used to using a big and heavy smartphone as my usual daily driver, I honestly had quite a refreshing feeling when I held and used the non-Pro version because I personally felt that the dimensions were at the right size, not too small like the flagship iPhone 13 or the iPhone 12 Mini and not as big and tall like a typical flagship.

So this is probably based on a personal preference, but if I really had to choose, I prefer how the Xiaomi 12 felt, as it was fitted nicely in my hands, and I also had that sort of confidence of not dropping the phone as I took it off my pocket, in and out and this is also thanks to the matte finish and the 3D curves that the phone had.

The ports and the buttons are the same, and even though the placements of the SIM ejector slot are different, we are looking at both phones not having a microSD card slot expansion, with just a dual SIM card support.

However, the Xiaomi 12 Pro has a total of four speakers instead of just two on the non-Pro variant, do check out a quick sound test in my YouTube video.

 

Display

Now the display is one of the most significant differentiating factors between both phones; while both is an AMOLED screen, the panel on the Xiaomi 12 Pro is an LTPO panel; hence you are looking at not only a higher quality panel but also a more versatile panel and here are the key differences.

Firstly, while both of the screens have a dynamic refresh rate, while both can go up to 120Hz, the Pro variant can go down to 1Hz when you are at a static screen, whereas the non-Pro variant will go down but not as low as 1Hz. Furthermore, if you want to force the screen to only go up to a certain refresh rate value, the Pro has the option to choose between forcing its screen to go at 120Hz, 60Hz, and 90Hz all the way compared to the non-Pro variant, that only can choose between 120Hz and 60Hz.

In terms of the resolution, the Xiaomi 12 Pro can go to a maximum resolution of 3200 x 1440 WQHD+ compared to the FHD+ 1080 x 2400 on the Xiaomi 12, and while the peak brightness on the Pro is higher at 1,500 nits compared to 1,100 nits on the non-Pro but it still was very sufficient to use even under bright sunlight.

However, I found that the automatic brightness on the non-pro was not as nicely optimized as the Pro variant, and the screen also has a slightly warmer tone than a more cool or more accurate white on the Pro variant.

What’s sweet is that both have Dolby Vision support on Netflix, so rest assured you will have a very enjoyable experience watching HDR content and high-resolution videos on both phones. 

Now even though there is quite a difference in terms of the display specs of both phones, I felt that these differences could not be seen if you use both phones separately, and you could only see the differences if you compared both phones side by side.

However, from a daily usability perspective, if I really had to compare both phones, the obvious choice would be the Xiaomi 12 Pro, but that goes without saying that the non-Pro was not great because it still looked like a flagship screen compared some other smartphones within this price range.

 

Cameras

Now in terms of the cameras, starting from the Xiaomi 12, it has:

• a 50-megapixel f/1.88 aperture lens, 
• a 13-megapixel f/2.4 ultrawide lens, 
• and a 5-megapixel 50mm telemacro lens.

 

Then the Xiaomi 12 Pro comes with:

• a different Sony IMX707 sensor of a 50-megapixel f/1.9 aperture lens, 
• another massive 50-megapixel f/2.2 aperture ultra-wide lens, 
• and ANOTHER 50-megapixel f/1.9 aperture 48mm telephoto lens.

Then as for the front camera, both have the same 32-megapixel f/2.45 aperture lens.

 

High Megapixel Mode

Starting from the High Megapixel Mode, while both had the exact color reproduction on the image if you zoom in to the image further about seven times, what’s interesting is that, even though both are a 50-megapixel lenses, you will find that the Pro has a sharper quality and this could be due to the Sony IMX707 sensor on the Pro.

Ultrawide Lens

As for the ultrawide lenses, while the image quality was very identical, one not so obvious difference is how the non-Pro is just a very tiny bit saturated if you see the blue skies and the red signage on this first image, and the apparent difference is the focal length of the Pro is wider, but the overall quality on both was the same if you zoom in closer, which was quite surprising as the Pro has a bigger 50-megapixel sensor compared to the 13-megapixel sensor on the non-Pro variant.

 

Main Lens

Then the main lens on each was pretty much the same all the way, with a very high dynamic range and overall very sharp images, so here is where you don’t see an obvious advantage of the IMX sensor on how it was for the high megapixel mode as seen earlier.

While both have a dedicated telephoto lens, once again, it was pretty much looking the same, even though with a mere 5-megapixel telephoto lens on the non-Pro compared to the massive 50-megapixels on the Pro, where you only see the difference in quality if you zoom into the images, but I don’t think you will be doing that anyway, so this pretty shocking to know.

But you will start seeing the image on the non-Pro to slightly be off quality if you are looking to zoom digitally further.

 

Portrait Mode

So the portrait mode was a bizarre situation, though, as when you enter the portrait mode in the app on both phones, the non-Pro variant is wider compared to a quite zoomed in image on the Pro, and my biggest confusion as to why this is happening since both phones had a very similar focal length on the telephoto lens, which is 50mm on the non-Pro and 48mm on the Pro.

And then what I did was block the main lens with my finger when I was on portrait mode for both phones, and I found that the Xiaomi 12 was not using the dedicated telephoto lens for this portrait mode, whereas the Pro was using it, hence the differences in the focal length on both.

So yea, this was pretty weird, but when it comes to comparing both images, even though the non-Pro variant was using the main lens, the edge detection and the background blur were still really great with excellent dynamic range, and I prefer the images coming out of the non-Pro variant as it gives you better flexibility to go closer if you want to, as opposed to forcing you to go far away if you’re going to take a wider portrait mode shots on the Xiaomi 12 Pro.

 

Macro Mode

Now, if you are a huge fan of the Macro Mode, unfortunately for you, the Pro doesn’t have a Macro Mode, as seen in the screenshot off the camera app below; it’s just not there.

But the non-Pro variant has it, and here are the shots and honestly, I felt that the Macro shots over here were just OK, as I have seen way better Macro photos on other smartphones within this price range.

 

Night Mode:

Ultrawide

Then the night mode photos on the ultrawide lenses for both phones had an equal balance of highlights and shadows, but the skies on the Pro variant were a bit more color accurate than a slightly cooler tone on the skies for the non-Pro variant.

Main Lens

However, the images were identical for the main lenses, once again with very nice balances of highlights and shadows without any noticeable noise in the pictures.

Zoom

But you will see a slightly softer image on both phones when using the 2x zoom with again a slightly different color shift at the skies for the non-Pro variant.

Night Selfie

Now I would totally not rely on the Night Mode Selfie shots on both phones if there are no lights present where the images looked pretty smudgy, and even with some night flood lights shining, I still didn’t like how the photos turned out over here.

Regular Selfie

As for the regular selfie shots during the day, you are looking at very similar photos with great skin tones and great details, whether under great lighting outdoors or even in very harsh lighting situations with still great dynamic range in the sky areas.

Portrait Selfie

And while the dynamic range remains the same high quality when it comes to the Portrait Selfie images, the edge detection is not the best during a harsh lighting situation but performs really well under softer lighting.

 

Video Recording

[Check out my YouTube video for the sample video footages] 

Then as for video recording, both phones can record up to 8k 24 frames per second, a frame rate that I never ever use, but you will get some really high-quality video over here, but of course, you will be using a lot of storage space over here.

The main lenses for video on both were really good, a huge improvement compared to their previous generation, with amazing colors and dynamic, very sharp details, and excellent stabilization as well.

An ultrawide lens for video records up to 4k 30 frames for the non-Pro and up to 60 frames per second for the Pro, but it was nice that it didn’t limit this lens to only 1080p, and the quality was equally as good, with great dynamic range and very great stabilization as well.

 

Night Video

If you are planning on taking videos at night, the ultrawide lenses on the non-Pro didn’t perform well at all, but the Main lenses were way better, and I wouldn’t really count on having the best Image stabilization over here as well.

Front Video Specs

As for the front video recording, it can only go up to 1080p up to 60 frames per second; what’s new….

And while the quality of the skin tones and the image stabilization was really excellent over here, it still lacks the dynamic range with the over-exposure of the sky.

Then the Night time videos were just OK, but you will surely need lots of light to get the best video quality over here.

And if you are looking at the quality of the microphones, using the front camera as your vlogging camera, check out the quick sound test between both phones in my YouTube video.

So, with these guys, let me know – Do you think the non-Pro or the Pro performed better in every aspect of the cameras? And from a camera’s perspective, is the extra money justifiable on the Pro variant? 

 

Battery

As for the phone’s batteries, the Xiaomi 12 comes with 4500 milliamps of battery, and the Xiaomi 12 Pro has a slightly bigger 4600 milliamps of battery.

And based on my daily test, on the Xiaomi 12 the battery drain was a little peculiar, because while it drained about 27% battery after non-stop video consumption of 3 hours, but it hardly drained the battery on gaming where it only lost about 5% after 20 minutes of gameplay.

And with that, it gave me an average battery life of a full day’s use.

Then as for the Xiaomi 12 Pro, it hardly even drained the battery even while we are looking at a difference of only 100 milliamps, where with the similar time of video consumption, it only lost about 17%.

And for heavy gaming, it used about 7% of about 20 minutes of gameplay.

And the Xiaomi 12 Pro gave me a day  and a half of average battery life which was really sweet.

Then the plus factor of the Pro variant is, of course, the ability to fast charge up to 120W compared to 67W on the non-Pro variant, where both charging brick does come inside of the box, and while yes, there is an almost half of a difference in the charging between both phones, but I didn’t feel like I was crippled using the 67W because yes it was nice to have 120W, but I personally felt that the 67W was good enough since I don’t charge the phone overnight and usually charge it when I am awake, get myself ready in the morning and I got both phones all charged.

And what’s interesting is the fact that both had the same 50W wireless charging and 10 watts reverse wireless charging, so there were no compromises over here.

 

Software

The software comparison is quite a short one since we are looking at similar Android version 12 on both phones, and even though, for some weird reasons, the non-Pro is getting a faster and the latest software update on the MIUI version as seen over here, where the non-pro is at version 13.0.7 compared to being only at version 13.0.6

But the good news is that I had absolutely no complaints when I was using both phones daily, everything felt pretty snappy, and there was no lag whatsoever in load apps or during multitasking.

Then the biggest fear of the phone overheating was pretty much nonexistent, which was super nice to know, but it only gets a little warm only when it comes to gaming which is the next comparison topic.

 

Gaming

Since we are comparing two flagship smartphones over here, hence my obvious gaming test was with Genshin Impact and PUBG Mobile.

Xiaomi 12

On the Xiaomi 12, settings were at Medium, 60 fps with motion blur turned off, the overall gameplay was smooth, without any lag or micro stutters and the very good news is that it didn’t feel hot even after 30 minutes of gaming.

Then there were no battery drain issues, as it barely moved about 3% over 20 minutes of gameplay.

Then on PUBG Mobile, the graphics were at Ultra HD and the frame rate was at Ultra and the overall gameplay was smooth as expected one very important thing to note is how the phone felt nicer to play with because of the smaller form factor and the overall finish of the phone.

 

Xiaomi 12 Pro

Then switching over to the Xiaomi 12 Pro, the settings are the same as the Xiaomi 12 but what’s funny is that it became really warm after about 20 minutes of gameplay but it didn’t show any signs of the game slowing down.

Then on PUBG Mobile, the setting was also similar again, and while the gameplay had a similar experience but because of the phone’s slightly bigger form factor, it didn’t feel as comfortable to play games on it compared to the Xiaomi 12.

Then there is the Game Turbo that monitors the GPU, CPU, the FPS, and other additional features over there as well.

 

Conclusion

So, based on my in-depth comparison, I can conclude this, I personally feel that RM1,000 or USD 228 is quite a high price difference, because other than the faster charging situation, the most significant standout feature on the Pro is that the screen is better but remember, this is only if you compare it side by side with the non-Pro; otherwise, I feel that the Xiaomi 12 is way enough to justify getting it.

It has a very refreshing build quality and size, cameras are pretty much the same, and if I really had to choose, I would save the extra money and get this Xiaomi 12 instead of the Xiaomi 12 Pro, but who cares what I think? What is important is what you think, so let me know which you would choose in the comments section of my YouTube video!