Xiaomi MI A1 Review:The Budget King of 2017
The best budget smartphone you can buy this Christmas-GEARBEST
Xiaomi is an amazing company with a big variety of products, but the biggest investment of this company is the smartphone industry. There are a lot of Xiaomi smartphones which are really good and extremely cheap for what they give you. Ths company presented the bezel-less trend in 2016 with the Xiaomi Mi Mix, a beautiful device with minimal bezels and an extraordinaire design. As you may expect, their flagships are not cheaper than 200€, but the Mi 6 with the Snapdragon 835 comes in at only 320€, so a top-notch device for less than 200€ is predictable, coming from this company. What was not predictable was the partnership with Google, so you can expect software updates for 3 years and the Android One experience. Here is my review of the Xiaomi Mi A1.
DESIGN
Maybe it’s a personal opinion, but I don’t like the Mi A1’s design. It has an aluminium shell and frame with a glass front. The back is pretty common with devices this year, the dual camera system on the top left corner and a centred fingerprint reader. I do like the positioning of the fingerprint reader, the hand wraps around the phone, and the indicator sits right on the scanner. What I don’t like on the front of the device is the chin. Yes, we’re paying less than 200€ for the device so a bezel-less smartphone was not expected, but I believe the reader would be better positioned on the front, amongst the capacitive keys. The device also has an IR port on the top, the type-C connector, the almighty Headphone Jack and the speaker are on the bottom. The phone comes in at 7.4mm and 165grams with a screen-to-body ratio of only 70%, and it definitely feels pricier than it actually is. There are 3 variants: rose, gold and black.
DISPLAY
The display is pretty meh. I’m not going to lie, the Mi A1 has a really sharp and vivid display but the contrast is not really good and it can get quite hard to see in direct sunlight. Still, the 5.5-inch Full HD 1920x1080 panel comes in at a PPI of 402. Still, we have to consider the price...
PERFORMANCE
Of course, this won’t play major 3D games comfortably, but it’s still a pretty capable chip.The processor amongst the octa-core CPU that overclocks at 2GHz, amongst 4GB of RAM gives the smartphone a score of only 64.000 points on ANTUTU, which is nothing spectacular, but not bad by any means. It’s still a pretty capable device for day-to-day use.
CAMERA
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| Shot taken with the MI A1 |
Now, when you talk about a dual camera on the back at this price point, this is probably not true. Yes, you can see a dual camera on the back, but it doesn’t mean it the second lens works. But Xiaomi stepped in and showed how you can have a cheap smartphone with pricier camera quality. Now, on the back, there’s a telephoto f/2.6 12MP lens and a standard 12MP f/2.2 one for achieving the bokeh effect. The front shooter comes in at 5MP. There’s really not much to say, other thaT Xiaomi really proved how far it can go.
BATTERY
Do I even have to talk about this? Xiaomi deals amazingly with a smartphones battery life. You can expect more than a day worth of battery life from the 3080mAh cell. And fast charging is always welcome.
FINAL VERDICT
I believe this is a real budget king. Xiaomi really outdid itself with this smartphone. I never expected a partnership between this company and Google, but it sure is nice. You get components that you can expect from a smartphone at around 200€ or even more. If you’re looking for a smartphone that is good and not expensive at all, look no further.
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