With the Xiaomi 12S Ultra, the Chinese company has built what is probably the best camera smartphone. But how good is the camera, which was developed in cooperation with Leica, really? This is exactly what a real camera specialist looked at and is enthusiastic about – with limitations.
Xiaomi 12S Ultra takes excellent photos
The Xiaomi 12S Ultra is one of the best camera smartphones. This is also the assessment of the camera professional Marques Brownlee, who many also know as MKBHD from YouTube. He uses high-end RED cameras for his videos and attaches great importance to first-class image quality. So he knows what a smartphone has to do to stand out. And that’s exactly what the Xiaomi 12S Ultra does. The 50 MP main sensor with a size of 1 inch takes excellent pictures. Both the autofocus and the sharpness are excellent.
But that is not always the case. As with many Android smartphones, Xiaomi’s new camera on the 12S Ultra isn’t 100% consistent. When the camera hits it, it hits it really hard – in the sense of excellent. Brownlee is fascinated by subjects he never thought a smartphone could capture so well. The large sensor can fully demonstrate its advantages:
But the Xiaomi 12S Ultra is not perfect. While the main sensor performs excellently for the most part, the differences with the ultra wide-angle and telephoto lenses are major. Especially with the zoom you can see right, how much the color profiles differ. As if Xiaomi had used all the energy to make the main sensor as perfect as possible and it wasn’t enough for the other two sensors.
He also noticed a strange error. For example, if you zoom in while filming, you can see the object on the display, but you don’t actually film it because the angle has shifted due to the change of sensors, but the camera app doesn’t take over. A plane flies past you as if you fell asleep while taking the picture – even though you keep the plane in focus on the display. Xiaomi can of course fix it with an update, but that should have been noticed.
The Xiaomi 12S Ultra in video:
Xiaomi 12S Ultra not for Germany
Now that we know how good the camera of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra is, it’s even more unfortunate that the smartphone isn’t coming to Germany. If you still want it, you have to import it. The Leica cooperation is also designed for several years, so we will probably benefit from it with the Xiaomi 13.