So, you guys asked for it, and here we are to solve one of the biggest confusions in the smartphone market right now. Whether you should buy the OnePlus 12 or the Xiaomi 14. Two very different phones in terms of DNA but very similar in terms of price. Let me try to clear up that confusion for you.
So, stay tuned till the end because this comparison is going to be awesome.
To start with, the Xiaomi 14 is a compact and comfortable phone, and the OnePlus 12 is a big boy. So depending on where your preference lies, you can gravitate towards that. Now, in hand, the Xiaomi 14 does feel more comfortable to hold and use, and that is to be expected considering the fact that it’s a smaller and much more compact phone, and of course, it’s lighter as well. And even in my initial review of the OnePlus 12, I clearly mentioned that it feels big and heavy to use compared to at least the previous OnePlus phones. Also, this weight increase can be attributed to the fact that you’ve got a bigger battery inside and that Periscope 3X zoom camera as well. More about that a little later. Looks-wise, it’s a bit of a toss-up. Both of these have a really nice green color option, but the Xiaomi 14 is slightly more minimal in terms of look, whereas the OnePlus is slightly more exuberant. And looks are subjective, but you might prefer whichever one you like. But both of these have a camera module that juts out a lot from the rear end. Therefore, when you place it on a table, a lot of table wobble happens. But there’s no denying the fact that Xiaomi’s construction quality feels more premium compared to the OnePlus 12. The Xiaomi 14 has Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protection on the rear, and on the front, you’ve got the ceramic glass, which is Xiaomi’s very own solution. In comparison, the OnePlus 12 has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the rear, and it also has, you know, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection on the front. Plus, Xiaomi also offers an IP68 rating compared to IP65 on the OnePlus 12. So durability and, you know, IP rating wise, Xiaomi definitely takes the lead compared to OnePlus.
However, there’s one functional advantage that OnePlus has in its design, and that is the fact that you get an alert slider, which of course is not present on Xiaomi, and you guys know how useful the alert slider is in everyday usage. Now, to close up the design and functionality aspects of these phones, the OnePlus 12 and the Xiaomi 14 both come with a Type C 3.2 port at the bottom, and you also get an infrared blaster. On Xiaomi, you can’t see the infrared blaster on the top, but do you know where it is? Let me know in the comment section below.
Now, the displays on both of these phones are fundamentally different.
The Xiaomi 14 has a 6.3-inch 120Hz refresh rate AMOLED panel with LTPO technology as well, which means that it can refresh between 1 and 120Hz depending on what is playing on the display. The OnePlus 12 also has an LTPO panel, again with a 1 to 120Hz refresh rate. It also has an AMOLED panel, but this is a much larger 6.82-inch curved AMOLED panel. Now, a flat versus curved display is a raging debate, and you can pick whichever side you want. I can only tell you my preference and in that I can tell you that I prefer flat displays to curved displays primarily because I still feel that curved displays do have inherent issues with the way the physical structure is built because however hard brands try there will still be some ghost touches that do happen once in a while or some UI elements that do get cut off as well and sometimes there could be discoloration as well but note that that’s just a very general statement the OnePlus 12 doesn’t have any of these specific problems or at least I haven’t a little bit of an advantage in that regard, which is possibly also the reason why Samsung has gone from a curved display on many generations of S series phones to now a flat display on the S24 Ultra.
Anyway, moving on, both of these phones also offer you the DCI-P3 color gamut, so you do get the widest color space that you can expect from a phone display today. And you can trust both of these screens to display accurate color, which is therefore helpful when you’re editing videos or photos. HDR tuning has also been done exceptionally well on both the displays the gradation is very similar with no unnecessary spikes in the highlights and no crushing of shadows either and to test this scenario we actually watched the interstellar black hole sequence on both these displays and we couldn’t tell the difference really between the two in terms of HDR gradation at least but what you can notice a difference in is the skin tones and here’s something interesting that we noticed on the Xiaomi 14 when you’re watching HDR videos on YouTube you will notice a little bit of a red tint on the face tones and the same reversed when you’re watching Dolby Vision videos on Netflix, yes both these phones do support Dolby Vision and in that the OnePlus 12 has some red skin compared to you know a more natural skin tone on the Xiaomi 14. So yeah, with respect to the color accuracy and, of course, the HDR grading, both are almost equally matched; nothing to tell the two apart, both are very good displays. Although OnePlus did make a huge hue and cry about the fact that this display supports 4500 nits, especially when you take them outdoors, what we notice is that both of them get equally bright. Again, nothing to tell the two apart. Now, part of the display is also the optical in-display fingerprint scanner. Both are extremely fast to unlock, but I liked OnePlus’s placement because it is slightly higher, so it is easier to reach. Xiaomi’s is slightly lower, but considering this is a smaller phone, that’s not too much of a disadvantage. Now, with the haptic feedback experience, I expected the OnePlus 12 to be better tuned, considering that, oh, haptics is fantastic, but it is not as tight as the Xiaomi 14 is. I mean, it’s still very good, but the Xiaomi 14 wins for me. Now, talking about the Dolby Atmos stereo speakers sound quality on both of these phones, considering that OnePlus has a larger physical space, it does sound louder compared to the Xiaomi 14, but when it comes to details, richness, and the quality of the base itself, there’s very little to tell the two apart. Take a listen to it for yourself, and let me know what you guys think. So, if you’re looking at the display and the overall multimedia experience on these phones, both are equally matched; it’s a tie. Now, for performance, both of these phones have the Snapdragon 8th Gen 3 chipset; you also get LPDDR5X RAM; you also get UFS 4.0 storage; and here are what the benchmark results actually showed us.
The storage rewrite speeds are similar on both. The highest Antutu score that we got on the OnePlus 12 was slightly over 2 million points, whereas Xiaomi never crossed the 2 million score, so OnePlus does beat Xiaomi in this regard. CPU stability in our CPU throttling test, where we engaged 40 threads for 30 minutes, is better on the Xiaomi 14 compared to the OnePlus 12. Whether you’re running it in performance mode or in regular mode, the CPU stability is better on the Xiaomi 14. Now, BGMI can run at 90 FPS on both phones with smooth graphics; no problem there. And COD can also run at 120 FPS on both phones, but on the OnePlus 12, it runs at very high graphics, whereas on the Xiaomi, it runs at max graphics. However, we did play Genshin Impact on both phones for 30 minutes, and we noticed that the average frame rates were higher compared to the Xiaomi 14, where Xiaomi does throttle a bit in real-world gaming performance. With respect to phones getting hot, the OnePlus 12 maintains cooler temperatures compared to the Xiaomi 14. In daily usage, HyperOS has gotten really smooth and fast with the animations themselves. In fact, if you look at it, the animations are tuned very similarly on OxygenOS 14 and HyperOS as well. It was so similar on both of these phones, and there was literally no lag either. Good job, Xiaomi, and good job, OnePlus as well. So overall, with respect to performance, if you have to pick between these phones, I would say the OnePlus 12 is slightly better than the Xiaomi 14. But the best-performing Snapdragon Angel 3 phone continues to be the iQOO 12. If you want only performance, the iQOO 12 is the way to go. With respect to radio and network connectivity, both of these phones are the top dogs. You get support for Wi-Fi 7, you get support for the latest Bluetooth 5.4 standard, and you also get support for NFC. That apart, there are a swath of 5G bands supported on both of these phones, and we’ve been using them extensively on our international trips recently, and there was absolutely no problem with network coverage. In fact, the call quality through the earpiece is also fantastic. If you want a flagship phone with network connectivity problems, then you’ll have to pick up a Pixel phone. See what I did there? Now, one area where OnePlus beats Xiaomi comprehensively is in battery performance. The OnePlus 12, at least for me, has been the best-performing flagship phone in terms of battery life, easily getting anywhere between eight and 10 hours of battery life with the 5,400 mAh battery. Fantastic tuning of battery performance has been done by OnePlus. Now, with respect to charging speeds, you get 100 watt charging speeds on OnePlus compared to 90 watts on Xiaomi, and it takes about 31 minutes for Xiaomi to fully charge, and this one takes about 26 minutes. Both of these phones also support 50-watt wireless charging speeds. So overall, when you look at the battery life and the battery charging speeds, OnePlus beats Xiaomi. Now in software, Xiaomi 14 runs on HyperOS, the latest and greatest Xiaomi software based on Android 14, and Xiaomi is promising 4 years of software updates and 5 years of security updates as well in India. And on the OnePlus 12, we get OxygenOS 14 based on Android 14, and again, OnePlus also promises four years of software updates and five years of security updates as well. So, OnePlus is a clean and minimal software experience with absolutely no bloatware pre-installed, and I’m happy to report that even Xiaomi has no bloatware apps pre-installed, and it’s a fairly clean install too. Plus, whatever third-party apps are installed, not bloatware apps, whatever third-party, first-party apps are installed, all of them can be uninstalled on both phones or at least disabled, which is good. My only problem with the Xiaomi 14 with HyperOS, which was also a problem with MIUI on previous Xiaomi phones, is the fact that dark patterns are still being followed in the setup process.
And if you’re not careful, you might end up selecting the wrong option because that’s the one that’s highlighted.
Anyway, apart from that, both of these operating systems have a lot of useful features. HyperOS has new lock screen customizations. You’ve got split screen, you’ve got floating window, and you’ve got gallery app edit features like, you know, cutouts that you can make and, you know, paste anywhere else. And of course, you’ve got the dynamic island ripoff too. Don’t worry, if you want that dynamic island on the OnePlus 12, that is also available. And OnePlus has really nice options like global search, the file dock, split screens, and floating windows; all of that is present. And you also have features like the cutout feature within the gallery app as well. But overall, when you look at the software experience, while HyperOS is getting better and better and on the Xiaomi 14, the experience is really, really good. OxygenOS wins it for me. Finally, it’s Leica versus Hasselblad type. With the primary camera, both phones can capture ample details, but the Xiaomi 14 is a tad bit sharper compared to the OnePlus 12. and that sharpness definitely comes in handy in the 2X InSensor crops as well, because you can clearly see the defined netting pattern on the Xiaomi 14 whereas you can’t see that on the OnePlus 12. And as you’re all aware, the Xiaomi 14 has two distinctive looks: the Leica Authentic and the Leica Vibrant. I use the Leica Vibrant mode for this comparison, and color reproduction-wise, both are extremely good at recreating the actual color of the scene. Can you spot any difference here? I really cannot. In fact, the color science consistency with the primary and the ultrawide is good on both phones. The one major problem with OnePlus is that it misses the white balance correction a lot of times, whereas Xiaomi doesn’t. In HDR scenes, while Xiaomi has improved the dynamic range performance, it still has a tendency to blow out the highlights in certain scenes, like this indoor one, but in medium dynamic range scenes, Xiaomi does pull out more details from the shadows. Yes, there’s some noise, but it’s not too bad because the details are present. Now, when you’re shooting friends and family, Xiaomi’s Leica authentic mode makes the scene a little too dark for my taste. Also, there is a lot of vignetting around the corners. Now I really like OnePlus’ skin tones here, even if they are slightly contrasty. Xiaomi’s are slightly on the warmer side in authentic mode. Now, when you switch to the Leica Vibrant, it brightens the face, but the skin tones are close to what Arnav’s looks in real life, and the details are better too on Xiaomi. Against the light in the HDR scene, OnePlus makes the scene look more natural, whereas Xiaomi makes it look pretty artificial. But crop in and look at Sridhar’s face out here, and Xiaomi has more details plus better skin tones as well. Portraits are also advantages on Xiaomi, purely because you can shoot 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm, and 90mm. Obviously, the 50mm and 90mm look bad, but the rest are pretty usable, and when you compare the 75mm on Xiaomi to OnePlus’s 3x portraits, I think Xiaomi has a little bit of an advantage here, plus Xiaomi’s versatility is its biggest strength. Moving on to low-light shots with the primary camera, the exposure in these shots is similar on both phones, but Xiaomi does pull in more details, and the finer textures are well defined too. However, I really like the noise control algorithm on both phones, but Xiaomi is better at low light compared to OnePlus. The high-resolution, ultra-wide-angle cameras on both phones are very good. The daylight shots are detailed and crisp on both; nothing to tell the two apart really, but the Xiaomi 14 is definitely more detailed in low-light ultra-wide-angle shots; therefore, the Xiaomi 14’s ultra-wide-angle camera is better than the OnePlus 12’s. But when it comes to the 3.2X telephoto on Xiaomi compared to the 3X on OnePlus, the OnePlus 14 is detailed and sharper, whether you’re shooting in ample morning light or indoor lighting. But in low light, I just couldn’t get it to beat the Xiaomi 14, which is better. So low-light telephoto shots are better on Xiaomi, whereas daylight telephoto shots are better on OnePlus. Also, if you like capturing the moon, Xiaomi has the Super Moon mode, and you can see the difference; it’s better than OnePlus, as you can tell clearly. Fun fact: if you do want to shoot the moon with the OnePlus 12, don’t use the night mode because the night mode will brighten the scene and will brighten the moon as well.
Just use the regular photo mode, and you’ll be able to capture at least this kind of shot.
By the way, the 3.2x on the Xiaomi is a floating telephoto lens, and therefore it has autofocusing capabilities. You can go closer with the Xiaomi and get crisper macros compared to the ultra-wide macros captured by the OnePlus. Now moving on to selfies, OnePlus pulls back a win because selfies are definitely more detailed on OnePlus, plus the skin tones are closer to natural and the colors are better too. Portrait selfies have a better edge cutout on OnePlus compared to Xiaomi. Now, in low light, the selfies are a close fight, but OnePlus offers slightly more details, and yes, there’s a lot of lens flare, as you can tell. So overall, if you want to pick up a phone for selfies, then OnePlus would be better than Xiaomi. Video recording at 4K 60fps is contrast-heavy on Xiaomi, and OnePlus has a flatter look. It’s just a matter of what kind of contrast tuning the algorithm has gone for and what you prefer. Stabilization is good on both, but HDR is slightly better on the OnePlus. But sound quality is better on Xiaomi because the environmental sound correction or the noise correction is better on Xiaomi. Alright, so right now we are shooting the 4K 60fps video using the Xiaomi 14 and the OnePlus Go. Okay, come faster with me. Alright, so right now we are shooting the 4K 60FPS video using the Xiaomi 14 and the OnePlus 12. Okay, come faster with me. And when it comes to ultra-wide-angle video recording quality, the findings are very similar to the primary video recording quality at 4K 60FPS. In selfie videos, Xiaomi gets an immediate advantage thanks to 4K 60FPS as opposed to 4K 30FPS on OnePlus. So right now, this video was shot using the Xiaomi 14 and the OnePlus 12’s front-facing camera. So, right now, this video is shot using the Xiaomi 14 and the OnePlus 12’s front-facing camera. Now, low-light video recording is equally good on both, but OnePlus pulls in more light and slightly more detail, but there’s more noise, as you can tell. Xiaomi controls the noise better, that’s for sure. Low-light, ultra-wide-angle video recording quality is definitely better on OnePlus, but telephoto low-light video recording quality is definitely better on Xiaomi. Now, if you’re recording low-light videos using the front camera, of course, you can shoot at 4K 60fps using Xiaomi, but we recorded at 4K 30fps to match for quality, and what we noticed is that Xiaomi definitely gets brighter and there’s more exposure, but there’s a lot of noise as well. Overall, when comparing the two cameras, I actually went in with the preconceived notion that the Xiaomi 14 would easily beat the OnePlus 12 in camera performance, but that’s not really the case. Xiaomi had to fight for the win. Where Xiaomi takes the lead is in the extras that you get, for example, portrait style or super moon mode.
All of these things are pretty good, as is the fact that you can shoot 4K 60fps videos using the front camera.
Also, more importantly, Xiaomi has a more consistent shooter compared to OnePlus. Therefore, Xiaomi has a better camera experience compared to OnePlus, and it would win for me when somebody asks me for a camera comparison between these two. Okay, final verdict time, and I’ll make it very, very simple for you. If you want a small phone with great cameras, go for the Xiaomi 14. If you want a big phone with better battery life and slightly better performance as well, then go for OnePlus. Also, if you’re a OnePlus fan, obviously you’d go for a OnePlus, right? Ah, and by the way, do you know where that infrared blaster is? It’s in the camera itself. Yeah, the camera module itself.
