Xiaomi 14 Ultra review: Definitely made for photography enthusiasts

Xiaomi’s latest flagship Android phone 14 Ultra is finally here, and it is the second iteration of Xiaomi’s collaboration with German photography brand Leica.

I tested the Xiaomi 13 Pro last year, which along with the 13 Ultra, featured the first Leica lens on a Xiaomi phone. So, with the new 14 Ultra, what has changed (photographically wise)?

Xiaomi Ultra experience

While I only got to experience the Xiaomi 13 Pro last year, the new Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s chassis is undoubtedly a tier above its Pro range.

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra, which I had, came with a matte black aluminum frame and interestingly, a nano-tech vegan leather back.

The phone just looks serious and stealthy, and it is very comfortable to hold onto. The nano-tech vegan leather back is nice to the touch, and it is not something you can find on any other major phone manufacturers (think Samsung, Apple and Google).

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a nice heft to it, and that is mostly because of the huge array of lens at the back of the phone.

The phone comes with four lenses inside a circular camera bump, and the main camera now has a new Sony LYT-900 1-inch sensor.

This time, I also had the opportunity to test out the Xiaomi Photography Kit, and deck out the Xiaomi 14 Ultra with a camera grip for a more compact camera-like experience.

The camera grip comes in two parts: a leather case and the grip itself, and it was easy to assemble them onto the phone.

The grip comes with a video record button, a shutter button as well as a dial. The buttons are tactile and it feels almost like a compact camera.

It also has a 1500mAh battery in it, and according to Xiaomi, it can extend the battery life of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra by 23%.

If you are after a compact camera experience, this kit is absolutely for you. Otherwise, the kit does make the phone a lot bulkier, and removing the leather case when you don’t want to use the kit was quite cumbersome.

However, the best part about the kit is the ability to add a 67mm filter adapter ring onto the leather case. This means that if you are an avid photographer with your own equipment, you can now use your own photographic filters on a phone!

Shooting photos on the Ultra 14 with the main camera

For a start, I attached my own diffusion filter onto the Xiaomi Ultra 14 with the kit, and the images from the Xiaomi Ultra 14 now look a little dreamier and ethereal because of how the filter softens the highlights in the photos.

I also tried attaching a variable neutral density filter to attempt some long-exposure shots during the day. A neutral density filter essentially reduces the amount of light entering the camera, and it is akin to adding a pair of sunglasses in front of the camera lens.

However, the main camera's minimum aperture is f4.0, and the lens cannot further reduce the amount of light entering it.

My variable neutral density filter was not strong enough to reach a shutter speed longer than one second on a cloudy afternoon, so you will need a much stronger neutral density filter if you are interested to do long exposures with the Xiaomi 14 Ultra during the day.

Speaking of the main camera, the lens is still a wide angle 23mm lens, and the performance of the new 1-inch sensor, as far as I can tell, is very similar to last year’s Xiaomi 13 Pro.

The images are sharp, and you can still get some blurry out-of-focus background bokeh if you get your compositions right.

The devil is, however, in the details. The new sensor is able to capture better details in low light situations, and it is evident in the match-up against my own Google Pixel 8 Pro in the comparison below.

I tested both phones using their default night mode respectively. Despite the Xiaomi 14 Ultra defaulting to a much higher ISO or sensor sensitivity of 5000, the Xiaomi image has noticeably more details in the brighter portions of the image, while the Pixel 8 Pro completely blows out any kind of details.

This is not a surprising result considering the Xiaomi 14 Ultra main camera has a significantly larger sensor than the Pixel 8 Pro's, and consequently a better dynamic range.

Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s other cameras

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra also comes with three other lenses: an ultra-wide 12mm lens, a telephoto 75mm lens, and another telephoto 120mm lens.

I am generally not a fan of ultra-wide angle lenses, but it can create unique perspectives and it is useful when you need it (to shoot a large crowd, for example).

The 75mm telephoto lens features a floating lens, and it is very similar to the one I tried last year on the Xiaomi 13 Pro.

I had the most fun with the 120mm lens though, and it is useful to have a lens that can zoom into something pretty far away.

Telephoto lenses also tend to compress the image, making things in the background appear nearer than they actually are, and it makes for interesting compositions.

It also has the ability to shoot macro photography along with the ultra-wide 12mm lens, and I would recommend this phone to anyone who enjoys shooting extreme close-ups of just about anything.

Leica colours and editing RAW images

There are two main photographic styles or camera colour profiles you can choose on the camera app, and they are Leica Authentic and Leica Vibrant.

These are obviously inspired by Leica’s own colour profiles, and based on my own comparisons I did last year, the Leica colour profiles on the Xiaomi Ultra 14 are the same as the Xiaomi Pro 13, which were very similar to a Leica M11.

The camera app also offers a huge range of camera filters that are mostly film simulations, and I am going to call it: Leica has some of the best black and white filters/profiles/whatever you want to call it out there.

The black and white images straight out of the camera app are gorgeous, and I was already raving about them on the Xiaomi 13 Pro last year.

At this point, I honestly think both Leica and Xiaomi have perfected black and white on a phone camera.

The Xiaomi Ultra 14 also offers 16 bit UltraRAW, and if that sounds too much, it just means that the Ultra 14 offers RAW images which contain more colours.

RAW images are essentially just data straight from the camera sensor, and you have to use apps like Adobe Lightroom to process them (and edit them), before exporting them into usable photo files for your own use.

The RAW files are very malleable when I fiddled with them on Adobe Lightroom, and you can recover a lot of details in the RAW files even when it looks like you have lost them when you were taking the actual shot.

Conclusion

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is clearly designed for photography enthusiasts, and it is especially evident with the Xiaomi Photography Kit.

I honestly think it has hit the mark, and while the likes of iPhones and Pixels stand in Xiaomi’s way, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra together with the Xiaomi Photography Kit are offering something that other phones just do not.

If you want a compact camera experience on your phone, you are all about editing your images to taste, or you just simply like black and white photography, then yes, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is a great phone for you.

Jay is a content creator who likes to hoard vintage photographic lenses, and loses too often in Dota 2 and Magic: The Gathering after work.