I swapped my Fuji for the amazing Xiaomi 15 Ultra — do I even need a mirrorless camera anymore?

When it comes to photography, I’m one of those rare oddballs you’ll still see pointing a bulky mirrorless at things in a vain attempt to capture a snap that my smartphone still can’t. As much as I love them, the iPhone, Galaxy, and even the critically acclaimed Pixel can’t convince me to leave my Fuji at home for two key reasons — tasty natural bokeh and emotive color palettes. Still, the Pixel 9 Pro XL‘s reliable exposure and inoffensive color palette has earned it a place as my go-to when there’s simply no room on my hip for the mirrorless.

However, with the Xiaomi 15 Ultra in my pocket for the past couple of weeks, the Pixel has been relegated to my shelf, and a small layer of dust has started collecting on my overpriced lenses. Is this the smartphone that finally convinces me to ditch my mirrorless? Let’s find out.

Xiaomi’s latest super-premium flagship certainly features a compelling camera package, so let’s give it its dues with a whole dedicated review — I’ll get back to the rest of the phone later.

The circular rear array features a 50MP, ƒ/1.63, 1-inch sensor, flanked by a 50MP,  ƒ/2.2, 115° ultrawide, a 50MP, ƒ/1.8, 3x telephoto (70mm), and a colossal 200MP, ƒ/2.6, 4.3x periscope zoom (100mm) that offers deceptively long-range capabilities. On top of that, Xiaomi throws in authentic and vivid Leica color profiles and twelve additional color filters. As you can see below, there’s plenty to get creative with here.

If you’re a pixel peeper, you can follow along with the full-res snaps in this Google Drive folder.

In the round, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s cameras all nail dynamic range, noise, and white balance. The primary camera and 3x cameras, in particular, excel in challenging lighting conditions. The camera’s default color palette is quite reserved, but Xiaomi’s selection of filter flavors and pro-mode photography styles makes it effortless to take the camera in more expressionate directions. I don’t love the default vignette, though it’s not terrible, and the Fuji fan in me feels right at home with the Scarlet filter, reminiscent of my beloved Classic Chrome. Even the more minor tweaks afforded by the Positive and Negative filters are enough to effortlessly elevate pictures from vanilla to triple choc chip.

Low light isn’t a problem for the phone’s larger sensors (the smaller ultrawide definitely struggles); color reproduction remains strong even if dynamic range takes a small hit. Inevitably, even these large sensors produce noise in some situations, but the 15 Ultra’s resemble a more filmic grain rather than smudgy digital noise (I wonder if Xiaomi applies this on top), at least until shooting virtually in the dark. With very little light at all, smudging is inevitable, even with very long exposure times. Still, in less ideal lighting, photographs retain the character and a natural softness that mirrorless lovers will feel at home with, all thanks to those big sensors and wide apertures.

However, Xiaomi’s ultra camera setup isn’t completely flawless. Really strong HDR backlighting, for example, can result in flatter images with poor contrast, which is simply a side-effect of the strength of the multi-frame HDR algorithm. Despite metering set to faces by default, subject underexposure isn’t uncommon either, even when not shooting against bright backlighting, which is arguably the bigger issue.

As is all too common, the ultrawide camera is the weakest lens. I noticed much more noise and weaker exposure from this lens in low light, owing to the comparatively small 1/2.76-inch size of the JN5 sensor. Thankfully, despite the wide aperture, the lens itself does not cause too much aberration (aside from the usual edge warping), and the results still look fine in good lighting. That said, I seldom use this lens off the cuff, as the ludicrous 14mm focal length has an obviously warped perspective yet isn’t much more helpful than the already wide 23mm main for anything other than perhaps photographing the Grand Canyon.

Using the primary camera up really close is often an unfocused mess, owing to the huge sensor and wide aperture. Thankfully, the 3x and 4.3x telephoto cameras can focus within a few centimeters, making them very good for macro. You just need to remember to switch to them.

Zoom marks a return to the camera’s strengths. I really like both cameras at their native optical levels; image quality is top-notch, with a high level of detail and robust capabilities in tricky lighting. The 3x lens quickly became my favorite lens to shoot with, as the reasonably wide aperture and pleasing focal length help create a lovely natural bokeh, but we’ll touch on portraits in a minute. For street shots and landscapes, colors hold up well compared to the primary lens, although I did notice a tad more saturation from the 4.3x lens.

The phone can certainly push well out beyond its 4.3x optical zoom, but this is where my reservations creep back in. Xiaomi crops straight from the sensor for an “optical” long-distance 8.6x zoom that offers a decent level of detail in outdoor light. However, the small pixel sizes require a longer shutter time, so you’ll spot blurring and smudging from moving subjects or even handshakes. Also, because it’s a crop from a relatively close 100mm, longer-range shots look rather flat, lacking that depth roll-off and superb dynamic range that makes its closer shots look so good. Still, the results are nothing to turn your nose up at; even at long range, this is still among the best I’ve seen from any camera phone and particularly impressive at this distance, given the lack of optical zoom.

Beyond 10x, details start to look a bit messy. Xiaomi has options for both AI and traditional upscaling, neither of which really manage to reclaim anything like the natural look of the camera at shorter distances, despite blending in data from that 200MP sensor. Contrast and noise begin to creep up, though, thankfully, it avoids the ugly smearing seen on rival handsets. Even so, I can’t help but feel that a native 6x lens would have made for a slightly more flexible package at a distance, though the phone is fine out to about 20x as long as you don’t look too closely.

Of course, the 70mm and 100mm focal lengths lend themselves to portraits, too. The focal length is a little longer than ideal, but there’s no arguing about the quality of Xiaomi’s skin textures and tones. Last year’s model already performed brilliantly, and the series is still a length ahead of the competition here. The added software bokeh comes in a selection of variations, but it’s not always brilliant at nailing soft edges, such as hair, and even the occasional hard edge was accidentally blurred in some of the snaps I took. It’s the one minor blemish on an otherwise top-class portrait setup.

Thankfully, the same accolades apply to the selfie camera, albeit with narrower face shapes from a wide field of view and slightly sharper skin textures. Even in low light, selfies manage to dodge the smudging we so often see from small, noisy sensors, though details definitely soften and the grain level creeds up. Xiaomi doesn’t outperform the competition for selfie noise, but it handles it better than most. However, the selfie camera is the weakest of the bunch when it comes to HDR, though Xiaomi’s multi-frame processing ensures decent exposure, even with the strongest backlights.

If you’re more of a videographer, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra has you equally well covered. There’s superb video stabilization, 4K/60fps and 8K/30fps available on all four lenses, and 120fps options for the primary and 4.3x lenses. Xiaomi’s color filters follow over for 1080p video, aiding with those creative efforts, along with LOG support in the Pro camera mode and Dolby Vision capture. We’re missing a cinematic mode, but the natural lens focal lengths and dedicated night and super-macro options perhaps make up for this omission. In any event, I was very happy with the short clips I took.

So, does the Xiaomi 15 Ultra make me want to ditch my mirrorless? Well, not entirely — there’s no replacement for natural bokeh from expensive lenses, after all. However, I certainly didn’t feel anxious about missing out on a great photo as long as I had the 15 Ultra in my pocket, as it’s proven to be a very reliable shooter over the past couple of weeks. Compared to industry staples like the iPhone 16 Pro, Galaxy S25 Ultra, and even the beloved Pixel 9 Pro, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is undoubtedly the camera phone I’d rather have in my pocket — whether it’s for a quick snap or dialing in something specific to scratch that creative itch. If you’re looking for the absolute best camera phone money can buy, completely isolated from any critique of the rest of the things a phone is meant to do, this is it.

Of course, I said the same thing about the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, but ultimately it was let down by other parts of the experience that meant other phones with a more well-rounded setup and competitive cameras were better overall picks for most buyers…

Xiaomi knows good hardware, as the camera package plainly shows, and there are scores more goodies packaged up here, too. The 6.73-inch AMOLED display with increasingly rare WQHD+ resolution looks sublime even in bright daylight, thanks to its 3,200 nits of peak brightness (though I could only force the phone to output 625 nits when faced with a bright LED). You can check off an IP68 rating (not quite the new gold standard of IP68/69, but still great), aluminum frame, and Xiaomi Shield Glass 2.0 in lieu of Gorilla Glass, along with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 capabilities to round off a comprehensive hardware setup.

Battery life and charging are both impressive, too. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra takes longer to charge than its predecessor, taking 59 minutes to full from a 90W Xiaomi plug, which is actually a bit slower than Samsung’s 45W Galaxy S25 Ultra, but it’s far quicker to refill if you only need short top-ups. I could also obtain 60W from a 20V-compatible USB PD PPS plug and 45W from a more common 9V PPS charger. You can fast charge the 15 Ultra with a huge array of third-party adapters, which is good news as there isn’t one in the box. The phone also has a battery life similar to Samsung’s latest, providing a substantial upgrade on last year’s already quite impressive model. This phone easily took me through two days of lighter use and still had plenty left in the tank, even after a busy day snapping photos (you can shoot continuously for about five hours!).

However, the ultra-speedy Snapdragon 8 Elite dampens the proceedings. Yes, it scores very highly on the benchmarks that I could run and hands in effortless performance for daily tasks, but the overheating problems we’ve seen from other handsets are perhaps at their worst here.

Xiaomi blocked our usual 3DMark stress tests, and upon running a stealth app, I think I know why. The phone overheated and crashed the app during all three of our usual stress tests, but without providing a warning. I recorded the phone’s internal battery temperature, which reached 49.9°C. before closing the app. After about 50 attempts (I’m not joking) and starting the phone at a super-idle 21°C, I was finally able to complete the stress tests with temperatures again peaking at about 49°C. For comparison, last year’s Xiaomi 14 Ultra hit temps of 52.8°C, which is incredibly hot, yet didn’t close the stress test.

Xiaomi phones have always run hotter than most, but this year’s model is even more worrisome. Thankfully, the phone doesn’t get anywhere near this hot playing actual games. I recorded 33°C after 20 minutes of Call of Duty Mobile and 37°C during Genshin Impact. Still, the stress test overheating issue and abrupt shutdown is a concern for future games and hotter countries than the wintery UK (which is basically everywhere).

If you can look past that, all this is wrapped up in one of Xiaomi’s most unique-looking smartphones yet. The familiar circular camera housing looks sublime when paired up with the Silver Chrome colorway, which offers a textured back. Why anyone would pick the boring black or white colorways when this is on offer is beyond me. That said, I wouldn’t have minded a splash of color as an option.

You might have noticed that I haven’t prattled on about AI in this review yet, which is a real oddity for 2025. The Xiaomi 15 Ultra has plenty of it (of course, it does) bundled into what it calls HyperAI, but I’ve pretty much chosen to gloss over it during my review period and have been all the happier for it.

Yes, there’s Gemini pre-installed, Circle to Search, subtitle generation, AI note summaries, and AI speaker transcriptions in the Recorder app. The last two require a Xiaomi account and internet connection to function, so there are no offline capabilities here. Mi Browser has an AI summary feature, but it fails every time I try it. The Gallery app also features the obligatory object removal option, but the results are nearly always blurry and clumsy. It’s a passable suite but hardly groundbreaking.

Xiaomi says that more AI features will be added in a future Gallery update. The list includes AI image expansion, Eraser Pro, Reflection Removal, and photo-to-video capabilities. Obviously, I can’t comment on how good they’ll be, but I’ve not been dazzled by the 15 Ultra’s AI tools that I did dabble in. But in all honesty, I rarely reach for equivalent tools, even on the Pixel, and making do without only reinforces how AI is almost always a solution in search of a problem rather than something I really value in a phone.

Don’t let the software nonsense detract from the phone’s strengths. With HyperOS onboard (based on Android 15), there’s a ton of the usual bloat and overengineered apps to contend with anyway, which is just part and parcel of the Xiaomi experience, even after moving on from MIUI. In any case, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra remains a showcase for some of the best hardware money can buy, particularly in the camera department. Xiaomi’s software promise of four years of OS and six years of security updates is good too. It yearns to catch up on the AI front, but the quality is not all that brilliant, which makes already apathetic customers like myself care even less about them. Would Xiaomi be chastised for bypassing the AI trend? Most likely, but given you should still probably pick up a Pixel 9 Pro XL ($1099 at Amazon) or Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1299.99 at Amazon) if you really care about the very best in mobile AI, the Ultra doesn’t do itself any favors here anyway.

Thankfully, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra does so much else so well that it doesn’t hinge its identity on this fad. Keep thinking of the 15 Ultra as a photography powerhouse first and foremost, and you won’t be disappointed. It’s definitely the best camera phone you can buy right now. However, dedicated snappers should also check out the brilliant OPPO Find X8 Pro (£1099 at Amazon) and the more affordable OnePlus 13 ($899.99 at OnePlus) if you can’t quite justify the sky-high €1,499 (~$1,556) price Xiaomi is asking here.