“It’s like an iPhone, but better”. This is a very brief statement from Mr. MKBHD about Xiaomi 17 Pro Max. This year, Xiaomi created a truly attractive device, it was good enough for the first time that MKBHD praised a Xiaomi as better than the iPhone, and enough to convince a person like me who had a lot of attachments to portable Xiaomi to come back and experience it.
The price of this product is currently about 23 million VND for hand-carried goods. So is this a really good machine like what MKBHD says, and what problems are there when using it?
The attraction of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Xiaomi flagship (portable) so “hot” and sought after by brothers. The numbers below certainly do not lie. After only 5 minutes of sale, Xiaomi 17 series was sold out. After just a few days, sales in China exceeded 1 million products, faster than any previous generation.
In Vietnam, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is also highly sought after by brothers. If you follow some guys who specialize in selling hand-carried goods, you will see a lot of posts complaining about being out of stock, having no goods to sell, or having to wait a few more days for the next batch. With an iPhone, this is normal, but with a Xiaomi flagship, which is also portable, this is truly a rare thing.
The attraction of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max this year can be explained based on many different aspects. In addition to “jumping” for a lifetime and classifying names exactly like iPhone, we also have the following attractive factors.
Design: The secondary screen is the highlight, but…
The most valuable thing about the design of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is definitely this screen. It overshadows the design on nearly all other brand flagships. You guys pay attention, the new vivo X300 still has the same round camera style, the Find The design on the iPhone is actually still an induction cooker camera cluster, and the Orange color is criticized by many for being too prominent.
Finally, there is Xiaomi 17 Pro Max left with this unique secondary screen. You can take advantage of it to create many interesting games, such as turning into a long camera cluster of iPhone 17 Pro Max, displaying text to tease friends or playing games with the included case. Inside the store, Xiaomi also has many additional wallpapers for this screen, and they are all free.
However, in reality, I rarely use this screen. Why? Most of the time I put the phone on its back, that is, with the main screen facing up. I never turn my phone face down and occasionally touch it once or twice to see the time.
What about the camera? I also never use the secondary screen, because it’s not big enough for me to see when I pick it up and look at it from an arm’s length away. If you want to take a selfie, just flip to the front screen and use it, after all, the selfie cameras on Chinese devices are now good.
Another thing is to display quick notifications, this screen is almost useless. Xiaomi only allows notifications to be displayed with some system applications such as phones, watches, airline tickets, etc. Frequently used applications like Facebook or Messenger are fine.
But no matter what, I still highly appreciate Xiaomi’s direction with the design on this 17 Pro Max. It still creates excitement for me, like every time I go out with friends, I can open this screen and show them things that iPhones and Samsungs can’t even dream of having. It also helps Xiaomi more clearly decentralize their flagship lineup:
- Xiaomi 17 standard: Aimed at common users with attractive equipment.
- Xiaomi 17 Pro / Pro Max: Has a unique design with a secondary screen.
- Xiaomi 17 Ultra (possible): Will focus heavily on the camera.
Going back to the design, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a big machine, easy to hold, sturdy in the hand and has very pleasant rounded corners. The back of the device is made from fiberglass, which is durable but still has sweat on it and is not completely clean. The ultrasonic fingerprint sensor has a very nice location. The device still has an infrared sensor to control the TV and air conditioner, but the sensor is not placed on the top edge like before. I guess Xiaomi moved the sensor down next to the wide-angle camera.
The device supports 2 physical SIMs, no eSIM.
7,500mAh battery: 2 days of use is a small matter
This is one of the flagships with the biggest battery with 7,500mAh, uses the new Silicon-Carbon standard and comes with super fast 100W charging. For me, Silicon-Carbon batteries only have one problem: when… testing the battery. It’s so powerful, the battery won’t run out after using it forever.
To make it easier to imagine, if you use both devices in parallel, when the iPhone 17 Pro Max runs out of battery, this Xiaomi device still has about 25-30% battery left to continue using.
What about practical use? It is impossible to drain the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max’s battery in a day, at least for my needs. Look, my phone is set up with a SIM card, installed a lot of applications, uses 4G, takes pictures and everything. By 7 p.m., the device still had 48% battery left, and the on-screen time was 5 hours and 19 minutes. Using it all night, the device still has about 26% battery left, reaching 6 hours on-screen.
If used like this, reaching 9 – 10 hours on-screen is a trivial matter, and I can use it comfortably for 1.5 – 2 days.
Another new point on the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is that in addition to the included Xiaomi 100W charger, the device also supports PPS 100W fast charging. In theory, you can use third-party chargers from Anker or Cuktech to charge at high capacity. However, when I actually charge it with a third-party charger, the recharging time is much longer, taking up to 73 minutes, which is about the same as the iPhone 17 Pro Max or Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Anyway, having another charging method is very convenient. If you forget to bring your original charger when going out, you can use a third-party charger to charge it, it’s still fine.
Performance and biggest hurdles
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is too powerful. Now I see that there is no task that can make this chip difficult anymore. Even playing the heaviest mobile games like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max can play smoothly, the FPS chart is almost straight (and cool), it’s true that the flagship’s performance has now exceeded the needs of users.
In actual use, HyperOS 3 is smooth, lightning fast, and the device is also very cool. Like my friend, he is using Xiaomi 17 Pro, a smaller version but it also reflects that the device is cool, never overheating or reducing light. You can rest assured that you can use this Xiaomi 17 Pro Max comfortably.
But, software is probably the biggest barrier for this Xiaomi 17 Pro Max.
I won’t say too much anymore, those of you who use Xiaomi portable devices probably know how painful the slow notification problem on this phone is. I’ve tried all sorts of fixes, running it in the background and then turning it on without limiting battery usage, but the notifications keep buzzing, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes they don’t even pop up at all.
Looking at Chinese companies, I now see that HUAWEI is the best (receives Gmail), followed by OPPO, HONOR, followed by vivo and at the bottom of society is Xiaomi. If you have decided to buy this phone, you should have a parallel device like an iPhone to receive notifications.
Display and Sound
The most notable change is the screen ratio, from 20:9 it has changed to 19.5:9 just like the iPhone. It makes the machine a little more horizontal, making it more compact to hold. It seems that Chinese companies are following this trend, the Find X9 release also changed the screen ratio to 19.5:9.
Display quality is beyond dispute. High brightness, great for outdoor use. It doesn’t have a good anti-glare layer, so using it in the sun won’t be as “cool” as the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
This year’s speakers sound quite good, with great bass and very good vocal reproduction. Unfortunately, it cannot be as good as the peak period like the Mi 10S or Mi 11.
Experience Leica Camera
The camera on Xiaomi 17 Pro Max generally does not have many upgrades compared to the standard version. All three rear cameras are 50MP, the telephoto camera has a focal length of 115 mm, which means 5X optical zoom. Compared to the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, it can be seen that Xiaomi is still “saving” the biggest things for the Ultra version released later. The main sensor is not a 1-inch type, nor does the telephoto camera have terrible resolution or sensor specifications.
But anyway, the actual experience of this camera cluster is still very good.
Basically, the images produced on the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max still have a very typical feature of LEICA: the contrast is pushed up, the image tends to be a bit dark and dark. This image quality is very suitable for cozy settings with lots of yellow lights. The day I went to a Japanese restaurant, I picked up my camera to take a photo of the onigiri set, which looked really good. Thanks to the large focal length telephoto camera and algorithms, the sushi pieces look blocky and distinct from the background, creating a very delicious feeling.
I also tried to compare with the standard Xiaomi 17 with the same focal length of about 120 mm. It can be seen that the quality from the telephoto camera on Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is much better in terms of color and detail reproduction. Even zooming to 10X (230mm), the quality is still very good, details are not much reduced compared to 5X.
The 5X telephoto camera is also extremely useful for those who often go to concerts and festivals. The other day, I went to see the Mid-Autumn Festival in the village. Even though I had to stand 15-17 meters away from the stage, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max still produced quality photos that could be posted straight to social networks. Photos have little noise and handle light well. If you zoom in closely, you can still see the Tomati logo on the snack package or the small series of numbers on the stage light.
Of course, taking night shots with a telephoto will inevitably cause the image to be slightly blurred due to the subject’s constant movement. However, the machine handles quite well when it often pushes the shutter speed up, somewhat minimizing this phenomenon.
However, the camera on Xiaomi 17 Pro Max still has certain problems.
- Color is not consistent: In some cases, photos from the main camera will look a bit “yellower” than the telephoto camera. Although the difference is not too big, it is still noticeable.
- Inconvenient when taking close photos: Taking photos with a long focal length telephoto camera is sometimes a bit inconvenient. Like when I took a photo of the food set, I had to stand up and move quite far away to get the entire frame.
- Software error: Sometimes, if I quickly open the camera from the lock screen to “capture” the moment, the device will slow down significantly. Looks quite uncomfortable. Hopefully in future updates (or when it comes to genuine products), these problems will be fixed.
Summary
For 23 million VND, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a great phone. It gives me excitement about the design, it has a very strong battery, super strong performance and the camera is good enough.
There is only one barrier: software and notification issues. If you already have a secondary device, or can accept the notification problem, this will be a bet worth experiencing.
The post Detailed review of Xiaomi 17 Pro Max: Looking forward to selling genuine products in Vietnam first appeared on Vo Vo Studio – VVS – Hot technology news, in-depth product reviews.
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