We recently encountered the following challenge: one of our editors is a father, and his boy wanted a new smartphone that can run the highly popular game Fortnite. If you do a bit of research, you see that Fortnite tends to run on high-end smartphones that cost a lot of money. But… there is one smartphone that stands out with its powerful hardware, beautiful looks, and affordable price. We are talking about Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 - a smartphone that was high-end back in 2017, and that is being sold today too, at an incredibly affordable price. Here is what you get today, two years after its launch, from Xiaomi Mi Mix 2:
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2: Who is it good for?
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is an excellent choice for people who:
- Desire an Android smartphone that looks fantastic
- Want to play Fortnite and other games at high-quality settings
- Need a powerful smartphone but do not want to spend a fortune for it
Pros and cons
There are many positives about the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2:
- It is a beautiful smartphone
- The display does not have a notch and it is large
- The hardware is powerful even today
- It is an affordable smartphone even without a contract
- It runs Fortnite at high-quality settings, which isn't common in its price range
- The battery is large enough to keep you going for two days without a charge
- It has received an update to Android 8 Oreo, and Xiaomi plans to offer an update to Android 9 Pie also
As negatives:
- Xiaomi does not bundle any headphones
- The camera experience is the biggest weakness of this smartphone
Verdict
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is one of the best Android smartphones that we have tested, although our review comes after almost two years since it was launched. Even in 2019, the Mi Mix 2 is still a good choice for anyone who wants a powerful yet beautiful Android smartphone. Furthermore, if you want to play Fortnite and other games, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is one of the cheapest smartphones that you can buy. The true weakness of this smartphone is the camera, which does a good job only when taking pictures outdoors, with good lighting conditions. For people who desire excellent value for money, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is one of the best purchases that they can make.
Unboxing the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 comes in a square dark gray cardboard box with a minimalist design. On its top side, you see only the Mi logo printed in gold.
On the bottom of the box, there are a few stickers that tell you the exact model of smartphone that you have bought. Inside, you find the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 together with all its bundled accessories and documents. You get a protective cover, a power adapter and a USB Type-C cable, a Type-C to audio converter, a SIM insertion tool, the warranty card, and the user guide. Unfortunately, there are no headphones bundled in the package.
The unboxing experience offered by Xiaomi is a pleasant one. We like the minimalist design of the box, and we appreciate the good quality of the materials used to create it. The only thing missing from the box is a pair of headphones.
Design and build quality
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is sold in only one color: black. Its body is made of a ceramic compound that looks great. It is also reflective, but most people like that. The funny thing is that it was hard for us to get good pictures of it because of the reflections. đŸ™‚
The ceramic body is beautiful, but it is also prone to get scratched, broken or smudged by fingerprints easily. It is a good idea to use a protective case for this smartphone. The good news is that Xiaomi also thought about that and included a case in the standard package. The case you get is thin and minimalistic but feels pretty resistant. We chose to use it for the above reasons, and because it also made the smartphone less slippery.
The back of the smartphone is also home to the camera and to the fingerprint reader. The camera is small but slightly protruding. Xiaomi brags about the its elegant design and about the fact that it decorated the camera with an 18-karat gold-plated rim. It looks beautiful.
The edges of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 are rounded and made of a black aluminum alloy. They give a note of elegance and also help you feel like the smartphone is well-made.
The front side of the smartphone is all about the large 6 inch (5.99 technically) display. Xiaomi managed to fill almost the entire front surface with the screen, leaving only a few millimeters for the bezels.
Unlike many high-end smartphones today, Xiaomi did not want to cut the screen and put a notch on it, and we appreciate that a lot. The company preferred to move the front camera to the bottom of the screen and place it on the bottom bezel. It is a good approach and we bet that many people would rather have that instead of an ugly notch.
The volume rocker and the power button are found on the usual spot: the upper right side of the smartphone. On the opposite edge, there is the SIM tray and, on the bottom edge, there is the bottom speaker and the USB Type-C port.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is a beautiful smartphone, and one of the main reasons for that is fact that its screen covers most of its front side, and that the bezels are so thin. However, although the ceramic back side also looks great. It is also slippery, so you should always use a case with this smartphone.
Hardware specifications
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 features a 5.99 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080 x 2160 pixels and 18:9 screen ratio, resulting in a relatively high pixel density of approximately 403 ppi. The screen is protected against scratches and drops by Gorilla Glass 4.
The smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8998 Snapdragon 835 chipset that features an octa-core Kryo processor which can reach speeds of up to 2.45 GHz. For the video part, the smartphone uses a Qualcomm Adreno 540 graphics processing unit. According to Wikipedia, the GPU supports Vulkan 1.0, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, OpenGL 3.1, and DirectX 12.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 that we tested had 64GB of internal storage space and to 6GB of RAM. However, you can also find it in other hardware configurations: 128 GB internal storage and 8GB RAM or 64/128/256 GB internal storage and 6 GB RAM. Unfortunately, if you want to expand the storage space, you cannot, because the smartphone does not have a card slot.
The autonomy of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is provided by a large non-removable battery with a capacity of 3400mAh. It supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, and the good news is that you also get a fast charger bundled in the default package. During the time we had it for testing, we noticed that the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 needs less than 2 hours to charge to 100%, and 20 minutes of charging gives you at least a few hours of autonomy.
On its back, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 has a single 12 megapixels camera with f/2.0 aperture, 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization, phase detection autofocus, and a dual-LED flash. On its front side, it comes with a 5 megapixels camera.
Regarding connectivity, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is a Dual SIM smartphone and uses Nano-SIM cards. It has a Dual SIM Dual Standby implementation, which means that even if both SIM cards are active when you are not using them, once you take a call on one of them, the other becomes inactive.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 has a USB Type-C port, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, dual-band wireless support for the 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4 GHz and 5GHz networks, and 2x2 MIMO.
The smartphone also benefits from the information it gathers from the built-in sensors: fingerprint (on the rear side), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, and barometer.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is a phablet, meaning that it is larger than the average smartphone, and because of its big battery, it is not exactly light. It is 5.98 inches in length (151.8 mm), 2.97 inches in width (75.5 mm), 0.30 inches in thickness (7.7 mm), and it weighs 6.53 ounces (185 grams). For more details about Xiaomi Mi Mix 2's hardware specifications and features, visit its official webpage: Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 Specs.
In 2019, the hardware specifications of the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 are those of a powerful mid-range Android smartphone.
Check the next page to find out more about the smartphone experience offered by the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2, its cameras, bundled apps, and performance in benchmarks. Also, see how well it runs Fortnite.
The smartphone experience on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2
The chipset and the internal memory are more than enough to make the operating system and the user interface run smoothly. All apps are loaded very fast, and multitasking is great.
The fingerprint reader works well almost always, but it also can fail to register your fingerprint correctly, from time to time. For me, it was easy to reach because I have long fingers, but for my wife, who has smaller hands, it proved to be somewhat tricky to find the sensor and touch it without looking.
The volume rocker and the power button are easy to find and tell apart, as the volume rocker is a single long piece, while the power button is a lot shorter.
We were surprised by the autonomy offered by the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2: two days on a charge. However, if you play Fortnite or any other demanding game, expect to have to charge it daily.
Regarding phone calls, the ones we had while using this smartphone were of excellent quality. We were able to hear the people we called clearly, without unwanted noise, and they could hear us just as well. We did not experience call drops either, even though the mobile coverage is not great in our area.
If you like watching movies or listening to music, you should know that this smartphone is an excellent choice for multimedia activities. The IPS display has a good color reproduction, and its brightness is high enough to make the screen visible even when you are outdoors. Videos look beautiful on the bezel-less screen, and the speakers do a great job when watching movies.
The speakers are powerful and do not distort sounds even if you push the volume to the max. Even so, if you want a richer listening experience, use a good pair of headphones - unfortunately, there aren't any bundled with the smartphone.
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is the cheapest Android smartphone that runs Fortnite, so we were curious how well it performs in this game. Fortnite configured itself to use high-quality video settings on the Mi Mix 2. Then, when we played the game, it ran smoothly, no stutter, no lags, no errors. That is great for any mobile gamer, and it's especially great for parents who want to buy a Fortnite-capable Android smartphone for their children, but do not want to spend a fortune on it.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is an excellent Android smartphone that can perform any task flawlessly. Videos look beautiful on the bezel-less screen, the speakers sound great, and it can run Fortnite at high quality settings, without any stuttering.
The camera experience on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2
The main 12 megapixels camera found on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 uses a Sony IMX386 image sensor. It has an f/2.0 aperture, optical image stabilization, phase detection autofocus, and a dual LED flash. We took photos in various lighting conditions and with different subjects. The camera focuses rapidly, and the photos are quickly saved because of the fast internal storage. The quality of the photos we took was good when outdoors, with vivid colors and good exposure. However, it struggles when having to work with indoor artificial lighting. Although the camera focuses fast, the photos aren't as detailed, and you can notice noise when the light is dim. An aperture of f/1.8 would have been better than the f/2.0 offered by the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.
The front camera has 5 megapixels and can take decent selfies, of which you should be satisfied if you're not too picky. To get a better idea of the camera experience, browse the gallery below, which includes pictures taken with Xiaomi Mi Mix 2. We took various shots, in different lighting conditions, including selfies:
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 can film videos in 4K, at a resolution of up to 2160p (3840 x 2160) and 30 frames per second, but also in 1080p Full HD, at 1920 x 1080 pixels and 30 fps. In our experience, the smoothest videos with the best image stabilization results were the ones filmed in Full HD. However, it should be noted that the image stabilization is not that great, and other smartphones do a lot better in this regard. Here is a video sample in which you can see how the camera records moving objects:
And here is a panorama that we recorded, in which you can see how the smartphone handles videos with less movement involved:
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 offers a reasonable camera experience when it comes to shooting photos and recording videos. The results are better than when buying other affordable Android smartphones, but they're not impressive. If you are not too demanding, you shouldn't be disappointed by the cameras on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2.
Android 8 Oreo, MIUI 10 and bundled apps
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 was launched with Android 7 and the MIUI 9 customer user interface pre-installed. However, as soon as we turned it on, we checked whether any updates are available. Android 8 Oreo and MIUI 10 are available and we installed them. According to Xiaomi, the Mi Mix 2 should also get another update for the operating system, to Android 9 Pie, which is awesome.
The MIUI interface is not the original Android experience from Google, but in some aspects, it is better. MIUI 10 is fast and looks great, and it offers plenty of customization options. The only aspect that some people might not like is the lack of an apps drawer.
You should also know that, besides the standard Google apps for Android, such as the Play Store, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, or Photos, the Chinese company also bundles a few others on the Mi Mix 2:
- Browser - a web browser from Xiaomi, which you can use to surf the web
- Calendar - a calendar app that lets you schedule your daily agenda
- Camera - the MIUI 10 default camera app for taking photos
- Clock - a simple clock app that also lets you set alarms, use a stopwatch and a timer.
- Compass - shows you where the North and the other cardinal points are
- Contacts - an app that displays your contacts and also lets you edit them
- Facebook - the official app of the most popular social network on Earth
- Feedback - sends your opinion and recommendations to Xiaomi
- File Manager - browse and manage the folders and files stored on your Xiaomi Mi Mix 2
- Gallery - displays the pictures stored on your smartphone
- Mail - the default email app offered by Xiaomi
- Mi Calculator - makes math calculations easy đŸ™‚
- Mi Drop - an app that lets you send files from your smartphone to others, without having to connect to the internet
- Mi Pay - Xiaomi's wallet app
- Mi Video - a gallery app that plays the videos found on your smartphone
- MIUI Forum - keeps you connected with the Xiaomi community and keeps your updated with news from Xiaomi
- Music - use it to listen to music
- Notes - an app for taking notes
- Recorder - an app that records sounds using the smartphone's microphone.
- Scanner - uses the smartphone's camera to scan QR codes
- Screen Recorder - an app that lets you record your smartphone's screen and which is excellent for creating tutorials đŸ™‚
- Security - keeps your smartphone secure by running antivirus scans and also helps you optimize it by cleaning junk files, clearing memory, or speeding up games; it also lets you lock apps so that nobody can open them but you
- Weather - it shares the weather prognosis in your location or anywhere else in the world
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 runs on a modern version of Android (8 Oreo) and it uses the MIUI 10 user interface. MIUI 10 is fast and easy to use. It is also highly customizable, but it doesn't offer an apps drawer, which some people want.
Performance in benchmarks
In 2019, the hardware specs on the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 are those of a mid-range smartphone. However, the hardware specs only tell half of the story. To find out more, we also ran a series of benchmarks. Here are their results:
First, we ran the Basemark OS II, an all-in-one benchmarking tool for measuring the performance of Android devices. Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 got an overall score of 3346 points, which is slightly better than what a Samsung Galaxy S8 can offer, and a similar result to that of a Samsung Galaxy S9 or a Huawei P20.
Then, we used Geekbench 4 to see how well Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 uses its processor cores. The single-core test is relevant because some apps do not know how to use more than one core, and many games rely on the per-core speed to work well. Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 had a score of 1682 points, which puts it close behind the Samsung Galaxy S8 (with Snapdragon 835 chipset), but far behind the Huawei P20.
The multi-core test revealed a score of 5115 points. This test set assesses the processor's speed when running multiple tasks simultaneously, using multiple cores. This time, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 showed a weaker performance than the Samsung Galaxy S8 or the Huawei P20. However, it's almost as fast as the ASUS ZenFone 5.
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 supports 4G LTE mobile data connections, so we also used Speedtest to see its performance in this area too. The problem is that our mobile operator does not offer the best internet speed. In other areas the speeds we get could be much higher. However, the results that we got were decent, as you can see in the screenshot below.
Next, we ran a few gaming benchmarks, to see how good the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 is when playing games. We used the GFXBench GL Benchmark and here are the most interesting result we got:
- In the Aztec Ruins OpenGL (Normal Tier), it rendered 1625 frames (25 fps), and in Aztec Ruins Vulkan (Normal Tier), it rendered 1631 fps (25 fps). Both results are significantly better than what you would get from a Samsung Galaxy S8, which is more expensive.
- In the 1080p Car Chase Offscreen test, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 rendered 1511 frames (26 fps). It is a result that puts the Mi Mix 2 above the Huawei P20 (1368 frames) or the Samsung Galaxy S8 (1472 frames) but beneath Samsung Galaxy S9 (1641 frames).
- In 1080p Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 managed to render 2486 frames (40 fps). It is again better than a Huawei P20 (2448 frames) or a Samsung Galaxy S8 (2342 frames) but weaker than the Samsung Galaxy S9 (3741 frames).
- In 1080p T-Rex Offscreen, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 rendered 5593 frames (100 fps). This is the only gaming benchmark where the Mi Mix 2 was slower than the Huawei P20 or the Samsung Galaxy S8, which both managed to render 5808 frames.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 can run all your favorite games with visual details set to medium or high quality.
For the final test, we used PCMark Work 2.0 battery life test to measure the autonomy of the battery when running common daily tasks such as browsing the web or editing documents and photos. The average time we got from Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 during three runs, was of 10 hours and 48 minutes. It is a great result for any smartphone.
The Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 offers performance numbers that confirm that this is an excellent mid-range Android smartphone. It can compete even with higher-end devices. It's also an excellent choice if you want to play the most demanding games, such as Fortnite.
Do you like the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 smartphone?
You know now that we like the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 a lot, and that we believe it offers an excellent balance between price, performance, and features. Do you feel the same? If you already have this smartphone, share your experience with it with others that might be interested in buying it. Comment below and let's discuss.
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