Xiaomi 15 Ultra review: two steps forward and one step back

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is arguably the best camera phone of 2024, with its 1-inch primary sensor, variable aperture from f/1.6-4, and a suite of quality cameras, so how does the Xiaomi 15 Ultra beat the best? With significantly upgraded zoom and a slightly downgraded wide camera.

Since the 14 Ultra launched, both Honor and Vivo have broken through the zoom quality ceiling with their ultra-high resolution periscope cameras on the Honor Magic 7 Pro, Magic 7 RSR, and Vivo X200 Pro. The Vivo X200 Pro is the best smartphone around when it comes to zoom and photo processing, in my opinion, making the competition tougher for the new Xiaomi 15 Ultra.

Looking at the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s specs, it completely obliterates Apple, Google, and Samsung when it comes to sensor sizes and apertures, with the 50MP 1-inch sensor wide camera and its f/1.6 aperture, the 200MP periscope camera with a fast f/2.6, 100mm lens, and the macro-focusing 70mm, f/1.8 lens.

One phone the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s specs don’t trounce is the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Yes, the periscope zoom is turbo-charged, but the primary camera ditches the 14 Ultra’s variable aperture (f/1.6-4.0), and the secondary cameras use a combination of Samsung and Sony sensors. Given two of my favorite things about the Xiaomi 14 Ultra were the variable aperture for video and close-up capture and the shared quality across all secondary cameras – each was a Sony IMX858 sensor – it looks like Xiaomi’s tinkering with a winning formula.

With so many upgrades across design, display, battery capacity, and the upgraded camera grip, do the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s downgrades and sidesteps hold it back from being the best camera phone of 2025?

Xiaomi 15 Ultra design and screen

At its core, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s design is very similar to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. Both phones weigh about the same at just under 230g, share almost identical dimensions, and have the same sized 6.73-inch screens. They also have huge camera bumps that make a striking visual statement.

This year, there’s a fresh two-tone color that adds a proper camera look and feel to the line, setting matte silver against a vegan leather black, with chamfered sides and corners that create a comfortable-to-hold, stylized design. You can also pick the Xiaomi 15 Ultra up in white or black for more traditional smartphone styling.

For the 15 series, expect upgraded durability. Xiaomi calls the 15 Ultra’s frame Xiaomi Guardian Structure 2.0, with new Xiaomi Shield Glass, a high-strength aluminum frame, and it's IP68 water and dust resistance. Specifically, the glass on the camera surround is more scratch and drop resistant. While we didn't drop-test our 15 Ultra, after two weeks, the camera glass is free from any scuffs. Xiaomi also includes a pre-fitted plastic screen protector.

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The 15 Ultra’s screen is similar to last year’s 14 Ultra. It's a flat display, but the glass curves on all four sides and corners, rounding into the frame for a more seamless feel. It’s sharp with 522 pixels per inch, gets very bright at up to 3200 nits for excellent outdoor viewing and HDR playback, and the newer LTPO display tech is 24% more energy efficient than Xiaomi’s last Ultra.

Out of the box, the 15 Ultra supports Netflix HDR and Dolby Vision certification, so it's easy to tap into those peak contrast ratios, and within the gallery, photos are displayed in high dynamic range, too.

Xiaomi offers exceptionally granular control over display options as part of its latest HyperOS on the 15 Ultra, with four preset color modes to choose from: Original Color PRO, Vivid, and Saturated, which offer a sliding scale of punch. Alternatively, choose Advanced settings for P3 and sRGB, and there’s also scope to customize everything from display contrast, saturation, and individual RGB values.

For anyone concerned about eye care and compulsive doom scrolling, Xiaomi’s reading mode is one of my favourites, with easy-to-toggle monochrome and low-blue-light viewing, as well as a novel grain effect that can be applied to visuals to give an almost uncoated paper-like effect. The display also features 1920Hz PWM dimming, which doesn't best Honor’s suite of eye care display tech, but it's still competitive.

Photography Kit Legend Edition

For 2025, Xiaomi has upgraded its Photography Kit camera grip for the 15 Ultra, adding a handful of features and elements but failing to add the most notable omission from the past-gen grip, a tripod thread.

Even with no tripod thread, the utility the grip adds is undeniable. When shooting, it gives your hand more to hold, emulating a traditional camera grip. The new detachable thumb support adds a place for your thumb to both hang out and steady the phone, reducing shake and minimizing accidental screen presses. The second winning ergonomic addition is the detachable shutter button. This not only makes pressing it more satisfying, with analogue-feeling tactile feedback, but it also makes for a steadier shot.

The battery inside the camera grip is also improved, and so too is Xiaomi's power management. The now 2000mAh cell in the camera grip can be set to only charge the 15 Ultra when it's low on power. The original camera grip powered up when plugged in, and discharged the phone battery quicker once the camera grip battery was empty. The power hand-off seems to be managed better this year.

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As for inputs, the camera grip adds that excellent shutter release, a direct video record button, a zoom dial, and a scroll wheel that can be set to EV, Shutter, WB, Focus, or Bokeh, depending on shooting modes.

The main drawback of the Photography Kit is that focus can lock onto the wrong object, and you need a second hand to correct the issue. As a Canon user, I need my R6’s four-way stick to nudge the focus point into place. If Xiaomi overlaid an on-screen analog stick within thumbs reach to move the focus point when the grip was connected, that would be a fantastic addition to the experience.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra camera specs

The main upgrade this year is the 200MP telephoto camera, with a large 1/1.4-inch sensor ad 16-in-1 pixel-binning. With a fast f/2.6 aperture, it competes on spec with the Honor Magic 7 Pro and Vivo X200 Pro; however, where the Xiaomi 15 Ultra falls slightly behind is near-focus, with both Honor and Xiaomi’s phones capturing periscope macro-style shots.

The excellent 1-inch Sony LYT-900 sensor is back for the primary camera, as is the IMX-858 for the 70mm telephoto camera. The ultra-wide camera seems to be downgraded this year – a trend for 2025 – with a slightly smaller Samsung sensor compared to the 14 Ultra’s larger Sony IMX 858.

One highlight that's new to the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is a 13-channel spectral sensor to help professionally balance color temperature and ensure greater accuracy, especially across reds and greens.

14 mm ultra-wide camera: 50MP, 1/2.76 Samsung JN5 sensor; f/2.2 lens with AF.

23mm wide camera: 50MP, 1-inch Sony LYT-900 sensor; f/1.63 lens with OIS and eight element lens.

70mm telephoto camera: 50MP, 1/2.51-inch Sony IMX-858 sensor; f/1.8, lens with OIS.

100mm periscope camera: 200MP, 1/1.4-inch Samsung HP9 sensor; f/2.6 lens with OIS.

21mm front camera: 32MP, 1/3.14-inch OV32B sensor; f2.0 lens.

All four rear cameras can record 10-bit Log at 4K 60fps, SDR 4K at up to 120fps, and 8K at up to 30fps.

With a four-microphone array, audio from the 15 Ultra should be competitive, and Xiaomi offers multiple audio settings for video, including Smart noise reduction to tune out background noise, dimensional immersive audio, preserving a stereo effect for landscape video, live in-ear monitoring for wired earphones, and audio zoom for tapped subjects.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra camera review

There's no denying the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is in the running to be the best camera phone of 2025, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.

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This year, there's a bit less consistency across all four rear cameras than on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, with the ultra-wide being the weakest link. Colors across all four cameras are typically consistent – better than Honor's Magic 7 RSR and lower-end phones like the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro – but in dark environments, photos and videos from the ultra-wide start to look a bit muddy, and it struggles with bright light sources more than the other three cameras.

High-contrast scenes occasionally throw some gnarly visual artifacts and processing misfires into the mix and frequently choose to blow out highlights.

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Full-resolution RAW capture is also limited to the main camera, with the remaining three rear cameras dropping to 12MP for RAW images. Finally, the 200MP periscope camera also misses out on the near focus of the Honor Magic 7 Pro and Vivo X200 Pro, though the 70mm floating lens steps in for macro capture with a roughly 15cm minimum focus distance, beating the iPhone 16 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra at macro photography.

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Those gripes aside, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s camera is a joy to use across both auto and pro modes. The first win is clarity; when lighting is middling to great, photos across all four cameras capture a winning combination of detail and drama. The ultra-wide camera is consistently the weakest of the three, but still competitive, and the wide, 70mm telephoto and 100mm periscope are exceptional.

Focus is typically quick and accurate, though less impressive as the lights drop. The 24mm, 70mm, and 100mm cameras can create super-shallow depth for a phone, and all four rear cameras pack autofocus for added versatility.

Colors are mostly accurate, though put through Xiaomi and Leica’s dramatic processing pipeline, with Leica’s Vibrant shooting mode being a bit too zingy, and Leica Authentic subduing hues a bit too much at times. It would be great to either have a more neutral mode or scope to manage the color balance of shots, which Apple has given users as part of iOS 18.

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The Xiaomi 15 Ultra can capture exceptional dynamic range across photos and videos. However, it won't subdue light sources like most phones, so bright spots are more likely to be blown out than on a OnePlus, Pixel, Samsung, or Vivo phone. Xiaomi and Leica have been stubborn on this point, which is clearly intentional and possibly a means of retaining that classic, more dramatic quality than the more flattened look other smartphones capture. This is especially challenging in high-contrast indoor scenes. That said, RAW photos showcase excellent dynamic range for a phone, with plenty of shadow detail.

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra is great for stills and video at night, especially from the primary camera. The 100mm periscope is a solid performer, but hand shake can hold shots back from being class-leading. Get a secure hold of the phone, though, and you'll love using the 15 Ultra outdoors at night, and it's a strong portrait camera too.

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It's the 15 Ultra's characteristic processing that ensures you can capture some absolutely beautiful photos with it, even if it holds it back in certain scenes. Travel photos look brooding, food is textured and rich, and product photography is detailed without being sterile.

The 15 Ultra’s zoom isn't the furthest reaching, optically falling behind the Xiaomi 14 Ultra’s 5x zoom. However, by combining the 200MP Samsung HP9 sensor with a 100mm optical equivalent focal length, which captures relatively lossless 8-10x shots when paired with a steady hand its performance is fantastic. Of course, you can go further, and AI will help to clean details up, but if you want quality results, stay between 100-400mm.

When taking photos of subjects closer than a meter away, the main camera’s fast f/1.6 aperture can be too fast. Depth of field is too shallow, with blur going beyond charming and distortion detracting from the overall image quality. This is one area the Xiaomi 14 Ultra beats its successor. You can see the photos of the coffee cup below shot across all four cameras; each showcases the camera system’s versatility, but the 24mm image would have been better handled with a slower aperture.

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Another area the Xiaomi 15 Ultra falls behind the 14 Ultra is when filming bright environments or shooting fine detail that produces moire. By ditching the variable f/1.6-4 aperture, the 15 Ultra puts more pressure on the shutter speed, prevents a fuller depth of field, and could also contribute to this year’s Ultra generating more artifacts when shooting fine detail materials with repetitive patterns.

The 15 Ultra’s video is totally transformed by the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s zoom, with telephoto quality getting a huge boost, making the 15 Ultra an excellent option for gig enthusiasts, festival goers, proud parents at a school play, and travel videography.

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Video shot on the 15 Ultra looks excellent on the whole, with 10-bit Log across all rear cameras being a great addition. The phone doesn't support lens switching mid-recording when shooting in Log or 8K, which can throw off flow a bit and leave you with a lot of clips, but the pure image quality is strong, as is the dynamic range.

When shooting 4K non-Log video, you can switch lenses across all cameras at up to 60fps, with switching looking relatively seamless and handheld footage looking steady, especially from the ultra-wide and wide cameras. If you can get the 15 Ultra on a mobile gimbal for walking footage, it will help a lot, and if you’re happy hooking up a mic, the 15 Ultra fast becomes a total vlogging system

On the whole, for me, zoom is more important than a variable aperture, so the 15 Ultra is a better camera phone than the 14 Ultra, but only by a hair. After all, the 14 Ultra has a wider and higher-quality ultra-wide (12mm Sony IMX 858 combo versus 14mm Samsung JN5 combo), a more specced out primary camera thanks to that variable aperture, and an identical 70mm camera.

So, if you’re not a zoomer, there’s a case to be made for the 14 Ultra over Xiaomi’s latest flagship, especially as it will cost significantly less. But for anyone who loves to punch into the distance, the 15 Ultra is arguably the best option on the market right now.

As for which phone is the zoom champion, Vivo’s X200 Pro wins for close-up zoom and periscope portraits; however, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra takes the crown for zooming off into the distance, even besting the Galaxy S24 Ultra, iPhone 16 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra performance and battery

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra runs the latest version of HyperOS on top of Android 15. Xiaomi’s interface is very rich in certain respects, with fluid transitions and plenty of scope for customization, such as the screen settings mentioned earlier, and there's also a new Mac pairing feature for easy file transfer between your Xiaomi and Apple device. This worked brilliantly on first use but has since failed to activate – we have followed up with Xiaomi and will update the review when a solution is shared. We also struggled to activate Xiaomi's screen reader.

There are also plenty of AI tools to sink your teeth into, which are well integrated into the UI. When writing a message, you can lean on Xiaomi’s language tools, there’s recording transcription and summarizing, and the photo editing tools: HD enhance, generative expand, AI erase, reflection remover and sky switching all work very well, with online and offline options available.

Thanks to the ample storage (512GB or 1TB) and 16GB RAM as standard, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s memory offers plenty of space for 4K and even 8K footage, and manages multi-tasking smoothly.

Xiaomi’s HyperOS is still very busy, and a little bit buggy. Why we need to accept cookies to access the file explorer or themes app is beyond us, and the new Mac Connect feature worked on first launch but has since struggled with screen mirroring. Likely a combination of persistent issues and teething problems, given we tested a pre-release phone, the software experience gets a 6.5/10 right now, though this will likely climb to a 7.5 or 8 when Xiaomi irons out the kinks.

With its Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and Xiaomi’s dual-channel cooling system, the 15 Ultra is a decent gaming option with exceptional performance across both real-world gaming and benchmarks. It gets warmer than some larger flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and the camera bump makes it a bit unwieldy. It’s actually more comfortable to game on when the Photography Kit is connected, as that offsets the big camera bump.

I hammered the Xiaomi 15 Ultra’s battery from 7AM to around 5PM with photos and videos, draining it to around 10 percent before topping it up with the battery grip. On other lighter days when I wasn’t, the high-density 5410mAh silicon-carbon battery got us through a full day with as much as 30 percent left in the tank.

With 90W wired and 80W wireless charging, you can power up in under an hour by plugging in and a little over an hour with a compatible Xiaomi wireless charger.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra verdict

Xiaomi's made another exceptional camera phone. Big swings make for big pay offs, with the Leica-tuned photo processing matched with the exceptional hardware on the 15 Ultra capable of producing incredible photos and videos.

If the 15 Ultra retained the 14 Ultra's variable aperture and more specced-out ultra-wide, it could be the best mobile camera around, even with its occasional photo processing gremlins. As it stands, it's battling it out with the the 14 Ultra, as well as Vivo's X200 Pro, which has more reliable processing, especially in high-contrast environments.

What elevates the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is the Photography Kit – it changes the entire ergonomics of smartphone photography – and the upgrades this year may seem small, but they make a big difference.

Even if the camera isn't an across-the-board upgrade, the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is still a significantly better smartphone than the 14 Ultra. Its battery is much improved, there's more power under the hood, and its two-tone design looks great.

Xiaomi's new interface additions, such as Mac support, compensate for HyperOS's busyness, and practically speaking, one of the bigger wins over the 14 Ultra is the addition of eSIM, which was confusingly absent in last year's model.

So despite the fact the Xiaomi 15 Ultra feels like two steps forward and one step back, considering it's a step forward from the best camera phone of 2024 makes it an exceptionally good option for photographers and a great shout for anyone who wants a supremely versatile camera system in their pocket.

Xiaomi 15 Ultra alternatives

The obvious alternatives to the Xiaomi 15 Ultra are the flagships. The iPhone 16 Pro competes on video capture, but falls behind on photography; the Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL best the 15 Ultra's highlight-handling for stills but fall behind on versatility with significantly weaker macro capture and less impressive zoom. Finally, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's smaller sensors and less nuanced photo processing stop it from being the better choice, but its bigger screen is better for gaming, and it offers pen support.

Anyone happy with a less mainstream brand, the Vivo X200 Pro is an obvious zoom alternative with exceptional processing co-developed by Zeiss, the Honor Magic 7 RSR offers superior telemacro performance, and the OnePlus 13 and Oppo Find X8 Pro both deliver versatile cameras despite lower-end camera specs, but significantly lower prices. Alternatively, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is still an excellent camera phone for anyone happy with inferior zoom and last-generation power.