TechRadar Verdict

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Ultra has been designed to be the Windows competitor of the Macbooks and it takes to its role in its stride with an excellent display and design along with some powerful specs.

Pros

+
An excellent display
+
Sleek design
+
Competitive performance

Cons

-
Inefficient speakers
-
Quite hefty
-
No SD Card slot

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2-minute review

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Ultra is a laptop that has been single-mindedly made by the company keeping a particular rival in mind and that is the Macbooks from Apple. And it is Xiaomi's with to not just take on the Cupertino-based tech giant but beat it at its own game by introducing features that it does not have.

This is in no way a new segment for Xiaomi as it has been making laptops for a while now, but the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Ultra definitely takes the best features of the company and betters the areas it was weak in. And considering that this is the first laptop from the company to launch in India, this is a strong one to mark one's presence.

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Ultra comes with a taller display which provides for not just entertainment purposes but creativity as well. And it certainly does have the specs to be able to support the needs of the creators that might be looking to buy a laptop at this budget.

While AMD has been making strides in the chip-making business, Xiaomi sticks to the Intel side of things with the Mi Notebook Ultra and features the newest i7 and i5 chips for uncompromising performance.

And at this price point, it can be argued that the company really wants to set an example and create a new trend in the laptop market.

Mi Notebook Ultra India price and availability

The Mi Notebook Ultra price starts at Rs 59,999 for the 8GB RAM and Intel i5 CPU, Rs 63,999 for 16GB RAM and Intel i5 CPU, and Rs 76,999 for the 16GB RAM and Intel i7 CPU variant.

Offers include Rs 4,500 cashback for HDFC Bank credit card and EMI transactions for the Intel i7 variant and Rs 3,500 on the Intel i5 variants. The laptops are available for purchase from Xiaomi's own website, Mi Home app, and retail stores including Amazon.

Design and display

Xiaomi Mi NoteBook Ultra — (Image credit: Future)

Anyone using the Mi Notebook Ultra would notice that this is a sleek device right out of the box. The laptop has a metal body with laser-cut edges and a keyboard. It has a silver matte finish that goes all over the outside of the body of the device.

The Xiaomi branding is present on the lid of the device which has a shine and sheen to it. The bottom part of the laptop has a groove cut out which allows the user to easily access the space between the lid and the base and open up the laptop with just one hand.

The left-hand panel of the device features two USB-C ports one of which is a Thunderbolt 4 type along with an HDMI and a USB 3.2 port. On the right-hand panel, there's a composite 3.5mm port along with a USB 2.0.

The bottom panel of the device features heat vents which means that the laptop may not be ideal to use on soft surfaces like beds or even on the lap. One of the things about the laptop which could be posited as negative is that it is rather bulky and weighs 1.7Kgs and has a chassis made out of Aircraft grade Series 6 Aluminium. But it does have a premium feel to it.

The keyboard on the Mi Notebook Ultra has ample space without having the keys stick to each other. And the 1.5mm travel of the keys make for a comfortable typing experience. And while the trackpad is quite large it does leave something to be desired in terms of responsiveness. It has a rather smooth finish and does well with gestures though.

It comes with a 15.6-inch 3.2K (3200x2000) IPS display with 89% SBR, 100% SRGB colour gamut, 242 pixels per inch, and 90 Hz refresh rate. The tall display of the Mi Notebook Ultra is one of its best features. This is definitely one of the best displays in this class of laptops.

While I was skeptical about this tall display since I am so used to using the wide resolution one, but I had no idea that it would turn out so well. While this definitely is a great medium to work on and use creative software like Photoshop, it turned out to be a brilliant display for gaming as well.

While the 90Hz refresh rate is a boon, the extra real estate on the display really made for an excellent experience in playing FPS as well as MOBA games.

Performance

The Mi Notebook Ultra is a very consistent performer in almost all segments that are needed by a laptop of this budget. Xiaomi has been sticking to its guns about using Intel chips and while that is not an issue as long as the performance of the device is unhindered, the company should think about the alternative in the future. We reviewed the i5-11300H processor with 16GB RAM.

While the performance of a laptop is with these standard specifications is expected to be top-notch, it is some of these benchmarks that dictate terms. And indeed the Mi Notebook Ultra excels in performance for creative software and some of the games we played on it. We played some Dota 2, Valorant as a test for multiplayers and it could consistently give us 60FPS.

We even tried some AAA games on it like Horizon Zero Dawn and Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and it could handle the games in mid to low visuals with FPS averaging in the 50s. Speaking of the temperature of the CPU it reached around 85°C during peak performance which seemed pretty decent.

Xiaomi Mi NoteBook Ultra benchmark — (Image credit: Future)

Some of the creative software we used included Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro and Lightroom, and these were quick to initialize and the images and video rendered quite quickly as well.

Now moving to some benchmarks the laptop scored a 4,023 on the PCMark 10 benchmarking test which is designed to calculate a device's efficiency for day to day work and use. This is a decent score for a laptop that features Intel Iris Xe Graphics and i5-11300H processor.

On the TimeSpy test from 3DMark the laptop scored 1253 which is not exactly ideal for gaming but then again this isn't a gaming laptop. It had an 1113 GPU score and a 4430 score for the CPU benchmark which kind of states the obvious.

Battery

I have to admit that the Mi Notebook Ultra is a power hungry machine even though it does not come with a separate GPU. It has a 3.2K display with a 90Hz refresh rate which would hog power all day long.

And to support this the laptop comes with a 69,993 mWh battery which according to Xiaomi should last about 12 hours. We found that the laptop battery lasts just north of 7 hours with continuous usage and the screen brightness set to max. This is quite impressive and we estimate that it should last most users for the whole day without having to charge in the middle of the day.