Xiaomi X Pro QLED TV: An affordable option with all the bells and whistles

Mint

5 hours ago

Shouvik Das In a market dominated by premium brands, Xiaomi's 2025 X Pro Qled television offers great features like 'Filmmaker Mode' at a fraction of the cost. But is it a good buy, overall? The 65-inch variant of Xiaomi X Pro QLED TV
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In 2018, Xiaomi brought its range of smart televisions to India. In due course, it had a similar effect as the company had on the smartphone market—bringing in features at lower prices than ever seen before. Fast forward to 2025, and the Xiaomi X Pro Qled television has nearly pulled off what was once typical to this brand—the experience of flagship products at a fraction of the price.
In 2018, Xiaomi brought its range of smart televisions to India. In due course, it had a similar effect as the company had on the smartphone market—bringing in features at lower prices than ever seen before. Fast forward to 2025, and the Xiaomi X Pro Qled television has nearly pulled off what was once typical to this brand—the experience of flagship products at a fraction of the price.
Case in point: earlier this year, Japanese giant Sony introduced a picture mode called 'Studio Calibrated' on its flagship line of Bravia televisions. The rationale was to offer buyers of some of the most premium televisions in the market a picture mode that replicated colour and related settings that a movie director shot a piece of content in. It was one of the ways through which Sony sought to differentiate its offering—televisions, after all, is an increasingly commoditized market today.
The 2025 edition of the Xiaomi X Pro Qled television, interestingly, has almost pulled off a similar feat—with a dedicated 'Filmmaker Mode' in the TV. Before a qualitative analysis of it, a more important factor to note is the price at which Xiaomi has rolled out this feature.
The Sony Bravia 3, which offers this feature albeit with an 'Oled' display panel, is priced at ₹ 1.65 lakh for the 65-inch variant. Samsung, Sony's Korean rival and India's biggest television seller by volume at the end of last year, made the 'Qled' technology mainstream. Today, a 65-inch Samsung Qled television starts at ₹ 88,000—about half the price of Sony's. Xiaomi, with its 65-inch X Pro Qled, charges users ₹ 64,000—nearly one-third lesser than Samsung, and at two-fifth that of Sony. Also read: An 11th grader brings technology to canine care
Purely from a cost standpoint, the Xiaomi X Pro Qled television stands out for having delivered on the transition that India's television market is going through. Driven by easy financing availability and rising credit, buyers are increasingly looking for larger or more premium televisions. For Xiaomi, third in the market behind Samsung and LG, this could be a major pitch to rope more customers back into its ecosystem. Balance of performance
While the cost advantage is a good thing, the performance factor cannot be ignored. On this note, the Xiaomi X Pro Qled ticks the basic checkboxes at the onset—a reasonably slim build, the typical Google TV interface coupled with a custom layer of content recommendations, and ample picture settings to tweak around.
The panel itself delivers stable picture quality—no obvious quirks or imbalances. The backlight is amply bright, which means that the television will produce legible visuals even in very bright living room environments. While brightness is the typical factor of strength for Qled televisions, it also does reasonably well in dim environments, without creating very noisy shadows or pixelated scenes in movies that have predominantly dark scenes. There is also no interpolation that's apparent in about one month's usage—showing that fundamentally, the picture panel used by Xiaomi is reliable and adequate for a 65-inch, 4K television.
The 65-inch variant in use here also uses a relatively new technology called 'Dual Line Gate' (DLG)—using which televisions can upscale the refresh rate of the display panel. Think of this as how smooth a television can be in showcasing fast-moving scenes—a factor that typically comes into play for gamers who would hook up their Xbox, Switch or PlayStation gaming consoles to the television.
For them, the Xiaomi X Pro 65-inch Qled Google TV attempts to produce visuals akin to more expensive televisions that use a native 120Hz refresh rate display. The result is almost in line with flagships, but sampled on an Xbox Series S, the refresh rate delivery was not at a constant 120Hz. That said, for most casual gamers, the difference is unlikely to make a major dent.
All said and done, it is the 'Filmmaker mode' that stands out here. Xiaomi allows viewers to switch to this mode to give a true-to-source representation of the cinema on the screen. The result, truth be told, is impressive for a television that costs a fraction of the market average. Xiaomi even allows users to tweak the settings in this mode—a good factor, which would allow users to use this mode as a template, and then tweak the picture settings to their preference.
While the picture quality of the Xiaomi X Pro Qled's 2025 edition is recommendable, the native audio quality, despite the use of 34-watt in-TV speakers along with Dolby Atmos support, is a touch underwhelming. The absence of bass, which is common in non-flagship televisions, is evident—a factor that won't go unnoticed.
Also apparent is the design of the television—while there are no discrepancies, the distinctly premium brushed-metal finish on Samsung and Sony's televisions are missing on the Xiaomi X Pro Qled. It isn't something that would get in the way of the picture quality, but is something to be noticed nonetheless. Still a good pick
All said, there is no denying that purely based on the picture quality on offer in return of the price, the Xiaomi X Pro Qled 65-inch, 2025 edition TV is a worth purchase for those looking for a larger-than-average television but within a limited budget. Xiaomi has ensured that all essentials are delivered upon—even the audio quality is not underwhelming, even though not as wholesome as it could have been. Simply for this, it would be difficult to find a television that is more value for money than this one, especially with a 65-inch screen in tow. Unscrambling the jargon
Qled: Quantum light emitting diode, the fundamental technology that uses ultra-bright dots on the display, in place of Organic light emitting diode (Oled)—which uses ultra-dimming dots.
Refresh rate: The number of times a TV's panel flickers, measured in hertz (Hz). The higher the number, the smoother is the display—and typically, the more expensive is a TV.
Backlight: A panel of light behind the main screen. The best TVs have backlights that can be both very bright and super dim—and would thus be suitable for most scenes.
Dolby Atmos: A proprietary surround sound technology. In good speakers, presence of Dolby Atmos signifies superlative stereo and directional audio delivery. Also read: Memes are changing how we talk IRL Topics You May Be Interested In