You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/xiaomi-12t-pro.2161/

Xiaomi are a name that have quickly moved to the forefront of phone makers thanks to their wide range of devices at usually-affordable prices. Sticking with their yearly schedule of an upgraded flagship to end the year, we check out the Pro flavour of the 12T to see what’s new this time around.

If you’ve been keeping a keen eye on the review box lately, you’ll know we recently covered the Xiaomi 12T, the base model of the phone I have with me. There’s actually a lot of cross-over between this device and that one, with the two key changes that I’ll be focusing on being the improved camera and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. From the screen to the charging speeds and aesthetic, everything else matches up with the 12T, so I’d encourage you to give that review a read before looking at this one for a fuller image.

• https://gbatemp.net/review/xiaomi-12t.2140/

To give a brief overview of my general thoughts though, this phone is fantastic. I’ve previously covered the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G from Xiaomi as a really sleek midrange device, and it’s great to see the strong points of that shining through here with the added performance you would expect from a flagship offering. MIUI remains an incredibly clean and responsive Android skin with plenty of available customisation via the built-in theme manager. Both the 12T and 12T Pro have also been promised three major OS updates and four years of security patches, which is a nice assurance to have given the rate Xiaomi put out phones. The question quickly moves to whether you’d want to be using this phone for four years, and honestly, there’s not much I can say against it.

Now £700 isn’t necessarily a budget phone, but it is a relatively affordable flagship device, especially for the chipset you’re getting. In terms of performance, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is phenomenal, and able to handle even the highest of emulation hurdles. As I discussed in a recent post, this was the big draw for me with the 12T Pro, and having it setup for emulation and some of the trickier high-end Android games is a really pleasant experience. Switching the default launcher up to something more controller-friendly and throwing it into a grip gives you an absolute emulation titan, and this is something you can explore even with this as your daily driver using the Second Space feature.

Second Space is something I’ve generally overlooked in previous devices, allowing you to launch into an entirely separate Android configuration by using a different password at the lock screen. You can even have two different default launchers. Using this, you could have MIUI and your usual day to day setup on hand, while also getting a dedicated and isolated gaming setup. It’s a neat feature that can take away a bit of the Android emulation clumsiness without compromising your day to day usage.

To give a brief overview of what it can take on emulation-wise, Citra MMJ has run everything I’ve thrown at it at x3 native resolution and speed up options enabled. AetherSX2 has no trouble running Shadow of the Colossus at 720p, and Dolphin MMJR can even tackle games like Mario Galaxy without having to disable your cursor if you’re happy to play at native resolution. I’ve even managed to play some Switch games thanks to the in-development Skyline Edge emulator, though it is still very much a work in progress. To put a Geekbench score to it, you’re looking at a single-core score of 1308, and a multi-core score of 4186, which is fairly standard for the SD8+G1.

The other half of the 12T’s Pro moniker is of course its 200 MP camera, a relatively hefty upgrade from the base model’s 108 MP variant, at least on paper. As a bit of a photographical novice, I quite enjoyed using the camera, and there is a relatively impressive amount of detail that can be captured when you bump it all the way up to the highest quality picture taking. As phone cameras continue to get better though I feel much more of the experience starts to fall on the software, and it’s here Xiaomi really stand out. You have an assortment of really intuitive AI-enabled options to complement your more standard editing suite. My favourite of these is by far Xiaomi’s ProCut feature. Only available for pictures taken in the 50 MP or full 200 MP mode, ProCut looks at your original image and gives you a number of crops, each with a different aspect ratio or primary subject. Though it can do a decent job of reframing any picture, you do need as focal point to get the best results.

With the phone shipped to me with an EU charger, I took it upon myself to head to Xiaomi’s UK storefront and pick up my own 120W brick to see if the promises made in terms of its fast charging were all they were saying. To give you a brief overview of the Xiaomi store experience, it’s quick and easy. The plug and cable came to £40 with an additional £5 delivery. It was posted on the day I ordered it and turned up the day after. You usually would get this with the phone assuming you’re buying in-region, but if you happened to find yourself in a position like mine, is it worth spending the extra £45? Yes. 120W charging is wild, and completely eliminates the routine of leaving your phone plugged in overnight. With 0 to 100% taking around 18 minutes, I plug it in while I go for a shower and know it’s ready to go for either a day of usage, or a day of gaming in my case. Both the 12T and 12T Pro don’t feature wireless charging, but when you can charge it as fast as this, it feels like a redundant feature anyway.

So can I recommend Xiaomi’s 12T Pro? I can, undoubtedly so. You have an incredibly strong flagship device with the hardware to support both daily use and some pretty heavy gaming. With security patches promised for the next four years, my only real question is how such fast charging will affect battery life in the long-run. 120W charging only debuted last year, so we’re left trusting what we’re told from Xiaomi themselves. I’m hoping it has what it takes, but only time will tell.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/retroflag-handheld-controller-for-switch.2154/

Back when the Switch was originally announced, I had a vast assortment of miscellaneous excitements, each fuelled by the then-unique design. A dockable tablet with detachable controllers as a concept is phenomenal. You could have an entirely modular and upgradable platform between the dock, controllers, and tablet; the possibilities were endless for unique controllers, and docks that could provide power boosts when playing on the TV. In the end, my excitements remained just that. Nintendo never really iterated on the Joy Cons, and the dock is still just a block of plastic that’ll output HDMI and little more. My dreams of unique Joy Cons to match the company’s greatest controllers are all but up in smokes, at least officially speaking. While Nintendo sticks to its guns and holds tightly to its original designs, third parties continue to develop and iterate, and now we’ve finally arrived at my dream design with Retroflag’s very non-specific Handheld Controller for Switch. I’m in love.

Now there’s actually a good bit to break down here. On a surface level, we have a beautifully nostalgic translucent purple shell that’s designed to wrap around the Switch, interfacing with it via a USB C port at the bottom and being recognised as a wired Pro Controller. You have all the buttons you’d need for a Switch controller to work, with both sticks clicking in for a third input, and one additional button available for some nifty features we’ll go over later. Looking at the dimensions it’s 273mm wide and 110 tall, which is relatively comparable to Hori’s popular Split Pad Pro, if not a good bit sleeker in design. It’s got a really premium finish and holds both the standard and OLED Switch tablet well thanks to it overlapping the frame of the console on the left and right, as well as small clips on each side that catch the Joy Con rails.

To stop beating around the bush, what we have here is a controller grip that’s clearly inspired by the GameCube controller, and as I’ve commended Retroflag for in the past, they’ve done a brilliant job with the theming. Both analogue sticks feel great, and feature the growingly-popular magnetic hall effect sensors to avoid the drifting that’s plagued the vanilla Joy Cons. The D-Pad feels really nice, and definitely feels larger than the original GameCube controller’s. Each button feels great to press, with the plus and minus buttons, as well as the home, screenshot, and extra button being clicky; your usual face buttons by contrast have a satisfying travel distance to them. There have been some liberties taken to modernise the layout and bring it in line with what Switch games are expecting you to use, adopting the diamond-shaped ABXY over the GameCube controller’s own style. On top of this, we get a set of shoulder buttons and a set of digital triggers. I’m a little sad they didn’t jerry-rig something together to make the Switch think this is an actual GameCube controller so they could add analogue shoulder buttons, but I can imagine that’d add a number of restrictions that wouldn’t make sense given it’s only really Super Mario Sunshine that’d actually recognise them.

While I am on board with the modern take on the GameCube controller’s design, there are a few things I’m disappointed to see from this transition. Perhaps the most obvious of these for the eagle-eyed GameCube enthusiast is the lack of notches in the plastic surrounding each of the analogue sticks. It’s hard to really say whether this is a negative, since Switch games are probably expecting you to have full motion on both of your analogue sticks in oppose to being limited to an odd octagon. Even thinking like that though, I do think it’s a missed opportunity. Both analogue sticks just feel too close to the original, with this missing piece adding an initially-foreign sensation to the mix. Though an even more minor criticism than the lack of notches, the matte finish on the face buttons didn’t quite sit right with me at first, with the GameCube controller buttons being glossy. I will say that after using this controller for a week or so now, I’ve come on board to both of these discrepancies from the source material, and I do understand it can’t be exactly the same. With how close it is though, you’re overtly aware of anything that’s even slightly off.

I have been mentioning a special button, and it adds my favourite feature of third party controllers: rapid fire. If you hold the special button down and press any other button, the button will then have the hold mode rapid fire enabled. This means that if you hold the button down, it’ll act as though you’re mashing it. To give you an idea of how fast the mashing is, I decided to boot up Mario Party Superstars and start a game of Mecha Marathon. The aim here is to mash A and B as much as possible in 10 seconds. I managed to max out my score at 70m, so it seems plenty capable. On top of the hold mode, there is also a toggle mode that you can turn on by holding the special button and double tapping the button you want to enable it for. This will enable rapid fire regardless of whether you’re actually holding the button, and can be toggled on and off easily by just pressing the button.

The special button also has an additional feature in enabling you to remap buttons on the fly. The idea of this is a good one, but it is ultimately a useless feature for a reason I never expected: the controller is detected as an official Pro Controller by the Switch. What does this mean for button remapping? It means you can do it using the Switch OS itself, instead of having to rely on weird on-controller button combinations. On top of this, the controller even features motion control, though your use for this will likely be limited for handheld play. While the controller itself is perfectly comfortable, it doesn’t make for the best experience when playing a game like Splatoon 3 that expects you to be rotating the controller to aim efficiently. The one feature it’s missing versus an official Pro Controller is NFC support, but I don’t believe this is even possible to include with a wired controller, with even official Pro Controllers not allowing NFC usage with wired input enabled.

You do also get some rumble features here, with the controller vibrating to indicate when turbo functionality is turned on or off. It does also naturally work as you’d expect with Switch games. The one I looked at in particular was Splatoon 3, knowing it has a good variance in rumble strength between actions like swimming in ink and launching missiles. Though it can feel a little weak for the most subtle vibrations, it is noticeable and does enhance the larger experience. It has some of the subtlety you’d expect from HD rumble, even if it does fall slightly short on the strength.

Though the controller takes up the Switch’s USB C port, there is a USB C port on the bottom of the grip itself, allowing the Switch to be charged while you play. The only reason you’d need to take it out of the grip is if you wanted to dock it, since the additional bulk and slightly-repositioned USB C port would get in the way.

All in all Retroflag’s Handheld Controller for Switch is a hit with me. It looks great, feels great, and has all the features you’d realistically want from a Switch controller. With the only feature it’s missing being NFC support, I can highly recommend picking this up if you happen to see it in stock. At $70 you’re looking at a premium price, but I truly do believe this is a premium product to live up to that.