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Xiaomi 18 Fold Hands-On: Got Here Before Apple, Can It Beat Samsung?

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Xiaomi has chosen an interesting moment to return to foldables. The company has not released a book-style foldable since the Mix Fold 4, which launched in 2024, and now it is back with the Xiaomi 18 Fold just as compact foldables are starting to get more attention. Samsung has also added a foldable in this compact format to its lineup, and Apple is widely expected to unveil its first foldable iPhone at its September 9 event with a similar form factor in mind.

That puts the Xiaomi 18 Fold in an interesting spot. It is not just Xiaomi coming back to foldables after a break. It is also arriving just as this smaller book-style format looks like it could become the next big thing.

Designer: Xiaomi

Xiaomi is positioning the 18 Fold as its first mid-size flagship foldable. It weighs 7.73 ounces (219g), measures 0.42 inches thick when folded (10.68mm), and opens out to just 0.20 inches thick (5.02mm), with a folded footprint of 4.64 x 3.29 inches (117.8 x 83.6mm). In person, it feels thin, though not unusually thin by the standards of today’s premium foldables. More importantly, it feels expensive in a good way. The matte texture on the back and frame gives it a softer, understated finish, while the rounded corners and flat frame help the phone look clean and modern.

The unit I handled was the deep red version, and it is a bold color in person. It stands out more than the usual black or silver foldable palette without feeling too loud. It also happens to echo the deep red finish rumored for Apple’s first foldable, which makes the comparison hard to miss. The 18 Fold comes in Black, White, Red, and a Ceramic Version.

In practice, though, this is still a two-handed phone whether it is folded or unfolded. Even closed, the body is compact in one sense but still broad enough that I did not think of it as something built for easy one-handed use. That is not really a criticism. It just comes with the territory.

The outer display is a 5.38-inch panel, while the inside opens up to a 7.58-inch main screen. Xiaomi says both displays share the same aspect ratio, which is meant to make the transition from one to the other feel more natural. I could not fully judge how well that works in daily use from a short demo, but one benefit stood out right away. Video felt more immersive than on squarer foldables because there was less black bar space above and below the image.

The software also looked well suited to the shape. Animations felt smooth in my brief demo, and I did see split-screen and floating window support in action. The unfolded UI felt more like a small tablet than a stretched phone, which is what you want on a device like this. Xiaomi has also placed one speaker on the top edge and another on the bottom edge on the opposite side, which should help give the phone a more balanced stereo effect when it is open.

The hinge left a good first impression too. I cannot really say whether it felt especially firm or especially smooth, because my time with the device was limited, but it did feel sturdy. The crease was handled well too. Looking straight at the display, I only really noticed it from certain angles rather than all the time. More importantly, I could barely feel it when running a finger across the center, which was better than I expected.

Left: Xiaomi 18 Fold, Right: Galaxy Z Fold 8

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

I also compared the Xiaomi 18 Fold side by side with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8. Samsung’s device measures 4.88 x 3.22 x 0.38 inches when folded (123.9 x 81.9 x 9.7mm), 6.35 x 4.88 x 0.18 inches when unfolded (161.4 x 123.9 x 4.5cm), and weighs 7.09 ounces (201g), so it is a little lighter and a bit thinner than Xiaomi’s foldable in some areas. But the difference was not just about dimensions. Samsung’s inner screen was noticeably brighter to my eyes. At the same time, the Xiaomi 18 Fold had one practical advantage that stood out immediately. When placed on a desk, it did not wobble, while the Samsung did.

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

Left: Galaxy Z Fold 8, Right: Xiaomi 18 Fold

Top: Xiaomi 18 Fold, Bottom: Galaxy Z Fold 8

The biggest surprise for me was the camera. Xiaomi is using a 200MP Leica triple-camera system, led by a 200MP main camera and backed by a 50MP Leica periscope telephoto with an 80mm equivalent focal length. In my short time with the phone, the telephoto camera was the part that stuck with me most. I tried zoom, and the 3.5x telephoto setup immediately felt like one of the most interesting parts of the device. Stability also felt good even at higher magnification, which made the zoom feel more usable, not just more dramatic. The camera bump also did not seem overly large, and its oval-shaped, two-step raised design gives it some presence without taking over the whole back.

My time with the Xiaomi 18 Fold was brief, and this hands-on really only scratched the surface. Even so, the phone already feels like a polished return to book-style foldables. Pricing starts at RMB 10,999, or roughly $1,640, for the 12GB/256GB model, and Xiaomi said it will be available in China only for now.

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How Xiaomi made connected living feel more believable at IFA Berlin 2026

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At IFA Berlin 2026, Xiaomi’s booth made a strong case for how far the company has moved beyond smartphones. Phones and personal tech were still part of the picture, but the larger presence came from Xiaomi Auto and Mijia, the company’s home appliance brand, with TVs, air conditioners, and kitchen and cleaning products giving the space a distinctly domestic weight. For a company still often associated first with phones outside China, it was a useful reminder that Xiaomi now wants to be understood through a much wider lens.

Xiaomi framed the booth around its “Human x Car x Home” smart ecosystem, the company’s term for connecting personal devices, vehicles, and home products into one system. On a trade show floor, that kind of idea can easily remain abstract. What made it more legible here was not the branding itself, but a series of smaller demonstrations built around ordinary routines. They gave the concept a practical shape.

Designer: Xiaomi

One of the most memorable examples was a car-to-home demo where opening the car door turned the TV off automatically at home. It is the sort of interaction that sounds minor until you picture yourself leaving the house and wondering whether you forgot to switch something off. Another demo connected the dishwasher to the robot vacuum, so once the dishwasher door was closed, the vacuum would start cleaning the kitchen floor. In the bedroom area, Xiaomi showed a bedside lamp turning on when someone started reading in bed. None of these moments were staged as spectacle, and that was part of why they worked. They felt close to real life.

That sense of everyday usefulness carried through to some of the appliances themselves. A tower air conditioner could either follow your movement with its airflow or avoid blowing directly at you, a small adjustment that made the product feel more attentive to comfort rather than simply powerful. Xiaomi also showed a washer with three separate loading sections that could run at the same time, an idea that immediately suggested a different rhythm for sorting and doing laundry. Then there was a refrigerator with a zero-degree fresh-keeping compartment for meat, designed to keep food right at the edge of freezing so it stays fresh without actually freezing. These were not necessarily the loudest products on the floor, but they were among the easiest to imagine living with.

For a company showing such a wide range of products, Xiaomi’s design language felt notably controlled. The appliances and devices were clean and contemporary, but they avoided the kind of hard-edged minimalism that can make smart products feel distant or clinical. Nothing seemed desperate to stand out on its own. Instead, the products felt designed to live quietly in a room, which may actually be the more difficult thing to get right.

That restraint suited the broader ecosystem message. Xiaomi’s Human x Car x Home smart ecosystem, at least in the form shown in Berlin, was less about dramatic futurism and more about small reductions in friction. The booth as a whole showed Xiaomi’s range, but the more telling moments were the ones that suggested how the company wants its products to behave around daily habits. The TV switches off when you leave. The vacuum starts after kitchen cleanup. The bedside lamp responds to reading. The ambition is not hard to see. Xiaomi wants connected technology to feel less like a system you manage and more like a background layer that adapts around you.

The car is a big part of that shift. Seeing Xiaomi Auto presented alongside phones and home appliances made it clear that the company does not want its automotive business to sit apart as a separate identity. It wants the car to become another part of the same connected experience, linking what happens on the road with what happens at home. At IFA Berlin 2026, Xiaomi Auto also announced that it will enter Germany and other European markets in 2027.

Part of what Xiaomi seemed to be doing in Berlin was introducing European audiences to a version of the company that is already more familiar in China, one that extends well beyond smartphones into home living and mobility. That broader identity came through clearly on the floor. The scale of the booth showed how much ground Xiaomi now covers, while the smaller demos did the more important work of showing how those categories might start to connect in practice.

Trade shows often reward size, novelty, and noise. Xiaomi had scale, certainly, but the parts that lingered were quieter. They were the products that looked easy to live with, and the scenarios that translated a large ecosystem idea into something domestic, ordinary, and believable. If Xiaomi’s Human x Car x Home smart ecosystem is meant to describe where the company wants to go next, IFA Berlin 2026 offered a useful glimpse of what that future might look like when it is at its most convincing.

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Xiaomi Takes the IFA 2026 Spotlight as Samsung Makes A Quiet Exit After 35 Years

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Imagine spending 35 years building the most recognizable booth at the world’s biggest consumer electronics show, then deciding one year to just… not. That is exactly what Samsung is doing at IFA 2026. The company is hosting its own event at the Humboldt Carré, a conference venue in central Berlin, eight kilometers from Messe, starting September 2, two days before the official show opens. Samsung frames this as a focused environment for media briefings, retail meetings, and product launches, following the same logic it applied at CES 2026 when it left the Las Vegas Convention Center for the Wynn Hotel. Doing it twice in the same year starts to look less like a pivot and more like a policy.

While Samsung manages its event across town, Xiaomi is inside Messe Berlin, confirmed for Hall 6.2, with a full ecosystem pitch and no obvious competitor stealing the spotlight. Xiaomi announced its IFA commitment at the official IFA Kick-Off on June 30, attaching a €7.4 billion AI R&D budget to the news, covering electric vehicles, robotics, and operating systems through 2028. Its IoT platform connects over 1.16 billion devices as of mid-2026, which gives the “Human x Car x Home” pitch real substance beyond the marketing copy. Samsung will sponsor the IFA Creator Hub, a content studio for influencers at Palais am Funkturm. But a sponsorship is a very different thing from anchoring a show floor, and Xiaomi is anchoring the show floor.

Photo Credits: IFA

At CES 2026, Samsung left the Las Vegas Convention Center for the Wynn Hotel and applied museum-style layout techniques to give visitors more time with each product. The Humboldt Carré plan at IFA runs on exactly the same idea, consolidating launches, tech forums, and partner meetings under one roof with dedicated space for hands-on AI appliance experiences. Samsung also has a footprint inside Messe Berlin as the main sponsor of the IFA Creator Hub, a content studio for influencers at Palais am Funkturm. It will run its own programming there throughout show week. But sponsoring a content studio is a different brand position from anchoring a product booth, and on the Messe floor, that position now belongs to whoever occupies it.

Photo Credits: IFA

Reports place the Galaxy S26 FE launch on September 4, the same day IFA officially opens, which means every journalist in Berlin will be writing about a Samsung phone from inside a building Samsung chose not to be in. LG, TCL, and Hisense all held their hall bookings and published their stand numbers months ago. Xiaomi is in Hall 6.2, a short walk from the main press areas. The reporters who glance up from S26 FE coverage will be standing next to Samsung’s biggest competitors. The brand generating the most ambient attention on the Messe floor will simply be the one that actually showed up.

Xiaomi’s pitch at IFA 2026 carries weight because the company has actually built the ecosystem it is selling. Its IoT platform connects over 1.16 billion devices as of June 2026, phones and laptops excluded, which gives the “Human x Car x Home” framing real shelf-stocking credibility for European retailers. The €7.4 billion AI R&D commitment for 2026 to 2028, spanning electric vehicles, robotics, and operating systems, is sized for institutional buyers rather than spec-sheet readers. Xiaomi landed on the Fortune Global 500 for the seventh consecutive year in July 2026, ranked 232nd. It arrives at IFA knowing exactly what it wants from a European room, and with the numbers to back that up.

Photo Credits: IFA

Samsung’s controlled-environment strategy has a clean logic that gets harder to apply the bigger the show it leaves behind. Moving off the floor eliminates accidental comparisons, crowded aisles, and competitor booths visible from your own press conference, but it also removes the organic brand visibility a trade show generates just by being a trade show. Xiaomi does not have that problem this year. It is physically present in the room where buying decisions happen, where retail partnerships get formed over product demos, and where IFA’s roughly 220,000 annual visitors walk through looking for the next big thing. If the floor plan is the argument, Xiaomi is winning it before the doors even open.

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Xiaomi Now Sells Coffee Machines, and This One Costs Just $121

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Xiaomi sells phones, electric cars, rice cookers, robot vacuums, air fryers, and now a capsule coffee machine, which means the company has quietly built a catalogue capable of furnishing your entire apartment and then driving you out of the garage. The playbook has not changed since: pick a category ruled by expensive Western brands, strip it to the essentials, price it like a provocation, and make it look far better than the price suggests. The Mijia Capsule Coffee Machine has been a China exclusive since February 2025. It just went international at €104.90 ($121 USD), sold directly by Xiaomi.

Xiaomi designed it in-house under the Mijia sub-brand with no external studio credited, and the object measures 33.2 x 9.0 x 21.2cm, roughly an A4 sheet standing on its edge. Inside sits a 19-bar ULKA pump from Italian manufacturer CEME, the same pump family Nespresso machines have used for years, alongside a 650ml removable tank and a 25-second preheat. The detail that actually matters is a magnetic capsule rack holding 20 capsules, sitting flush against the machine’s flank or clipping straight onto your fridge door. At ¥499 in China, this thing was a weapon. At €104.90 it lands in Nespresso Essenza Mini territory, which makes the argument far more interesting.

Designer: Xiaomi

Most capsule machines are wide and squat, built to disappear into a corner counter next to the toaster. Xiaomi went the other direction and made this one narrow enough to stand like a book on a shelf, which is exactly how the brand shot it for launch, next to a picture frame rather than a fruit bowl. The front is split into a rounded brew head sitting above a column of fine vertical fluting, with a smoked panel at the back revealing the water level. Nothing here is flashy. It is the kind of quiet, considered grey object that photographs better than it has any right to, and Xiaomi clearly knew that when it wrote “extraordinary craftsmanship” into the marketing copy.

The rack is the smartest move in the whole design. Instead of selling capsule storage as a separate accessory the way Nespresso does, Xiaomi built it into the silhouette, a slab of twenty vertical slots that clips onto the machine’s side or peels off entirely to stick on a fridge door. It also happens to be the only place color shows up on the entire product, since every capsule you load is a small bright object against an otherwise monochrome machine. That is either genuinely clever industrial design or the tidiest lock-in mechanism I have seen on a kitchen appliance in a while, and honestly it can be both at once.

The internals are competent rather than flashy, which is fine, because this machine was never going to out-engineer a Breville. A 19-bar ULKA pump built by CEME S.P.A. in Italy handles pressure, paired with an NTC sensor and PID algorithm for temperature control, plus a 1400W heater and a 650ml tank you can pull off and rinse at the sink. Two cup sizes come preset at 40ml and 110ml, and both are adjustable by holding the button and tapping again once you hit your preferred pour. Xiaomi rates the whole thing at 55dB(A), quiet enough that it will not wake anyone sleeping down the hall. None of it screams for attention, and that restraint is sort of the point.

The internals are competent rather than flashy, which is fine, because this machine was never going to out-engineer a Breville. A 19-bar ULKA pump built by CEME S.P.A. in Italy handles pressure, paired with an NTC sensor and PID algorithm for temperature control, plus a 1400W heater and a 650ml tank you can pull off and rinse at the sink. Two cup sizes come preset at 40ml and 110ml, and both are adjustable by holding the button and tapping again once you hit your preferred pour. Xiaomi rates the whole thing at 55dB(A), quiet enough that it will not wake anyone sleeping down the hall. None of it screams for attention, and that restraint is sort of the point.

Worth saying plainly: Xiaomi never claims Nespresso compatibility. It lists four capsule diameter ranges instead and lets you do the math yourself, which is a neat bit of legal sidestepping dressed up as a spec sheet. It is also worth remembering that capsules cost more per cup than ground coffee and are harder on the planet, no matter how good the machine holding them looks. The bigger question is what happens to the price argument now that it has left China. At ¥499 this machine undercut everyone. At €104.90 it is going toe to toe with Nespresso on cost and betting the design carries the rest. Given what is actually sitting on that shelf, I would not bet against it.

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Xiaomi Built a $29 Speaker That Snaps to Your Phone and Stands It Up

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The compact Bluetooth speaker category has been fighting the same battle for years. Every new entry promises to be louder than your phone, smaller than a can of soda, and tough enough to survive a bag. Most deliver on those basics reasonably well, and most of them occupy the same category of objects that you put next to your phone rather than on it. That distinction tends to go unexamined, and it’s the one Xiaomi decided to question with its latest accessory.

The Xiaomi Bluetooth Speaker Magnetic Edition attaches directly to the back of a smartphone. The connection is magnetic, and a built-in Hall sensor detects the moment it locks on, triggering the speaker to power on automatically. No button to find, no pairing ritual to repeat. You put it against your phone and it starts. Pull it off and it stops. The whole interaction is designed to be immediate enough that the speaker stops feeling like an accessory and starts feeling like part of the phone itself.

Designer: Xiaomi

The stand function is the idea that makes this more than a magnet trick. Rather than simply hanging on the back while the phone lies flat, the speaker’s base props the phone upright at a comfortable viewing angle. That solves two things at once: you get a better listening experience than the phone’s own speaker provides, and you get a hands-free viewing position without hunting for a stand or balancing the phone against something that will slide the moment you look away.

The audio hardware is modest by design. A 1.5-inch full-range driver running at 3W isn’t built for a living room, and the 200Hz to 20kHz frequency response tells you this is tuned for clear, near-field playback rather than bass-heavy output. For someone cooking in the kitchen and wanting to follow a video without holding their phone, or listening at a desk without headphones, that kind of output is exactly right. The speaker isn’t competing with a dedicated tabletop Bluetooth speaker; it’s competing with a phone’s built-in speaker, and that bar it clears comfortably.

RGB lighting rings the base of the speaker and syncs its colors to the audio playing, adding some visual presence in lower light and keeping the device from reading as purely utilitarian when it’s sitting on a desk as a stand. The 650mAh battery powers the speaker independently from the phone’s own charge. Bluetooth 6.0 handles the wireless connection with AAC and SBC codec support, and the pairing typically carries over automatically each time the speaker is magnetically attached.

Two color options are available, with dark gray confirmed. Priced at 132 yuan during the Xiaomi Youpin launch period, with a suggested retail price of 199 yuan, roughly $29 or €25, it sits in a price range where the two-in-one premise doesn’t need to be flawless to be worth trying. That’s a meaningful advantage for an accessory built around a function that most people are currently meeting with improvised solutions anyway.

Most desk setups already include an accidental phone prop. A charging pad, a book corner, a keyboard edge, something doing the job that wasn’t designed for it. The Xiaomi speaker makes the argument that the prop might as well be a speaker too, and that at this size and price, consolidating both into one small object costs nothing in practicality and improves the experience every time you sit down to watch something, take a call, or simply want your hands back.

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The Redmi K100 Pro Turns Its Glass Back Into a Glowing Sketchpad

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Photoluminescent material is not new. It is the stuff in your kid’s ceiling stars, in old wristwatch dials, in every glow stick you have ever cracked at a concert. What is new is putting that decades old chemistry on the back of a flagship smartphone and letting the owner become the artist instead of the factory. That is exactly what Redmi did with the K100 Pro, and it might be the single most fun thing to happen to phone design all year, mostly because it does not take itself too seriously.

The finish is called Glowing Firefly, and it works by hiding a luminescent layer between the phone’s glass back and its green ink coating, invisible in daylight and glowing wherever you point a flashlight or light pen after dark. Redmi launched the K100 Pro in China on August 11, pairing the party trick with a legitimately serious spec sheet that includes a 185Hz OLED, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V Series chip, and a 200MP camera. The phone can keep up with any flagship on paper. It just also happens to double as a doodle pad.

Designer: Xiaomi

Redmi’s own language calls the back panel a light painting canvas, and that description holds up better than most marketing copy tends to. Point a flashlight, a laser pointer, or a dedicated light pen at the glass and the material soaks up the energy along the exact path the light traveled, then releases it slowly as a glowing outline. Write your name, sketch a smiley face, sign the thing like a yearbook, and watch it fade out over the following minutes. There is no chip involved, no battery drain, nothing to charge separately. It is closer to a Lite Brite than to anything Qualcomm builds, which is honestly the charm of it.

Nothing tried something adjacent with the Phone 2a Plus Community Edition, and I still think about that phone. It used a green phosphorescent coating along the ribbon cables and camera trim, charged by ambient light and glowing softly on its own without any input from you. It was quiet, tasteful, very on brand for a company obsessed with making internals look intentional. Redmi took that same chemistry and handed the pen to the user instead of the factory. One phone glows because the designers told it to. The other glows because you told it to, and that distinction matters more than it sounds.

None of this changes what the K100 Pro is underneath the finish, a genuinely stacked gaming flagship with an 8,580mAh battery, 100W charging, and a cooling system built for long sessions. But the spec sheet was never going to be the reason anyone remembers this phone. The reason is a green slab that lets you leave a temporary signature in light, fading like sidewalk chalk, gone by morning, ready for you to draw on it again tomorrow.

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Xiaomi’s $281 Portable Projector is effectively cheaper than paying for Netflix for a year

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Here is what $281 buys you in an American projector aisle right now: TCL’s C1 at $250 with 230 ISO lumens, or XGIMI’s Vibe One at $269 with 250 ANSI lumens and zero HDR support. Both are decent little machines. Both also demand a room dark enough that you stub your toe finding the sofa. The sub-$300 bracket in the West has genuinely improved, but it improved into “acceptable,” which is a low ceiling for a category promising a 120-inch screen. Xiaomi’s newest budget projector landed in China this week and makes that ceiling look even lower.

The Redmi Projector 5 Pro sells for 1,899 yuan, roughly $281, against a 1,999 yuan list price. That buys native 1080p at up to 120 inches, 1,000 CVIA lumens, HDR10, a 120Hz refresh rate with 5ms latency, dual HDMI, Wi-Fi 6, and a metal gimbal arm that swings the body through 150 degrees. A year of Netflix Premium now runs $323.88 after March’s price hike, so the hardware costs less than the subscription. What holds my attention is that the industrial design survived the price target intact, which almost never happens down here.

Designer: Xiaomi

The body is a soft white wedge with a fabric-wrapped front panel, cradled in a U-arm carrying the REDMI wordmark along its cross-member. That arm is structural rather than a bracket bolted on afterward, so the silhouette holds together from every angle instead of looking like a box propped on a stand. Budget projectors usually betray themselves at the seams, with plastic that doesn’t look premium or boast of a perfect surface finish. Here the perforated grille wraps one flank as deliberate texture, and the white-and-grey split keeps the mass visually light. The posture borrows from a studio monitor on a yoke, a smarter reference than the black plastic router look most of this segment settles for.

A ToF sensor, an HD camera and Xiaomi’s algorithms handle focus, keystone, obstacle avoidance and screen alignment without you opening a menu, and wall colour adaptation reads your paint job to adjust the image. The 150-degree tilt lets you aim at the ceiling by nudging the body rather than stacking books under one end. Thirty degrees of side projection correction covers the reality that nobody’s coffee table sits square to the wall. Sealing the optical engine behind an all-glass lens keeps dust off the internals and, Xiaomi claims, sharpens the picture 10% over last year’s model. Both features used to be premium-tier boasts.

Temper expectations on brightness before you get excited. 1,000 CVIA lumens converts to roughly 700 ISO lumens, which puts this firmly in dim-room territory rather than sunlit-living-room territory. CVIA is a stricter Chinese standard than the fantasy figures printed on Amazon listings, where anonymous brands promise 10,000 lumens and deliver maybe 150. So the number is honest, and the honest number is modest. You will still be drawing the curtains.

The catch arrives at the end, as it always does with Redmi hardware. Xiaomi has said nothing about a global release, and Redmi projectors historically stay inside China while the Xiaomi-branded models travel. It runs HyperConnect and the XiaoAI assistant, meaning no Google TV, no Play Store, and no Netflix app. A projector that costs less than a year of Netflix and cannot run Netflix is the funniest possible ending to this story, and also the most frustrating one, because the rest of us are still shopping in a bracket that peaked at 250 lumens.

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Xiaomi’s SkyNomad Brings Living Space Thinking to the Family SUV

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Xiaomi is broadening its automotive ambitions with the SkyNomad series, a new SUV line built around space, flexibility, safety, and family-focused practicality. The range launches with two models, the SkyNomad N90 and the SkyNomad N70, giving Xiaomi a wider reach beyond the more driver-oriented SU7 and YU7 lineup.

Both models are built on Xiaomi’s newly designed Kunlun platform, which underpins the brand’s push into large, versatile SUVs. One of the platform’s defining features is a completely flat floor. That packaging decision supports easier movement through the cabin and gives Xiaomi more freedom to shape the interior around comfort, modularity, and open space.

Designer: Xiaomi

Two SUVs with different seating priorities

The SkyNomad N90 Max is positioned as the larger and more versatile of the two. It uses a 2+2+3 seating layout, giving it seven seats and a configuration aimed at larger families, multi-generational travel, and mixed personal and business use. Measuring 5,285 mm long with a 3,080 mm wheelbase, it sits firmly in full-size SUV territory.

Alongside it, the SkyNomad N70 Max takes a sportier approach with a confirmed 2+3 seating layout. That five-seat format makes it the more straightforward option for buyers who want the SkyNomad concept in a two-row package, while still benefiting from the same emphasis on cabin openness and flexibility enabled by the Kunlun platform. At 4,960 mm long with a 2,950 mm wheelbase, it is the more compact of the pair, though it still feels substantial in person.

SkyNomad N70 Max

Flat-floor platform defines the cabin

The completely flat floor is more than a technical detail. It is central to how Xiaomi wants SkyNomad to feel and function. By removing the usual floor intrusion, the platform helps create a more lounge-like interior, improves second-row and third-row usability, and makes it easier to reconfigure the cabin for different scenarios.

In the N90 Max, Xiaomi pushes that idea further with six sliding rails and a center console that can move 650 mm back and forth. The setup allows the cabin to be used with tables, bed arrangements, and other furniture-style layouts, giving the vehicle a more modular character than a conventional family SUV. Features such as a roughly 9-liter fridge and a 21.4-inch rear display with Xiaomi TV and remote control further underline the living-space concept.

The N70 Max carries the same thinking into a sportier two-row package. It supports face-to-face seating and a full bed mode, while Xiaomi claims up to 1,400 mm of maximum rear legroom and around 1,002 liters of rear cargo space. Even without the third row, it is clearly designed to prioritize comfort and usability over a traditional SUV layout.

Safety is a major part of the pitch

Xiaomi is also using the SkyNomad launch to underline the safety credentials of the new Kunlun Technology Architecture. The company says it has been carrying out real-life road load testing since 2024. As of June 30, 2026, more than 500 test vehicles had accumulated 4.28 million kilometers over 628 days.

The body structure makes extensive use of 2200 MPa Xiaomi Hyper Strength Steel across 16 key areas. According to Xiaomi, that includes a 13-in-1 integrated design spanning the A, B, C, and D pillars, a layout intended to improve lateral body load capacity and strengthen the passenger cell. The N90 Max also comes equipped with 12 airbags, reinforcing its positioning as a large family SUV where occupant protection is expected to be a central selling point.

Xiaomi also highlighted battery durability and protection as part of the Kunlun platform package. The company claims a cell lifecycle of more than 2,000 charge cycles, which it says is roughly double the national standard. It also says the battery unit is protected by an 18-layer safety structure, while the floor has been reinforced to improve fire resistance, impact protection, and overall structural security around the pack.

Performance and range round out the package

Both the N90 Max and N70 Max use dual-motor all-wheel drive and a 76 kWh battery. Xiaomi quotes a 0 to 100 km/h time of 5.9 seconds for the N90 Max and 5.5 seconds for the N70 Max, while both models have a top speed of 190 km/h.

Range figures are also notable. Xiaomi lists the N90 Max with a CLTC combined range of 1,705 km and a CLTC pure electric range of 464 km. The N70 Max is rated for a CLTC pure electric range of 505 km.

First-hand impressions from the briefing

During a media briefing and hands-on session, both the N70 Max and N90 Max stood out for their reconfigurable seating and spacious cabins. Even in a short test, both SUVs felt notably roomy, and the seats themselves came across as comfortable and well suited to the space-first character Xiaomi is trying to establish for the series.

The N90 Max in particular showed how far Xiaomi is pushing the concept. One of the most striking demonstrations was its face-to-face seating reconfiguration, which transformed the cabin into something closer to a lounge than a traditional SUV interior. That setup reinforced Xiaomi’s broader pitch that SkyNomad is meant to function as more than transport, serving as a flexible living space for travel, rest, and family use.

Cargo capacity was another standout. In its maximum rear trunk space configuration, the N90 Max was loaded with six 20-liter carry-on cases, a foldable bicycle, a folded baby stroller, and additional camping gear, while still leaving plenty of room in the back. The demonstration underlined the SUV’s family and lifestyle focus, especially for buyers who need genuine carrying ability rather than just a large exterior footprint.

Xiaomi also showed the N90 Max in a more leisure-oriented setup with an air mattress laid out in the cabin. Lying down inside, the space felt comfortable, and the panoramic sky roof gave a clear view upward. That added to the sense that the vehicle is being designed as a place to spend time, not just a machine for getting from one point to another.

That impression carried across both models. Even with limited time behind the scenes, the N70 Max and N90 Max both felt impressively roomy, and Xiaomi’s emphasis on reconfigurable seating did not come across as a gimmick. Instead, it felt like a practical extension of the Kunlun platform’s flat-floor packaging and the brand’s attempt to create SUVs that are genuinely adaptable to modern family life.

A broader move into family SUVs

With SkyNomad, Xiaomi is moving beyond the more driver-focused identity of its earlier vehicles and into a segment where comfort, flexibility, safety, and interior usability matter just as much as technology. The N90 and N70 are not just larger additions to the lineup, but a clear signal that Xiaomi sees family-oriented, space-led SUVs as an important part of its next phase in the auto market.

On first impression, that strategy looks thoughtful. Between the flat-floor Kunlun platform, the emphasis on reconfigurable interiors, and the effort to pair lifestyle versatility with serious safety messaging, SkyNomad gives Xiaomi a distinctive angle in an increasingly crowded field of large electrified SUVs.

The post Xiaomi’s SkyNomad Brings Living Space Thinking to the Family SUV first appeared on Yanko Design.

Xiaomi launched a $107 compact photo printer while all other tech is becoming expensive

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Xiaomi picked a strange moment to launch cheap hardware, because the global gadget market spent 2024 and early 2025 conditioning buyers to accept higher prices. Phones, laptops, tablets, and wearables all saw price increases between 15 and 30 percent compared to 2022 models, and most brands blamed supply chain costs, component shortages, and inflation without offering much evidence that those factors still applied by mid-2025. Even Apple, which held iPhone pricing relatively steady for years, finally bumped the base iPhone 16 Pro up by $100 in late 2024. The price hikes stuck anyway, largely because competitors moved in unison and consumers had few alternatives. Xiaomi clearly saw an opening in categories where pricing had stagnated rather than spiked, and photo printers fit that description almost perfectly.

The Mijia Desktop Photo Printer 2 launched this week at 699 yuan (about $107) through Xiaomi’s Youpin crowdfunding platform, with a retail price of 799 yuan ($122) planned after the campaign closes. The device uses 4-color dye sublimation printing, supports 4 inch and 6 inch photo sizes, and connects via Bluetooth to phones, tablets, and computers without needing a Wi-Fi network. Xiaomi claims the per-print cost can drop to 0.99 yuan (roughly 14 cents) when using the 4 inch dual-print paper packs in higher-volume bundles, which would make it one of the cheapest per-print options in the compact photo printer category. The Mi Home app adds templates, AR photo playback, ID photo generation, and LUT color filters, leaning into the same app-native feature strategy Xiaomi uses across its smart home lineup.

Designer: Xiaomi

Canon’s Selphy CP1500 typically retails between $140 and $160 depending on region and sales cycles, and HP’s Sprocket models sit in a similar range. Fujifilm’s Instax Share SP-3 launched at $199 and has stayed there for years. None of those companies aggressively cut hardware prices, because photo printer economics depend heavily on consumables revenue. The paper and ribbon cartridges generate steady income long after the hardware sale, so keeping hardware prices high protects the perceived value of those refills. Xiaomi is attacking both sides of that model by undercutting the upfront hardware cost and claiming a per-print expense well below what competitors charge for equivalent output.

The per-print math is where Xiaomi’s really squeezing out the competition. Canon’s RP-108 paper and ink set costs around $40 for 108 4×6 prints, which works out to roughly 37 cents per photo. HP’s Zink paper for the Sprocket runs about 50 cents per 2×3 print, though the smaller format makes direct comparison tricky. Xiaomi’s claimed 14 cent per-print cost assumes you buy the dual-print 4 inch paper packs in bulk, but even the 6 inch professional paper is listed at 2.48 yuan (about 35 cents) per sheet during the crowdfunding campaign. That pricing could shift after launch, but the gap between Xiaomi and the incumbents is wide enough that even a modest increase would still leave Xiaomi ahead.

The Mijia Desktop Photo Printer 2 ships in China first, with no confirmed timeline for international availability. Xiaomi typically tests hardware on the domestic market before deciding whether to expand regionally, so this could stay China-only for months or longer. The bigger question is whether Canon, HP, and Fujifilm respond by cutting prices or whether they hold steady and bet that brand loyalty and distribution advantages keep Xiaomi contained to its home market.

The post Xiaomi launched a $107 compact photo printer while all other tech is becoming expensive first appeared on Yanko Design.