1. Form factor is thin sleek and good handling
2. Battery perform really good thanks to the lack of useless apps or cache running in the background provide by big Brands such as Samsung. The best Android I've used to praise on battery life was Mate 7, this Mi Note come in 2nd.
3. I am really impress on the camera compare with my previous Note 4 and Lg G3, it's a lot more clear with details, simple and fun to use. In the dark I can take a very decent pictures. Also the front facing ultra-pixel camera is amazingly good for selfie, I am always a big fans of ultra pixel camera on the front.
4. The price 2999 is fair enough for such spec despite the branding. I am a practical person, I like my money to spend on something I enjoy and worth paying for such as "hardware, software quality and service". Why do I pay my extra hard earn bloody money for those Korean star or whoever celebrity that I don't even know or support. And of course I don't like to help those large chain store to pay sky high rent for those big HK "landlord" who mess with the average HK citizen daily life. I don't see Xiaomi doing that at this stage. It's all count into their supply chain system. I am ok with copy cat as long as they do it right.
5. Fast charging which come include with a fast charger, not like our friendly Taiwanese company HTC who emphasize about their phone support fast charging, but don't include a fast charger. That's cheap and cheesy. I know they are now in a financial crisis, but they think all the consumer are dump "Yes man", or C9 who don't know stuff? Even C9 knows about now I am telling you.
6. I am a Fiio X5 user with both Shure 215 and 535, I can't say it complete with my X5 but coming close with this price and it is powerful enough to push my 535 when you switch on the Hi-Fi mode. I would like to take this chance to clarify for those who doesn't know and keep complaint their "Hi-Fi" technology speaker sucks. Their Hi-Fi chipset and technology is for those who's really into music. Below are the two basic requirement to enjoy Hi-Fi quality of sound output, "Not speaker output" but "Audio output from 3.5mm audio jack"
A. High Quality Audio source files such as "DSD, Flac, DSF, and Wav" MP3 is "not" high quality, it's a compressed audio file format.
B. You need a pair of high or mid end earphones or ear-monitor such as Shure, Weststone etc.... Even the $139 Xiaomi pair headset cannot output decent Hi-Fi audio. We talk about stage and studio use high end headset.