I've got a Xiaomi phone (Mi 10 Lite) and am pretty happy with it.
Hardware is great. Software (MIUI) is adware crap, which I knew when I was buying. I tweaked privacy settings as much was possible, and I use almost none of the builtin apps. Instead I use Firefox Focus+Mobile for browsing, Amaze for file management, Dropbox for file storage and PDF view, etc.
Overall the entire experience is comparable (for me) to a Samsung or Apple phone at 3x the price. The most annoying things are still Google and YouTube ToS accept dialogs I get all the time because I'm effectively using an incognito browser, and I'd get those on any phone.
Hardware is great. Software (MIUI) is adware crap, which I knew when I was buying. I tweaked privacy settings as much was possible, and I use almost none of the builtin apps. Instead I use Firefox Focus+Mobile for browsing, Amaze for file management, Dropbox for file storage and PDF view, etc.
Overall the entire experience is comparable (for me) to a Samsung or Apple phone at 3x the price. The most annoying things are still Google and YouTube ToS accept dialogs I get all the time because I'm effectively using an incognito browser, and I'd get those on any phone.