Xiaomi’s sub-brand Poco made a name for itself with thePoco F1 and its unbelievable price-to-performance ratio. Since then, the company has expanded its product portfolio to include more budget devices to reach a wider audience. Amidst all this, it felt like Poco’s flagship products were focusing more on gamers with their funky design. With the Poco F5 Pro, the company is returning to its roots and has launched a phone with flagship-like specs at an affordable price point.
Using a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, the Poco F5 Pro packs an impressive specs sheet and includes all the features you could ask for: a high refresh rate OLED panel, wired fast charging, wireless charging, and premium build quality. And if you’re able to live with MIUI 14 and Poco’s slow software updates, the F5 Pro might be the right choice.
Poco F5 Pro
The Poco F5 Pro packs almost all the features you’d want from your smartphone, including premium build quality, superfast wired and wireless charging, and a great display. The phone also delivers great performance thanks to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip. It only falls short in the imaging department, with the cameras struggling in low-light scenarios. Poco’s software support could have also been better.
Availability and network
Like other Poco and Xiaomi phones, the F5 Pro (and its non-Pro sibling) will not launch in the US. Instead, the phone is available in Europe and parts of Asia. It is Poco’s flagship phone for the international market, offering a perfect mix of performance and value. The international version of the Poco F5 Pro costs €579 ($630) in Europe, with the 12GB RAM + 256GB storage variant priced at €629 ($685).
While you can always import the Poco F5 Pro to the US from third-party retailers, you are bound to face network connectivity issues. It does not support all the 5G bands US carriers use, so network coverage will be spotty.
Design and display
The Poco F5 Pro looks and feels premium thanks to glass front and back panels and a plastic chassis with chamfered edges. Its in-hand feel reminds me of the Xiaomi Mi 5 from the past, and despite a 6.67-inch display, the F5 Pro feels very compact.
The phone has flat edges, while the rear glass curves to blend into the chassis. This transition is not as seamless as other premium phones like theSamsung Galaxy S23, but this is a minor quibble; otherwise, there’s little to complain about the Poco F5 Pro’s build quality. The phone is IP54 certified and has limited dust and water ingress protection. So, while the Poco can’t be immersed in water, it should easily survive a splash or two in the rain.
Poco has housed the triple rear camera inside a rectangular island with a thick chamfered aluminum railing running across the two sides. This gives the camera bump a premium look and helps it to stand out. The power and volume keys are located on the right side of the display and have chamfered edges. Poco has nailed their placement, as they are perfectly reachable from your thumb.
Poco sent me the white version of the F5 Pro for review. Due to the glossy finish, fingerprints are not easily visible. But under the right light, the scratches and scuffs the glass eventually picks up stands out.
Along the top, the Poco F5 Pro houses an IR blaster, something once common among most flagship Android phones a decade ago. Coupled with the bundled Mi Remote app, it allowed me to use the phone to control my non-smart TV, AC, and other smart home devices easily. In addition to being a throwback, it’s genuinely a handy tool, turning the Poco F5 Pro into my own universal remote.
A 6.67-inch 120Hz WQHD+ OLED panel dominates the F5 Pro’s front. Poco is using a WQHD+ screen on its flagship phone for the first time. By default, the phone runs its display at FHD+ resolution. I switched to WQHD+ mode after the initial setup, though honestly, I could not tell any difference between them.
I was impressed with the phone’s OLED panel in all key aspects: brightness, viewing angles, colors, and contrast. Thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate, scrolling through lists and jumping between apps is super smooth. Video playback is also a treat to the eyes, with punchy colors and great viewing angles. The panel supports HDR content playback and can get sufficiently bright in harsh sunlight. Not as bright as the Galaxy S23 series, but you can still see the display’s content easily.
Other hardware and what’s in the box
The Poco F5 Pro impressed me with its build quality. It won’t beat theSamsung Galaxy S23 Ultraor the iPhone 14 Pro in this department, but given its price, there’s no reason to complain. The front and rear glass, coupled with the polished chassis, provides a premium in-hand feel, much better than what the Samsung Galaxy A54 and mid-range Moto phones offer.
With minimal bezels surrounding the display and rounded corners, the Poco F5 Pro feels compact and easily pocketable.
The Poco F5 Pro comes with Dolby Atmos-certified stereo speakers. While this setup can get loud, it lacks bass or depth. The sound is also lopsided due to the more powerful bottom speaker; the earpiece just can’t keep up.
One of my gripes with the Poco F5 Pro’s design is the location of the in-display fingerprint scanner, as it could have been located slightly higher. It always felt like I was stretching my (relatively big) thumb a bit too much to get to the fingerprint scanner. Its performance is excellent, though; the phone unlocks quickly and reliably, almost always without a fuss.
Inside the Poco F5 Pro’s box is a 67W power brick, some regulatory papers, a SIM ejector pin, and a soft transparent plastic case.
While I like the F5 Pro’s fast wired charging speeds, I would have appreciated Poco bundling a USB-C power brick in the box. It is high time Xiaomi and Poco ditch USB-A for good and switch to USB-C for their power bricks. Thankfully, the adapter is compact and light, making it easy to carry in your backpack.
Out of the box, the Poco F5 Pro runs onAndroid 13-based MIUI 14. If you’ve used a Xiaomi or Poco device before, you’ll feel right at home with MIUI. This heavily skinned version of Android provides an experience considerably different than what a Google Pixel 7 or Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra offers. I am not saying MIUI is bad; it’s just different.
In some areas, MIUI’s interface feels heavily inspired by iOS. For example, swiping down from the right of the punch-hole opens an iOS-style Control Center, while a swipe down from the left expands the notification panel. The Poco F5 Pro runs on a global build of MIUI, so you won’t find any Chinese elements lingering in the UI. You get full access to the Google Play Store and the full suite of Google apps. And for familiarity, Xiaomi ships Google Phone and Messages as the default phone and messaging apps.
I like how MIUI uses the haptic motor to give subtle feedback throughout the UI. For example, when using split-view multitasking, the Poco F5 Pro will vibrate whenever I drag the handle to resize the app windows. Given the drag handle is a tiny touch target, the vibration assures you that your finger has hit the right spot. It is a small touch that shows that Xiaomi is paying attention to detail with MIUI.
Admittedly, MIUI 14 feels much more stable and bug-free than the previous iterations of the skin I have tried. There were no random app crashes, slowdowns, or other oddities. Similarly, apps running in the background, like Gmail, Outlook, and Evernote, could send timely notifications without any issues.
If you are a fan of Material You and its dynamic themes, you might not like MIUI 14. The skin’s UI elements do not pull colors from your wallpaper, though there’s Material You theming for Google and third-party apps. Xiaomi has its own theme engine and store, but it is less powerful than what you’ll find on Pixel.
Poco ships the F5 Pro with several pre-installed apps and games (read: bloatware). I was able to uninstall all bundled games for a cleaner experience. However, removing or disabling many core apps like GetApps, ShareMe, Music, and Mi Browser is impossible. Worse, they regularly send spam notifications or show ads, making them more annoying. Thankfully, it is possible to mute almost all such notifications.
MIUI 14 really wants you to enable Glance for the lock screen.
As for updates, Poco says the F5 series will receive two years of OS upgrades and three years of security patches. This is notably inferior to Samsung, which promises four OS updates for its mid-range phones like the Galaxy A54. Even the mid-range Google Pixel 7a will receive three years of OS updates and five years of security patches.
What makes the matter worse is Poco’s slow update rollout speeds. The company has always taken its sweet time bringing the latest Android version (and MIUI) to its devices. In fact, Xiaomi only just got around to releasing Android 13-based MIUI 14 for some of its devices earlier this year, more than six months after the public release of the OS.
Performance and battery life
Despite being a heavy skin, the Poco F5 Pro runs as smooth as thebest Android flagship smartphones. All credit for this goes to the powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip ticking inside and Xiaomi’s optimizations. I saw no signs of lags or stutters while navigating through MIUI while installing several apps in the background. And this was right after I set up the phone. And due to the incredible efficiency of the Snapdragon chip, Qualcomm’s 2022 flagship chip, the Poco F5 Pro never felt too hot despite being used under the scorching sun.
While the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is not Qualcomm’s latest and greatest chip, it ismore than capableof running thebest Android appsand games. If it’s not the best, this remains the second-best chip an Android phone can use. Interestingly, Poco is using the 3GHz version of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, which is 200Mhz slower than what you’ll find in most of the other phones using the same chip. Given how fast this Snapdragon SoC is, you are not going to notice any performance difference due to the slower clock speed.
Battery life is another area where the Poco F5 Pro excels. With a 5160mAh battery and an efficient Qualcomm chip, the phone lasts all day easily. Over weekends when my usage drops drastically, the phone made it through two full days. When I used the Poco F5 Pro heavily for taking photos, recording 8K videos, streaming videos over 5G, and more, I could run down the battery in a day. But on most days, even with over an hour of gaming, the phone made it well past midnight.
Over one weekend, I used the Poco F5 Pro for navigation for about 5-6 hours, music playback, and as a hotspot to connect my other devices to the network. Despite this hammering, the phone lasted nearly 1.5 days before it prompted me to enable Battery Saver mode.
Charging the Poco F5 Pro is a breeze. It supports 67W fast wired charging, which Poco claims can top up its battery in about 30 minutes. In my testing, the phone went from 0-50% in around 17 minutes, while a full charge took about 31 minutes. This is fast enough for my use case and handy when traveling.
My only gripe is that the Poco F5 Pro does not support these charging speeds over USB-PD. You must use the bundled power adapter to get the fastest charging speeds possible. This is an issue when you do not have access to Poco’s power brick because you are stuck with slow charging speeds. And topping the 5,160mAh battery to full at 21W speeds certainly takes a while.
The Poco F5 Pro also supports wireless charging; it is the first Poco phone to do so. The company claims the phone supports 30W wireless fast charging. I cannot access Xiaomi’s fast wireless charger, so I could not test these claims. But the Poco F5 Pro happily charged wirelessly — albeit at much slower speeds — on a Samsung-branded Qi charger.
If there’s one area where the Poco F5 Pro falters, it’s the camera. It is not that the phone’s imaging performance is bad. The problem is that the F5 Pro set the bar so high in performance, display, and battery life that I also expected that level of quality from its cameras.
The primary 64MP camera with OIS can capture decent photos outdoors with boosted color and saturation, giving a social media-ready pop. Dynamic range is limited, and there’s a noticeable drop in sharpness towards the edges of the pictures. But unless you are a pixel peeper, you will be happy with the photos the phone captures when out and about.
While Poco prominently shows a 2x digital zoom button in the camera app’s viewfinder, the results are below par with a significant drop in details. And that’s in bright and sunny conditions. This is to be expected since the phone lacks a dedicated camera with optical zoom. Instead, it takes binned 16MP photos, like most flagship smartphones on the market these days. Given the small size of the 64MP primary camera, there’s only so much it can do.
In low-light scenarios, the addition of OIS helps the Poco F5 Pro to capture good photos. But the phone struggles with capturing moving objects once the sun goes down. Most photos of pets and kids I took with the Poco F5 Pro in indoor or low-light situations were blurry and unusable.
The 8MP ultrawide shooter is the most disappointing part of the Poco F5 Pro’s camera array. It can take photos with decent dynamic range in broad daylight, but that’s about it. In anything but less-than-perfect lighting, the pictures have plenty of noise. There’s a noticeable shift in colors when switching between the primary and ultrawide cameras as well.
Another gripe is that you cannot switch between the primary and ultrawide cameras while recording videos. Considering the phone comes with a powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, this is a weird limitation. The less said about the 2MP macro camera, the better. It’s high time Poco (and other companies) ditch this sensor and put this money towards using a better ultrawide camera on their phones.
I was also not impressed with the front 16MP selfie camera. Most photos I snapped in broad daylight were good, with decent dynamic range. But in low light, the sensor was clearly being pushed to its limits, with photos containing noticeable amounts of noise, a general lack of color, and plenty of blur.
If camera performance is your top priority, you might want to consider the Pixel 7a, as it offers a better imaging experience thanks to Google’s software prowess. At €509, the Pixel 7a is also cheaper than the Poco F5 Pro (€579) by a fair margin.
MIUI’s Camera app is filled with features and customization options, and there are plenty of options to play around with. A powerful Pro mode enables tweaking the camera’s shutter speed, ISO, focus, and other aspects before clicking a photo, though there’s no option to shoot in RAW. Even better, the Pro mode records videos up to 8K@24fps resolution.
Competition
With a starting price of €579, the Poco F5 Pro offers immense value for money. But it also faces stiff competition from two incredibly popular phones: theSamsung Galaxy A54and theGoogle Pixel 7a.
The Galaxy A54 is unarguably the most popular phone among the three. With a starting retail price of €490, Samsung’s mid-ranger brings a Galaxy S23-like design and features at a more affordable price point. But in almost all key areas like display, battery capacity, charging speed, and performance, the Poco F5 Pro trumps Samsung. The latter has an advantage in camera performance and software support, with One UI providing a more refined and polished experience than MIUI.
Then, there’s the Google Pixel 7a, available for €509 before any discounts and offers. Google’s 2023 mid-range Pixel is basically a smallerPixel 7, packing a 90Hz OLED display and an impressive camera setup. It uses the powerfulTensor G2chip but suffers from overheating issues. Plus, at this point, Tensor’s fairly inconsistent modem performance has been widely reported.
Compared to its two closest competitors, the Poco F5 Pro is more expensive by nearly €70. But for that extra money, you get a more powerful phone, a bigger 120Hz OLED panel, premium build quality, and all-day battery life with super fast charging.
Should you buy it?
Assuming it supports your area’s networks, the Poco F5 Pro is definitely worth considering, as long as you can live with a mediocre camera and software experience. From a hardware viewpoint, the Poco F5 Pro excels in almost all departments. It offers great build quality, a 120Hz OLED panel that gets sufficiently bright outdoors, a premium design, and fast charging speeds.
The only bummer with the Poco F5 Pro is the sub-par secondary cameras and the MIUI experience. More specifically, Poco should look into removing unwanted notifications from pre-bundled system apps and improve its software update policy. Google and Samsung promise three and four years of OS updates, respectively, and five years of security patches for the majority of their devices. In comparison, Poco’s promise of two OS updates and three years of security patches is simply unacceptable, no matter how affordable the phone is.
The Poco F5 Pro is a great alternative to the Pixel 7 as long as you can live with MIUI and the sub-par camera. It delivers better performance, lasts longer, and packs a bigger, brighter display with a 120Hz refresh rate.
