The best gaming beast packaged with good all-around specifications!!
POCO emerged as one of the most successful brands as its first offering Poco F1 (under Xiaomi) was the epitome of performance and gaming. After that, the brand could establish itself as an independent one where it could bring some very good smartphones with its X-lineup and budget-centric C-lineup. Its flagship grade F series has been a huge hit with each of its iterations.
Last year the POCO F4 (Review) was a huge hit as it was a well-packaged smartphone that brought in flagship specifications like a 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset, a 64MP triple camera setup, etc. But this POCO has made a few changes to the POCO F5 as it is now the first smartphone to have the newer Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset in the market.
Other than that, the smartphone brings in some very good specifications that remain almost similar to that of the POCO F4 and a few upgrades are also there. So how well will the POCO F5 maintain its standard as we had seen with the POCO F4? Is the POCO F5 worth buying?
Let's find out in the full review.
POCO F5 Design:
The POCO F5 sports a different design compared to its predecessor as this smartphone now sports a polycarbonate back instead of glass which is slightly disappointing but it does bring the weight down from 195 grams to 181 grams. The back has no dedicated camera module instead triple cameras with a LED flashlight are placed on the back. There is no specific IP rating but it is splash resistant.
The POCO F5 is available in three different colours - White, Blue and Black. The White colour variant has a unique shimmery pattern which transitions to an icy blue towards the bottom of the smartphone that looks cool whereas if you consider the Blue and the Black colour variant, they remain simpler and have a glossy back which does attract a lot of fingerprints and smudges.
Around the sides, the POCO F5 is slightly thicker at 7.9mm and there is a polycarbonate frame that houses the power button and the volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. On the top, there is a secondary noise-cancelling microphone, a secondary loudspeaker grille, an IR Blaster and a 3.5mm headphone jack which is a good addition.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a primary loudspeaker grille, and a dual SIM card slot that accepts two SIM cards only. There is no additional slot for a microSD card for storage expansion. On the front, the smartphone has minimum bezels to the sides and there is a single punch-hole present in the display. Overall, the build and design are good but a glass back would have been better.
POCO F5 Display:
The POCO F5 houses a 6.67-inch Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9 which is similar to the POCO F4. Since it has an AMOLED display, you get good colour reproduction and viewing angles and there is also the 120Hz refresh rate which provides smooth scrolling between applications easily.
Here the refresh rate is an adaptive one and has two different settings to choose from - Custom and Default where if you set the display to Default, then the display either switches between 60Hz and 120Hz depending on the content whereas on the other hand, if you set the refresh rate to Custom, the display switches adaptively between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz.
Combined with the 120Hz AMOLED display you get a 240Hz touch sampling rate which is good but still less for a gaming smartphone. The display as claimed by POCO is a 12-bit one where actually the display is a 10-bit one with an extra 2-bit of colour mapping has been done. The front display has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection.
Though you have an AMOLED display, there is no in-display fingerprint sensor as the power button doubles up as a fingerprint sensor. In terms of brightness, the display can reach a peak brightness of 1000 nits while watching any content in HDR but usually, the brightness ranges between 500-600 nits. Under direct sunlight, the display has good visibility though.
The display of the POCO F5 can be calibrated in three different modes - Saturated, Standard and Vivid where setting the display to Vivid provides punchier colours and set to either Saturated or Standard results in realistic colours with a slightly off-white balance. The display temperature can be either set to a warmer or cooler tone.
The display of the POCO F5 has support for Widevine L1 so you stream HDR content on OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime, etc. and there is also support for Dolby Vision on Netflix which provides a much better viewing experience with punchier colours. There is also support for HDR on YouTube. Overall, the display of the POCO F5 is great for multimedia consumption.
POCO F5 Performance:
The POCO F5 is powered by the newest processor from Qualcomm i.e. Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset. The Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset is based on a tri-cluster architecture having a 1x2.91 GHz Cortex-X2 core with another 3x2.49 GHz Cortex-A710 cores and 4x1.8 GHz Cortex-A510 cores coupled with an Adreno 725 GPU. This chipset is built on a much more efficient 4nm process making it very power efficient.
In terms of daily tasks, the smartphone handles all of them easily without breaking a sweat whether it is playing games, rendering videos, scrolling through webpages, etc. In heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Apex Legends, BGMI, etc. the gameplay is smooth even at the highest graphics settings. In BGMI, the POCO F5 could achieve stable gameplay at HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates.
After long hours of gaming, the POCO F5 did not feel warmer at all as the dedicated vapour cooling system does dissipate heat much faster. In the CPU throttling test, the POCO F5 could easily maintain a sustained performance of around 75-80 per cent which is decent as there is a lot of thermal throttling present which needs to be controlled.
The benchmark scores came out to be the best in class with the scores on Antutu v8 almost equivalent to the scores of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. In terms of network connectivity, you have support for good carrier aggregation and 12 bands of 5G. The POCO F5 is available in two different variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 256GB storage of UFS 3.1 speeds.
Overall, the performance and gaming experience is impeccable in the premium mid-range segment.
POCO F5 Software:
The POCO F5 runs on the latest MIUI 14 built on top of Android 13 out of the box. MIUI 14 does bring some substantial changes over MIUI 13 where you now get some newer themes, the Gallery application now gets text recognition whereas the rest of the features like a Control Center remains similar, Sidebar is present and also the app drawer is present which has different categories of applications.
Other than this, you get multiple styles for the Always-On display to choose from, you can change icon shape and size, different wallpapers and themes are present, etc. There is MIUI's own Security application where you have control of data usage for applications, and change the battery behaviour of certain applications also Privacy Dashboard is present to see which applications are using a camera and microphone.
Xiaomi claims that MIUI 14, it has improved the haptics to quite a margin which you can feel while typing on the keyboard or while multitasking. There are some MIUI-specific applications present like Mi Pay, Video, and Mi Remote which come in handy. However, there is some amount of bloatware present which can be uninstalled easily in the form of third-party applications.
In terms of software updates, the POCO F5 will receive another two AndroidOS updates and three years of security patches which is good but POCO does not have a good track in providing timely software updates. Other than this, there has been quite some issues regarding motherboard in POCO smartphones in the past. But still, the software experience is good.
POCO F5 Cameras:
The POCO F5 houses a triple-camera setup which is similar to the setup found on the POCO F4 which consists of a 64MP f/1.8 OmniVision OV64B40 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. On the front, there is a 16MP f/2.5 camera.
The images from the main camera come out with sharper details, and a wider dynamic range and colours also look punchier. However, there is some amount of noise present in the background which is negligible. With the HDR mode turned on, the images come out with good details and also if you use the 64MP mode, the images have slightly more noise and the details look slightly softer but still good enough.
At night, the images from the main camera come out with good details that look sharper and the dynamic range is good with less amount of noise in the background. The colours look natural without any oversharpening. The exposure is low-light is well maintained and with dedicated night mode, the images come out brighter, the dynamic range improves and also noise comes out less.
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details and the dynamic range is also good. However, around the edges, there is some distortion present and some amount of noise is present in the background also. At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out with a decent level of detail with average dynamic range and noise is also more in the background.
The 2MP macro camera does an average job in terms of macro shots where it is a fixed-focus camera that takes images with poor dynamic range and washed-out colours. The portraits from the main camera come out with good edge detection but it is a hit or a miss and the level of background blur just does not keep focus thus blowing out the entire highlights. However, skin tones look natural.
On the front, the selfies come out with a good level of detail that looks sharper but the skin tones look slightly underwhelming with some amount of noise present in the background. The portrait selfies come out with good edge detection but there is a lot of overexposure and the highlights look blown out in the background.
In terms of videos, the main camera can record 4K videos at 60fps and the videos come out with good dynamic range and colours that look natural with no oversharpening. Since OIS is present, there is no noise in the background. The ultrawide camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps which comes out with good details but the dynamic range is average and there is a lot of noise present in the background.
The front camera can record 1080p videos at 60fps and the videos have good details that look sharper and have good dynamic range but there is some amount of noise present in the background but it is negligible.
POCO F5 Battery Life:
The POCO F5 sports a slightly larger 5000mAh battery which is 500mAh more in capacity compared to the 4500mAh battery on the POCO F4. Considering the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset on the POCO F5 being built on a 4nm process, we do expect some better battery life- compared to the POCO F4.
With normal usage that includes casual web browsing, streaming social media, and minimal calls, the smartphone easily lasted for one and a half days with normal usage but with heavy usage that includes playing games, rendering videos, attending continuous calls, recording videos, etc. the smartphone easily lasted a single day with some charge left.
The standard screen-on time with normal usage comes around 5.5-6 hours whereas with heavy usage, the standard screen-on time comes around 3.5-4 hours. The POCO F5 is shipped with a 67W fast charger which takes around 55-60 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent which is good.
POCO F5 Audio Quality:
The POCO F5 sports a dual stereo speaker setup where the first speaker is located at the bottom whereas the secondary speaker is placed on the secondary speaker on the top. The sound output is very good with clear levels of bass and loudness levels are very good. There is also a 3.5mm headphone jack and the sound output is very good. For enhanced sound output, there is Dolby Atmos present.
Verdict:
Overall the POCO F5 is a great premium mid-range smartphone that brings all the required necessities like a good build and design, a 120Hz AMOLED display with stereo speakers that is great for media consumption, the powerful Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 chipset is great for performance and gaming, cameras are good, battery life is very good with fast charging and MIUI has far less bloatware present.
However, there are some areas where the POCO F5 falls short to deliver like the main camera is not so well optimized for low-lighting scenarios and also colour tuning needs some improvement, then MIUI is not so good in terms of timely software updates, the build and design is polycarbonate which does not feel as premium as glass and POCO had issues with the motherboard in their smartphones in the past.
Overall, as a POCO product, it fulfils all the criteria for being a performance-oriented smartphone as it brings the balance of everything if you can compromise with camera performance and timely software updates. Currently, POCO offers another 2 years of extended warranty which is good. In the end, definitely, the POCO F5 still continues to maintain the heritage of the POCO lineup of smartphones.
This post first appeared on OnePlus 8 Pro Vs Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra: Which Is The Better Flagship Of The Two?, please read the originial post: here
