POCO X4 Pro 5G Review

Mid Tier Hero, Affordable Price, great camera

Introduction

POCO is no stranger as a sub brand of Xiaomi for bringing in affordable yet powerful phones to the market. About a week ago, POCO introduces two new in its lineup as a refresher, which is the POCO M4 Pro and POCO X4 Pro 5G

Specifically our focus here for the review is the POCO X4 Pro 5G , a hero mid ranger that feature much on the affordable budget level pricing but with certain features and hardware upgrade over to the processor and camera close to a higher range performer. Let’s look at the new POCO X4 Pro 5G and find out what it can do in this review.

Unboxing Content

Upon unboxing, you will get the following as below

• POCO X4 Pro 5G Phone
• SIM Ejector
• User Manual
• 67w Charger
• USB A to C Cable
• Translucent Case

Design

The POCO X4 Pro 5G design is built with a fresh design that is meant to replace the older POCO X3 Pro, which is by specs still a 4G smartphone. The POCO X4 Pro 5G back is made of smooth hard plastic construction on the body while the back is constructed beautifully with glass like back that shines with the glossy touch that has lines reflecting all over the back of the phone. While all the gloss around, it was well built over the body side which does hardly even flex which is a good thing as this shows affordable device can be tough at the same time.

Xiaomi does provide a translucent casing in the box so at least, it is protected against any light surface drops. The camera portion is an island of bump consisting of 3 camera sensors and a flash. Putting it on the table is almost flat and it shows the slimness of the phone at just 8.1mm which is not that slim but manageable.

Continuing on the sides, on the right hand side, there is a volume up and down button and a power button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, while the top houses an IR blaster for remote control, a top speaker, microphone, while the bottom portion has a speaker, mic, 3.5mm headphone jack, Dual SIM card/MicroSD Card slot and a USB C port. All of the phone sides are made of aluminum. Over to the camera design, the darker black color applies to the side of the phone and the bottom/top part as well with mirror finishing touch to it. Audio wise, this ensures good call quality and clear stereo speaker enjoyment at anytime with Dolby Atmos. Since there is a Headphone jack, you can plug in any of the headphones of your choice.

The POCO X4 Pro 5G comes in three colors, Poco Yellow, Laser Blue and Laser Black which carries the weight of 205 Grams. Personally the weight is nice with overall device to body ratio that is suitable for majority of users

Display

Over to the display and audio department, the POCO X4 Pro 5G is powered by a 6.67 Inch FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED DotDisplay screen with Gorilla Glass 5. Display is vibrant on colors with great contrast level that did not disappoint at all having said at such price category. Most applications do take advantage of high refresh rates with rising of many games adapting it as well, which this is a huge selling point for POCO on bringing it towards the masses to enjoy. Surely streaming will not be an issue as well especially if you love 60FPS video enjoyment combined with a pair of stereo speakers that is quite loud and it does support Dolby Atmos out of the box.

Camera

When it comes to the camera portion, the POCO X4 Pro 5G rear camera consists of one 108MP 9-1 binning Wide PDAF camera, one 8MP ultra-wide camera, and one 2MP Macro Camera followed by a single LED flash. Pictures taken were clear as crystal during day with good amount of light captured produced on each picture. During night shots, as long you can get even small amount of light, the picture quality will come out good as well with contrast and shadows visible at a presentable level. The selfie images are bright and good during day time as well which is powered by a 16MP wide angle lens.

Different modes are tested with sets off 10x zoom, normal, 108MP, HDR and automatic shots taken were balanced, with minimal noise.

On video recording you get support up to 1080 at 30FPS, with minor stutters visible during recording however details are still captured with playback test over good recording bitrate.

Performance

Performance wise, the POCO X4 Pro 5G is powered by Qualcomm 6nm Snapdragon 695 5G Octa Core Processor, 128/256GB of internal storage and 6/8GB RAM. Operating system is on Android 11 with the brand new MIUI 13 on top that brings in improvement on battery life, performance tweaks and a new Game Turbo mode with performance tweaks and monitoring profiles. The phone does come with 5G connectivity support if you are looking for a 5G phone with WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5 and NFC. Testing over WiFi connection gets up to an average of 433MBPS transfer speeds, ensuring good fast speed for multimedia, streaming and online gaming. If you have a WiFi 5/6 router, you will be able to make use of the hardware features without issues.

Over to the gaming side, basically this phone will perform well on games such as Mobile Legends, Genshin Impact and Call Of Duty with low mix medium settings applied.

Above is the Benchmark performance, which delivers a very good scores on each of the test between its graphics, and processor performance. POCO X4 Pro 5G is suitable for those seeking for a Mid range hero phones.

Battery performance wise, you will get around 9.5 hours of it with the built in 5000mAH battery, a mix of calls, surfing, email, streaming, and a few Call Of Duty matches. Turning on the battery saving mode under 20% will get you around extra 2 hours of conservative usage. POCO X4 Pro 5G comes with a 67W fast charger, which will charge up the phone to 100% from 10% in around 45min average. 

Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion 

The POCO X4 Pro 5G is a device that for those who are seeking for a budget mid ranger with good camera quality which is perfect for Vlogging on the go, combining the speed you need for 5G streaming and the power for eSports mainline games with a huge battery capacity that will last you the whole day.

Pros

• 120Hz Refresh Rate Display
• AMOLED display with 360Hz touch sampling rate
• Has 3.5mm headphone jack

Cons

• Video Recording capped at 1080P 30FPS
• Widevine Certification at L3, only SD Playback for Netflix

Pricing and availability

Starting from now, the POCO X4 Pro 5G will be available in two variants at RM 1199 for the 6GB+128GB variant and RM 1499 for the 8GB+256GB variant, and can be purchased from Shopee