The POCO is well famous for it’s mid range segment offering most of what a budget gamer and user should need, and wanted to a certain level, but is the X5 Pro can keep up to the offerings towards today’s needs?
Design – Classic base looks
If you are a person that doesnt care about how a smartphone looks, especially if you just wanted a Smartphone that does what it should with decent placement over functionality, this is the phone you could be looking for, in fact it does have some durability built towards it with hard polycarbonate body and a power button that acts as a fingerprint scanner for authentication during unlocking. The back of the phone does bring the bling when facing towards light source followed by a big POCO logo just located beside the island of camera. In other words, I am cool with it, in fact if you wanna be even more stand out, get the POCO Yellow, which definitely shines saying that you are a POCO fans for sure! No fancy high IP ratings there but IP53 is present for dust and splash resistant protecting some dusts and light rain drops which works especially over Malaysia’s weather.
Display and Audio – Still Provides a fast display while dual speakers is there
POCO being a brand that brings in value with consumers in mind still delivers when it comes to the 6.67 inch 10bit color depth AMOLED properly protected by Gorilla Glass 5 and display still vibrantly played well with Dolby Vision which brings features like HDR10+ and yes, the brightness may not be the best one, but reaching peak brightness of 900nits over very bright sunlight is visible over most of the environment and also capable of 10bit color to boot there. Touch is sensitive over the feature it offers, peaking at 240Hz touch sampling is perfectly responsive over scrolling and gaming, which next part is the 120Hz refresh rates kicks in for all your smoothness needs, although that all depends on games and applications.
While you have Dolby Vision for your eyes, you get Dolby Atmos for your ears too!, and no surprises there where you have a pair of speakers instead treating of a mono one. Additionally there is an audio jack for all your wired no latency audio experience, especially if you are gaming on it and HiRes Audio also. Also worth mention is that there is equalizer settings available for your customize audio needs.
Camera – Base needs is there with some added value to it
Rear Camera : 108 MP, f/1.9, (wide), 1/1.52″, 0.7µm, PDAF
8 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide), 1/4″, 1.12µm
2 MP, f/2.4, (macro)
Front Camera : 16 MP, f/2.4, (wide), 1/3.06″ 1.0µm
Indoor Photos
Camera wise, the POCO X5 Pro may not be over the stellar side, but you still can expect a pretty good performance over certain scenario, for example, day shots can be real good with adequate acceptable dynamic range while night time, it is still usable over most cases which some level of expectation should be set, sometimes subpar but hey, it is still very much usable. Just do remember to take your night shots with abit of light surrounding your shots area. On and all the rear camera side, you still can portray and upload all the images without much losses, the quality is still there, just again, just not the stellar ones, but for the price you paid for, yes, real great value on that one.
Outdoor photos
Front camera? expect good outcome during day sometimes even on dimmer area, portrait looks great while POCO’s AI camera software is able to enhance things out so no worries over there.
From the video recording, you can record up to 4K at 30FPS which is adequate for all your high quality records but stutters are still visible if you are moving fast, however capturing fast moving frame is good for the most parts.
Overall, such camera combination is very well suitable for all your daily captures, even towards high quality ones and video captures were good for your social media or even a short video trailers with most of the camera features inherited from Xiaomi phones are still there, such as Vlog, Slow Motion, Time Lapse and Long Exposure.
Performance, Benchmarks, Experience – Still has some power in it
While many argue that the included Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G SOC is dated, it is still one of the common ones found due to its value and performance it provides. It is not the fastest within the mid range SOC, but it is still fairly suitable from all your gaming, day to day operations and multitasking. With 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and extended VRAM improvement from MIUI 14 and Android 13 as the OS, this brings further fixes and faster startups for applications and operations. That said, MIUI 14 may still looks the same is the former, but the inner works brings alot of changes, such as introducing better screen layout options, customizable RAM extension, options for app notifications, front camera assistant and improved game turbo, just to name a few of the new stuffs there.
Our daily use shows that it will at least last for about 12 hours of mixed usage, which is efficient for a SD778G SOC, and you are not losing much in terms of overall daily usage timing with the included 5000MAh battery capacity that is also standing the same as you may get from any modern smartphones, further conservative use can definitely last you more than one day for sure, but everyone milage may vary on this one. Gaming on Genshin Impact also shows good performance for a mid ranger with a few visible stutters after 20 minutes gameplay, but with game turbo app in it running alongside the games, you can adjust FPS limits to recording all you own, which to me, an added bonus.
Not complaining on the benchmarks, this is within expectations also on the combined internal specifications, a pretty much still good scores you can get and well good for all your needs.
Technical Specifications
| Display | 6.67-inch 1080 x 2400 pixels, AMOLED 1B Display, 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision |
| Security | Side mounted Fingerprint, Face Unlocking |
| Dimensions & Weight | 162.9 x 76 x 7.9 mm , 181g |
| Camera | Rear Camera 108 MP, f/1.9, (wide), 1/1.52″, 0.7µm, PDAF 8 MP, f/2.2, 120˚ (ultrawide), 1/4″, 1.12µm 2 MP, f/2.4, (macro) Front Camera 16 MP, f/2.4, (wide) |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G SOC, 6nm 64-bit Octa-Core Processor |
| Memory | 6GB/8GB RAM, 128GB/256GB internal storage |
| Battery | 5,000mAh |
| Charging | 67W Wired, 5W reverse wired |
| OS | Android 13 with MIUI 14 + GMS |
| Network/Connectivity | 3G WCDMA,4G LTE FDD,4G LTE TDD,4G 4×4 MIMO band,5G Sub6 FDD,5G Sub6 TDD, 5G 4×4 MIMO band. AX/WiFi 6, UWB, NFC, BT5.3, GPS. |
| Payment | Google Pay with NFC |
| Sensors | Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass |
| Water Resistance | IP53 |
Conclusion and Verdict
The POCO X5 Pro 5G is one phone that is still pretty good in terms of the improvement and updates that still can be done over a dated processor, while it is still holding good performance and commands great day to day multitasking ability, the software UI and other hardware such as the camera module is still producing a modest results out from most what a common user uses everyday, and with a price that is attractive, retailed from RM1299, the POCO X5 Pro 5G is one affordable phone over users that just wanted a comfortable mobile gaming experience with 5G, capture decent photos and still carries an overall productive task with the phone.