It's difficult to fully recommend the Poco X4 Pro without knowing the local price. It does however have better hardware design language than its predecessor, a stellar AMOLED high refresh rate display, and 5G connectivity. It also features great battery life, ultra-fast 67W charging, a headphone jack and a big spec bump on that main rear camera. So keep that in mind.
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Design
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Performance
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Battery
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Camera
Poco’s at it again, making smartphones with good (by industry standards) hardware selling for less than most mid-range phones. It’s good to note that a decent mid-ranger can cost around R20,000 these days. Considering Poco can offer far more in terms of raw power for a fraction of the price, it’s offering wonderful value for money.
This sub-brand of Xiaomi just announced the Poco X4 Pro and M4 Pro – and we’ve had our hands on both for just over a week. Here we’ll look at the more powerful Poco X4 Pro, descendent of the Poco X3 Pro – the gaming handset that we reviewed late last year.
That one landed at an admirable retail price of R5,800. The X4 Pro hasn’t been priced locally yet but is sure to cost less than R10,000. Here’s what you get.
The design gods are smiling
One of our major gripes with the X3 Pro was the design. It felt like a back panel was fished out of an ‘on sale’ bin in one of the Shenzhen factories, a Poco label slapped on and a camera module recycled from Huawei’s 2017 production line.
The Poco X4 Pro brings with it a wonderfully 2022 style, complete with a redesigned (albeit very large) camera housing in the upper half of the back panel. One of the prettiest back panels, featuring a shiny reflective design. The sides are completely flush, offering a very iPhone-esque feel. On the right-hand side sits the fingerprint sensor.
It feels like a particularly well-made device that deserves its spot in the year 2022. It’s sturdy and looks good – two major considerations for consumers today.
And that includes the exceptionally bright 6.67in AMOLED display, which offers a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10. Got anything to watch? This is the screen you want to watch it on. It’s a vivid, striking display that will make just about anything look good without oversaturating the colours. It’s just Corning Gorilla Glass 5, though.
This is just the beginning of where Poco managed to save cash on lower-end components.
Turn your attention to…
Poco’s F1 became an internet sensation when consumers realised they could get flagship-level specs in a much more affordable phone. At that point, they weren’t available in Southern Africa yet, though. The F1 touted a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and a 4,000mAh battery.
The X-range, however, comes in as slightly lower-specced mid-rangers. This one’s equipped with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 695 5G processor, 6/8GB of RAM and 128/256GB of storage. The chipset, while new, isn’t the best performing in the segment.
But it’s completely capable of daily tasks, including browsing, streaming, or scrolling. However, you may find that you need to play games on medium settings. Especially if you’ve got 6GB RAM paired with that Snapdragon 695. So from a pure gaming perspective, this device is a downgrade but for someone coming from a much older device, the day-to-day device performance should not be a deal-breaker.
Compared to its predecessor, the battery capacity goes down a bit from 5,160 mAh to 5,000 mAh. However, overall battery life is unchanged thanks to a fairly power-efficient setup and the AMOLED display. With 67W fast charging support, you can top up the new Poco X4 Pro to 70% in about 22 minutes.
There is a slight trade-off thanks to the addition of 5G connectivity but you should easily get a day’s use out of this one.
A few tweaks
The Poco X4 Pro retains a decent pair of dual audio speakers and a headphone jack.
In terms of software, the device is running MIUI 13.0.3 Global with the February 2022 security patch. There is the familiar Poco launcher with round icons. Overall software hasn’t changed much from last year’s version. We were missing Android 12 during the review period, though.
This year Poco bumps the main camera to a 108MP sensor and it’s a welcome addition. The ultrawide and macro camera keep the same resolution but get hardware identical to that on the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G.
The selfie cam is also stolen from the new Note 11 series and as a result, is a slight downgrade compared to the previous device. Overall selfie camera results are okay but we wouldn’t use it if we had another option.
Since the processor gets a downgrade from 8XX to 695 the ability to record video in 4K is no longer available. Practically speaking though the 1080p video with Dolby Atmos support is fine on the main camera on the rear.
Poco X4 Pro 5G Verdict
The Poco X3 Pro was (and still is) easy to recommend. While the newer Poco X4 Pro has better hardware design language, a stellar AMOLED high refresh rate display, and 5G connectivity, the price will greatly impact any buyer’s decision.
It does sport great battery life, ultra-fast 67W charging support, a headphone jack and a big spec bump on that main rear camera.
It’s making some interesting compromises – but not every change is a clear-cut upgrade. Let’s wait and see what its price looks like if it launches locally.