Poco F5 Pro review: Flagship Qualcomm at a steal

Note: This review was first published on 21 June 2023.

TL;DR: Plenty of raw power for its price with nice features to go against flagship offerings, but you should also manage expectations.

A flagship phone for just S$659?

Every once in a blue moon, a phone comes along and proclaims to be the next affordable “flagship killer” phone. While the Poco F5 Pro isn’t a true “flagship killer”, it certainly has plenty of boxes ticked to make it a worthy contender to that claim.

Why do we say that? That’s because, for S$659 (8GB RAM, 256GB storage), you get a 6.7-inch 3,200 x 1,440p resolution AMOLED display that supports 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision that can go up to 1,000 nits peak brightness or 1,400 nits peak brightness for HDR content. It could also be because of the slightly-older-but-still-as-formidable Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor inside that’s paired with either 8GB or 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM. 

It also doesn’t fall too short in other areas. The triple camera array on the rear also sports a 64MP main camera that pixel bins down to 16MP and provides decent performance, although we’ll touch more on that in the Imaging Performance section of the review. 

The Poco F5 Pro also has 67W wired fast charging and 30W wireless charging. The combination of wireless charging, a recent flagship-grade chipset, and 1,440p AMOLED, topped off with IP53-rated water resistance in one device is relatively uncommon at this price point.

So is it a good “flagship” phone priced in the midrange bracket? Let’s take a look.

Black never goes out of style

In most cases, a phone in black is usually the most subdued choice to get. That’s not the case here. 

The F5 Pro comes in two colours, Black and White, with the White being the more “boring” colour of the two. Black comes with a carbon fibre-esque design along the two long edges on the back. There’s no livery in the middle, but everything behind comes covered with Gorilla Glass 5, which Corning said can survive 1.6m drops 80% of the time. 

Unfortunately, the glossy rear plate is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. I had to wipe down the back of the phone occasionally to keep it looking nice. 

The protruding rear camera bump tapers off on both the left and right ends, which does look rather interesting, but the phone is still unstable on a flat surface. 

Poco (or rather Xiaomi) used polycarbonate on the flat sides of the phone, which isn’t too bad material-wise, although the edges don’t blend seamlessly with the glass on the back. This results in a ridge that can be felt in the hand occasionally. That said, the handling is consistent with most midrange phones. You'd probably find more care and attention in handling details in higher price brackets.

The 6.7-inch Flow AMOLED 1,440p display is a flat panel with thin bezels that are only slightly noticeable along the top and bottom. With the usual brightness hovering around 530 nits and a peak brightness of 1,000 nits (1,400 nits for HDR content), the screen is bright with nice colours. However, its colour temperature leans to the cooler side if you’re using the recommended Vivid colour scheme. 

If you switch to the Original colour profile, you’ll notice the display warms up immediately with better colour accuracy. While a default setting allows for the refresh rate to be adjusted dynamically, you can also lock the refresh rate to 60Hz or 120Hz, which is nice. The front camera is still a circular punchout at the top, although it’s high enough that it doesn’t interfere with most content. 

The F5 Pro, oddly enough, only comes with an IP53 rating, which means it can only withstand light splashes of water. Nowadays, it’s a little unusual to see a phone that doesn’t have at least an IP54 rating, so you’ll have to be careful around the pool and beach with this mobile. It’s still better than not having any certified IP rating like the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G.

There are stereo speakers on the Poco, and they get relatively loud with a good amount of bass. Even so, we still recommend getting earbuds or earphones for proper music enjoyment. 

Plenty of apps to delete

The Poco F5 Pro sits under a sister brand of Xiaomi. It runs on MIUI 14 for Poco, based on Android 13. Unlike the squarish icons on the regular MIUI 14, the pre-installed Poco theme has circular icons that more closely resemble the stock Android icons. 

There are also some nice features, like double-tapping on a blank spot on the home screen to lock the phone, and overall, the performance is snappy and fast.

Unfortunately, you’ll most likely want to do a cleanup of the phone once you’re done setting it up because there are a lot of preinstalled apps. Here’s a sampler for you: WPS Office, Agoda, QEEQ (this is a car rental app), Amazon Shopping, Bubble Shooter, Jewels Blast, Poco Community and many more.

Your tolerance to unsolicited apps may vary. If you prefer not having them, Poco lets you uninstall (fortunately) but you’ll have to do it one by one, which will take a little bit of time and could have been easily avoided by Poco not forcing these pre-installed apps onto the phone. 

A good example of an app we didn’t ask for but found useful was Game Turbo. It gave me a straightforward way to delete all those unwanted preinstalled games, and it also helped to optimise the phone for when you’re gaming. It does cause the phone to run a little hotter than usual and uses a bit more battery life, but the performance feels smoother. 

A voice changer function allows you to change your voice to sound like a robot, a cartoon character, a man or a woman. Although I’ve tried it, it’s not perfect, with the beginning of some sentences cutting off. 

However, there’s a big problem with Game Turbo: the FPS counter might be inaccurate. Game Turbo claims it boosts the performance up to 120 FPS while Honkai: Star Rail is running. Although Honkai: Star Rail can indeed support 120 FPS, that is a feature exclusive to iOS devices by default, so seeing the Game Turbo interface show 120 FPS on an Android phone was surprising.

When running Honkai: Star Rail on the F5 Pro side by side with the iPhone 14 Pro Max (which does support 120 FPS), there’s a visible difference in the smoothness when swivelling the camera perspective around. The iPhone was visibly better at keeping to a high framerate, while Poco saw frame drops when I pivoted my character in the game.

Imaging Performance

As mentioned, the Poco F5 Pro has a triple camera array on the rear with a 64MP main camera (f/1.8 aperture, 0.7µm pixel size) that comes with phase detect auto focus (PDAF) and optical image stabilisation (OIS).

Accompanying that is an 8MP ultrawide camera (f/2.2 aperture, 1.12µm pixel size, 120˚ FOV) and a 2MP macro (f2.4 aperture). On paper, it looks the same as the camera system on the Poco F4. However, there is 8K24FPS video recording, but it’s only available for six minutes (most likely due to heat constraints where extra image processing draws more power over time, causing heat buildup). We have to note that there’s not many use cases for 8K recording at the moment anyway, and the 4K30FPS on the F5 Pro is perfectly fine with decent video stabilisation. 

The main 64MP camera pixel bins to 16MP by default, and the pixel-binned images are serviceable. Images are sufficiently sharp and there’s some saturation and contrast boost to help the colors along, although sometimes it can feel a tad overly processed (like its strong blue cast, for example). For social media use, though, it should be fine. 

There’s a 2x zoom option, but it’s a digital zoom crop and not a true optical zoom. Regardless, photos with the 2x zoom are also serviceable. An okay amount of detail is retained, but it does end up a touch softer.

When you turn off pixel-binning to shoot with its full 64MP sensor, it retains the same punchy colours and adds a touch more detail to the photo (before you start zooming way in), but this feature isn't really all that necessary if you’re just posting your pictures on Instagram and the like. 

Unfortunately, the cracks start showing when moving to the ultrawide camera. Photos taken with the ultrawide camera come out with much more visible noise, and the images are noticeably washed out compared to a regular photo taken with the main camera. There’s no visible fisheye distortion here, which balances out its lower overall quality. 

While a macro lens can be nice for closeup shots, the 2MP lens included here just doesn’t provide enough detail or resolution, and we don’t recommend that most people rely on this lens. 

The front-facing 16MP selfie camera performs well at selfies, and Portrait mode works decently. There are moments when it doesn’t detect the edges, as seen by that obvious line between my shirt and my chair. To Poco’s credit, shooting grey on grey is a hard task, so we’ll cut it some slack here.

Night mode is serviceable, although you lose detail, and there are quite a few visible artefacts caused by software sharpening. Colours also get a tad washed out here, and using the ultrawide camera in night mode felt like a nightmare. 

Benchmark Performance

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is a 2022 flagship-tier chip, but the one we get in the F5 Pro isn’t the 3.2GHz version. It’s the 3.0GHz model with lower clock speeds on the individual clusters, which translates to decent battery life. Regardless, it’s a nice processor in a mid-range phone.

JetStream 2.0

JetStream 2 is a combination of a variety of JavaScript and Web Assembly benchmarks, including benchmarks that came before like SunSpider and Octane. It primarily tests for a system’s and browser’s ability in delivering a good web experience. It runs a total of 64 subtests, each weighted equally, with multiple iterations, and takes the geometric mean to compute the overall score. The higher the score, the better.

Geekbench 5

Geekbench CPU is a cross-platform processor benchmark that tests both single-core and multi-core performance with workloads that simulate real-world usage. Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000, which is the score of an Intel Core i3-8100. The higher the score, the better.

Geekbench 6

Our Geekbench 5 benchmarking will soon be replaced with Geekbench 6, the updated version that tests single-core and multi-core CPU performance. Geekbench 6 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 2500, which is the score of an Intel Core i7-12700. We’ll continue to populate this new benchmark with more scores from our review units before fully transitioning over. 

3DMark Wild Life (Unlimited)

3DMark Wild Life is a cross-platform benchmark for Windows, Android and Apple iOS for measuring GPU performance. Its graphics test consists of multiple scenes with variations in the amount of geometry, lights and post-processing effects, mirroring mobile games that are based on short bursts of intense activity. Wild Life uses the Vulkan graphics API on Windows PCs and Android devices. On iOS devices, it uses Metal.

In Unlimited mode, the benchmark runs offscreen using a fixed time step between frames. Unlimited mode renders exactly the same frames in every run on every device, regardless of resolution scaling. The higher the score, the better.

PCMark for Android - Work 3.0 and Storage 2.0

PCMark for Android is a benchmark for testing the performance of Android phones and tablets. The Work 3.0 test checks how the device handles common productivity tasks such as browsing the web, editing videos, working with documents and data, and editing photos. Storage 2.0 checks write-in and read-out performance for internal storage, external storage (if applicable), and SQLite database management. Together, the benchmarks can clue us in on how capable a phone is at handling everyday use. Work 3.0 scores are above, while Storage 2.0 scores are immediately below for each device - the higher the score, the better.

Benchmark Performance remarks

The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip inside might not be the same 3.2GHz model, but it performs admirably in both synthetic benchmarks and real-world use. 

While using the phone daily, everything was snappy and smooth for social media, web browsing, gaming, and the likes. The only downside might be that the phone tends to heat up more often, hitting 42.2°C during our benchmarking and hovering around 41°C while playing processor-taxing games like Honkai: Star Rail. 

Battery Life

Our new battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more. 

To enhance consistency in battery results, we start the test at: 

• 100% of the phone’s battery capacity until 20% left
• A fixed display brightness is calibrated at 200cd/m2 (200-lux) with the help of a luminance meter 
• Max resolution
• Refresh rates unlocked
• 0% audio, or completely silenced where possible
• Full bars of Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth, and notifications enabled
• Only one other battery recording app opened in the background
• Scored in uptime minutes; the higher, the better

We liked how Poco still provides a nice, 67W fast charger in the box. Unfortunately, it is a Type C prong (not the USB-C, but plug Type-C), so you’ll need a travel adapter to use in Singapore’s Type G environment. The included cable is also a USB-A to C, but you can get fast charging with a compatible third-party charger and cable. 

The 5,160mAh battery is also larger than the average 5,000mAh Chinese smartphone. There’s plenty of battery life for a full day of use, and then some. The phone used up 14% of its battery in an hour of 60Hz gaming, with around 13% for an hour of 120Hz web browsing and watching videos. 

Wired charging was fast at 67W, which is the exact specification of the included charger, and it took about 16 minutes to get up to 50% from 0%, with a full charge taking 48 minutes. There’s also 30W wireless fast charging, another rare feature on a mid-range phone. 

The new benchmark will succeed our outgoing Battery Life benchmarking, which has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email

Good for its price, cameras aside

Starting at S$659 for the 8GB+256GB Poco F5 Pro model and going up to S$759 for 12GB+512GB, this is certainly on the slightly more expensive side of a mid-range phone, but there are enough goodies in this phone to warrant the price. 

After testing the phone, I found it to be an enjoyable experience thanks to the 1,440p screen with 120Hz refresh rate, fast wired and wireless charging, and snappy performance. It also has IP-rated water resistance and wireless charging, which adds to the phone’s appeal.

Unfortunately, the camera system is a big letdown here. The F5 Pro would be a much easier recommendation if the cameras were better. 

If you’re looking at benchmarks, it’s hard to find a mid-range phone that convincingly beats the F5 Pro, and we daresay our benchmark numbers back that up against other mid-range phones like the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G and the Google Pixel 7a. The flip side, of course, is that a phone like the Google Pixel 7a offers much more on the software, optimisation, and features side of things than just pure hardware numbers.

If you’re looking for a mid-range device offering more raw power than its price tag suggests and you don't need perfect photography at this price point, the F5 Pro is a great choice and is probably the “flagship” alternative in the mid-range category. 

The Poco F5 Pro retails in the following configurations at these official prices: 

• Poco F5 Pro (8GB RAM + 256GB storage): S$659 
• Poco F5 Pro (12GB RAM + 256GB storage): S$709
• Poco F5 Pro (12GB RAM + 512GB storage): S$759

You can find the Poco F5 Pro at the company’s official stores on Lazada and Shopee.