POCO just announced its new flagship, the POCO F5 Pro. This is an interesting phone from them as I can see POCO wants to move up to the premium tier and it does have a few specialties. But that will also affect the price too – so, is this phone worth the price of RM2,099? That is the question we’re answering today.
I have to be honest with you guys first- I didn’t get to spend much time with this phone. We had it for only about 9 days and we had to return it tomorrow so I might miss out some details here and there.
Design
Starting off, the design. I think this design is just… polarizing, honestly. The carbon fiber weave texture is only on both the left and right sides. Some may like it, some might not. For me, I don’t really care since I’ll be slapping a case on it anyway.
They also included a case inside the box that actually serves a good purpose.
You see, the camera bump is raised, creating kind of a trapezoid shape. I was worried it’ll scratch the cameras easily – but that included a transparent TPU case actually thought of this issue and the case wraps the metal sides of the camera bump too. That is actually good, and if you’re finding aftermarket cases – I recommended you get a case with a similar design too.
Cameras
Speaking of the cameras, are they actually good? Well, this is something that I don’t have much time to test. We have a total of 3 cameras here but I’ll only consider two of them to be usable. the 2MP macro camera… why did POCO downgrade from the F2 Pro and F3’s excellent 5MP autofocusing macro camera to this 2MP fixed focus camera?
To have a look at all the pictures and videos taken, watch our video at the top of this review.
Screen
Okay, moving on to the screen – this is one of the big highlights of the POCO F5 Pro. Rightly so, actually. It uses a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with a high resolution 3200×1440 pixels, and at 120Hz max refresh rate.
While the specs do look great, you’ll have to head into the settings menu to change the resolution and refresh rate yourself. Out of the box, it defaults to 1080p at 60Hz only. I have no idea why they’re doing this as I have mentioned this issue plenty of times.
As for the brightness, it can go up to 1000 nits in high brightness mode – which is to say under direct bright sunlight. That’s actually good, you won’t have any issues at all when you’re using this phone. The color accuracy though, is actually good. It covers 98.38% of sRGB and while it’s not the best, I think that we can’t discern that 1.62% difference.
This phone has a supremely low maximum ΔE number of only 0.655793. That’s great, actually.
What I don’t like about this screen is actually the placement of the under-display fingerprint scanner. It’s too low. Also, I still think under-display fingerprint scanners are inferior. Not a hot take.
Performance
Since this is the highest-end POCO phone available to date, it has to be packed with a powerful chipset. For the F5 Pro, they chose to go with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 – which is about 9 months since its first debut, I think?
Anyway, even though the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is considered “old” at this point in time, we have shown in our gaming test that this is still magnificent for gaming. I played Genshin Impact at the highest graphical settings at 60fps and had a great time with it. While it did not maintain 60fps all the time, especially in the new desert area, it still manages around 50fps – which is still fantastic.
What I’m impressed by is the temperature. The POCO F5 Pro manages to maintain around 41°C after playing the game for about half an hour – and I’m truly impressed by it. If you’re worried about the read/write speed and also the RAM speed, then don’t be. It’s actually very good.
So all in all, this phone is just great for gaming. You can’t go wrong with it.
Battery life
What I am perplexed by, is the battery life. This POCO F5 Pro comes with a 5,160mAh battery and with our standardized battery life test, we got less than 12 hours. It’s good and that means it can last you throughout the day – but I was expecting more out of that slightly larger-than-usual battery.
Charging speed
This phone also comes with 67W charger in the box – and it can charge from 15% to completion in 50 minutes and I think that’s to be expected. The temperature is directly resulted by the charging speed as you can see from the graph – but it’s still below 42.5°C throughout the entire charging cycle, so that’s good.
What’s weird though, is the inclusion of wireless charging. I truly didn’t expect it to be present on this phone – but here it is.
If you want, then you can actually utilize all MagSafe too. Just get a ring like what I did, or get a proper MagSafe case.
Software – MIUI 14
Now, for the software – I want to skip this since it’s MIUI and I don’t want to repeat what I said previously. Just watch our previous videos at the top right corner for more information instead.
What I have to add though, is this. Because of the higher resolution of 3440×1440 pixels, we expect the UI elements to scale accordingly because that’s what’s happening on other phones. But, not the case here.
I found out that the power menu buttons are just… tiny. Just pointing this out since I find it to be funny.
Few more things to mention
Okay, a few more things to mention – the POCO F5 Pro still uses a USB 2.0 port at the bottom, so no HDMI output via USB-C as well.
Surprisingly, there’s no audio jack too. If you’re going to use any wireless earbuds then you’ll have to suffer through Bluetooth audio delay. Maybe we should do a video explaining Bluetooth audio delay once and for all – let us know in the comments below if you’re interested.
There is also no microSD card slot, but we do have an IR blaster – which I like.
Should you buy the POCO F5 Pro?
With everything said – is the POCO F5 Pro worth the price? That, depends entirely up to you. The local Malaysian prices and its configurations are as shown on the screen here – and we have the 12GB RAM with 256GB storage version.
- 8GB+256GB @ RM2,099
- 12GB+256GB @ RM2,199
- 12GB+512GB @ RM2,399
Honestly, I think this 12GB RAM with 256GB storage variant offers the worst value out of the 3. Remember, in our previous video, we talked about how 8GB RAM is probably enough for years to come – it’s your RAM speed that matters. Watch the video at the top right corner there for more information.
Since this phone doesn’t have any expandable storage, then I recommend you get either the 8GB RAM with 256GB storage or 12GB RAM with 512GB storage.
As for alternatives to this phone, maybe you can look at the Xiaomi 12T Pro? That too is a fantastic phone, powered by the same Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, faster charging speeds, but probably at a higher price – assuming that you can still find it in the market.
And that’s all we have to share with you.
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