This is the POCO F7 Ultra – it is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite and has the lowest price tag compared to other options in the market right now – at least that I’m aware of. Does this POCO F7 Ultra live up to its hype or is it just a smokescreen? Let’s find out in today’s in-depth review of the POCO F7 Ultra.
Performance
Now, we’ll start off by talking about the performance since it is the main highlight of this device. The POCO F7 Ultra is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. By just playing games with its out-of-the-box settings, the POCO F7 Ultra can indeed push out some great frame rates.
Genshin Impact ran nearly 60fps all the time at the highest graphical settings, though sometimes the frame rate does drop while we’re entering combat. No idea why, and I find it to be extremely weird. It does however, maintain 60fps in the Abyss so at least that is not a game-breaking issue.
COD Warzone also ran great at the highest graphical settings, though it does consume a lot of power to maintain that high frame rate. I’m not sure if it’s worth the power consumption – but it’s a choice that you can make. If you’re okay with 60fps, then head into the settings menu and limit the frame rate.
Wuthering Waves also ran great at the highest graphical settings – running above 50fps all the time. I mean, it’s no surprise that Wuthering Waves runs better than Genshin Impact and that could be due to having FSR.
Zenless Zone Zero is the infamous frame rate destroyer and the frame rate can dip below 30fps yet the average FPS isn’t the best either. Again, no surprise here since we can only see one phone handling ZZZ well in this fight.
Special gaming features
But that’s not all – the POCO F7 Ultra does have something called the WildBoost 4.0 to unlock more performance – which we have already enabled for the original gaming test, but there are two more features. I have to give you guys a warning first – it’ll be mostly speculation since POCO doesn’t actually explain what these features actually do. If anyone from POCO is watching this video and would like t further explain these features in detail, do contact us.
Firstly, the Super Resolution feature. By the name itself, it sounds like some sort of booster for your render resolution – but no, it’s more like an upscaler. It seems like the game is rendering at a lower render resolution, then upscaling it to the original render resolution of 1920×863.
From what I can see with my own eyes, the image has a slight sharpening effect and the shadows are brightened up a bit. It’s extremely difficult to spot the difference, though.
Then comes the Smart Frame Rate feature. We got some Q&A time with Angus, the Head of Product Marketing of POCO, while we were at Singapore – and I did ask about this feature specifically. It’s an in-house frame interpolation technique that bypasses the game’s FPS limit. Since it is in-house, I guess POCO is not using Qualcomm’s frame interpolation algorithm that is available in the Snapdragon 8 Elite?
From our tests though, the behavior is weird. The Vtools Scene app that we use to determine the frame rate dropped from 60fps to 40fps, but the built-in frame rate tool in HyperOS’s Game Turbo reports that it has jumped from 60fps to 120fps! I can’t really make sense of this since the math doesn’t check out.
Then, I kinda of realized that it’s basically limiting the frame rate to 40fps since scrolling through the destinations in ZZZ is chopping when the Smart Frame Rate is enabled – but it goes back to being super smooth when disabled.
I tried it again with Genshin Impact and yes, there are some parts that are extremely smooth when the frames are interpolated properly, but there are certain parts that cannot be interpolated and it becomes choppy. This is especially true when we pan the camera back and forth really quickly.
And in terms of power consumption, it only changes around 10mW average. It’s not a significant change, so I do believe it is negligible.
As far as we are aware, the POCO F7 Ultra’s Super Resolution feature works on “all games from POCO/Xiaomi app store” and the Smart Frame Rate also works on all games. However, from the popular games that we’ve tested, it doesn’t seem to have a significant difference.
Now, as it stands, I really think that the Super Resolution feature don’t really impact the gaming performance or experience much, but the Smart Frame Rate does impact the experience as the frame rate kinda jumps up and down frequently. For me, I do recommend turning it off if you just want to hope into a game and have fun. Otherwise, do experiment with these features and see how it affects your experience.
Screen
With that out of the way – let’s talk about the screen. This POCO F7 Ultra uses a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with 3200×1440 pixels and goes up to 120Hz refresh rate as usual. At most, the maximum auto brightness is at a shy of 1000 nits. It’s still good enough to be used under sunlight.
As for the color accuracy, we have a total of three different color profiles that we can select in the settings menu. The default Original Color PRO color profile has very low DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, so it looks rather desaturated. Using the Vivid color profile drastically improve the vividness, and using the Saturated color profile will further push the vividness to nearly to its maximum.
Battery life
How’s the battery life then? It’s actually… quite bad. This is a 5,300mAh battery and it only lasts 14 hours and 22 minutes in our standardized battery test at 1440p resolution. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with a smaller 5,000mAh battery can last another hour longer than this.
Charging speed
The charging speed though, is quite an interesting one. The POCO F7 Ultra comes with a proprietary 120W charger in the box – at least for our region. Using its default settings, it takes around 43 minutes to charge from 15% to completion though the temperature suddenly increased somewhere around the 90% capacity mark.
If we head into the settings menu to enable the fastest charging speed possible, it can charge even faster – from 15% to completion in less than 30 minutes. However, the temperature is at 43°C most of the time.
But, charging the POCO F7 Ultra with a 140W USB-PD PPS charger though, it can charge from 15% to completion in about an hour too. I think that’s okay, but of course – we have to use their own proprietary charger and cable to get the fastest charging speed possible.
Design
Now, let’s take a look at the design of the POCO F7 Ultra. For this black color variant that we have, it has a fancy matte design, and there’s another glossy part at the top. Other than that, it has a very basic design.
The camera bump is also small, so let’s talk about it now.
Camera
Surprisingly, this phone has triple usable cameras – and this should be the norm for a phone of this level. But then again, this is a phone focused on performance, not the cameras. How does the cameras perform then?
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the POCO F7 Ultra, watch our video at the top of this review.
Software
Now, the software. It’s using the version of HyperOS 2 as shown on the screen here – and it functions basically the same as what we’ve seen before. The GetApps – POCO/Xiaomi’s own app store – will push ads via the notifications.
The overall UI is super flashy with lots of animations, and it’s super smooth. We also have the Dynamic Wallpaper feature here that I like a lot, and we also have a bunch of AI features built-in too.
However, I do think HyperOS is the reason why the POCO F7 Ultra has such horrible battery life. This is the exact same situation as the Xiaomi 15 Ultra too.
A few more things to mention
Okay, a few more things to mention about the POCO F7 Ultra. It has a USB 2.0 port at the bottom, and there is no display output via USB-C.
We do have dual SIM card slots and that’s about it. The IR blaster has been moved to the camera bump, by the way. The POCO F7 Ultra is also rated for IP68 – so that’s great.
Should you buy the POCO F7 Ultra?
Alright – should you buy the POCO F7 Ultra then? Well, I’d say this is a great phone for those who want the latest chipset with the best performance at the lowest price. I mean, seriously – it is priced at only RM2,999, making this the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Elite phone to date.
You could also pick up the iQOO 13 at a lower price – but those lower-priced iQOO 13 are using China firmware and the warranty is up in the air. So, if you want a phone with local warranty with the Snapdragon 8 Elite at the lowest price, then the POCO F7 Ultra is your choice.
Just that the battery life sucks and the cameras aren’t particularly consistent but hey – it’s still the lowest-priced phone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
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