POCO F2 Pro Review: Best 'Affordable' Flagship You Can Get For Around ₹40000

Two years ago, Xiaomi surprised the global mobile industry when launching the sub-brand Poco with the first product using the top-end Snapdragon 845 processor for a very competitive price of Rs. 20,990. Recently, the Poco brand has returned with its second product, the Poco F2 Pro.

The Poco F2 Pro also has a very powerful configuration with the flagship Snapdragon 865 chipset, but the price has changed and no longer in the sub-Rs. 25,000 price range like the Poco F1. With the price of around Rs. 40,000 for the 6GB RAM / 128GB internal memory and Rs. 49,000 for the 8GB RAM / 256GB internal memory, this new Poco phone is closer to the high-end segment. Sadly, the Chinese brand hasn’t mentioned anything about the Poco F2 Pro India launch.

Of course, there is a good reason for the price increase. The Poco F2 Pro has been improved in many aspects. Not only having the top-of-the-line chipset, this phone now has a more advanced design with metal / glass frame material, edge-to-edge OLED display, large battery with impressive charging speed, 5G network support and better camera cluster. It should be added that the price of high-end smartphones at the present time has increased a lot compared to two years ago. Therefore, the POCO F2 Pro price is still highly competitive for what it offers.

POCO F2 Pro review: Display

Except for having a standard 60Hz refresh rate, the screen of the Poco F2 Pro fulfills most of the important factors in display quality. This is a large 6.7-inch OLED screen with no notch or punch-hole, Full-HD + resolution, vivid colors, and high brightness.

Notably, in auto-brightness mode, the screen of the Poco F2 Pro will automatically increase brightness to a level higher than users can set in manual mode. So when you open the automatic brightness mode, you can use the handset outdoors comfortably.

Xiaomi also introduced three color modes for users to customize. If you like boosted colors, you can choose Saturation mode, while Auto mode (which is the default), the colors are less vibrant. In Natural mode, colors will reproduce more accurately, but no longer have the vibrancy of the OLED panel. In addition, the HDR10 + standard is also present, fully supporting HDR content on YouTube and Netflix.

POCO F2 Pro review: Performance

Performance is a strength of the Poco F2 Pro as it is equipped with today's flagship Snapdragon 865. This chipset is manufactured on the 7nm process, including 8 CPU cores (one Kryo 585 core at 2.84GHz, three Kryo 585 cores clocked at 2.42GHz and four Kryo cores clocked at 1.8GHz). Along with the Adreno 650 GPU, the handset is capable of handling heavy tasks and high-graphics games.

Besides, you will also get at least 6GB RAM and up to 8GB RAM on the F2 Pro. Particularly, the 8GB RAM version uses the LPDDR5 memory standard which is more efficient and faster than the LPDD4X standard on the 6GB RAM version (the version I use in this review). Both versions do not have an external memory card slot.

In practical use, the Snapdragon 865 delivers a smooth experience as expected. I have tested the phone with some popular games today, which are PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty, at the highest settings.

With PUBG Mobile, the POCO F2 Pro runs the game pretty stably at 60 fps. As for the Call of Duty game, the device always reaches 60 fps during gameplay, but when in the lobby and when downloading the map, the fps reduces to 30 fps to save battery power. So the average fps rate when playing this game was reduced to 52.7 fps, not 60 fps like PUBG Mobile.

In terms of software, the Poco F2 Pro runs on Android 10 with the customized Poco Launcher interface. The Poco Launcher is essentially MIUI 11, meaning Xiaomi's familiar software features are also available on this phone such as Game Turbo game mode, second storage space, Dark Mode, comprehensive gesture controls, Always-On display and more.

POCO F2 Pro review: Battery Life

As expected with the 4,700 mAh battery, the Poco F2 Pro has a very impressive battery life with a powerful smartphone performance. After testing its battery life by watching movies, surfing the web and playing games, this phone all achieved much higher results than smartphones in the same high-end segment. With this result, users can be assured of the battery life of the Poco F2 Pro, even for those with a high demand for gaming.

Not only has a long battery life, but the charging time of the device is also quite impressive. The 33W charger allows the phone to full charge in a total of 65 minutes, of which the first 30 minutes charge 60%. Besides, Xiaomi's support of the universal PD standard is also an advantage. You can use any charger that supports PD standard with a capacity of 33W or more to take advantage of the fast charging speed of the Poco F2 Pro.

POCO F2 Pro review: Camera

The F2 Pro has a 64MP primary camera at the back, paired with an ultra-wide, macro, and depth units. The lack of a telephoto camera is reasonable because 2x telephoto ones don’t add to much value to the phone and it is better in most of the cases to just crop photos taken by the high-res camera. Overall, it is not a great setup, but certainly better than that of the POCO F1.

The image quality of the POCO F2 Pro is quite inconsistent. The primary camera does a good job of picking up a relatively high amount of detail and well-balanced colors. There is also no over-saturation, which is great considering other Realme phones at the same price point tend to over-process the colours. However, photos seem to have a bit too much contrast, which can make scenes become moodier. You also need to toggle HDR to lift the shadows to a reasonable level as the feature isn’t enabled by default. These below photos are taken by the F2 Pro:

Low-light photography is where the POCO F2 Pro fails. It relies on the main camera and the processing isn’t that good. It seems like the camera doesn’t take much time to capture the photo as other phones, some of which even require 10 seconds to do, so the F2 Pro doesn’t have too much data to work with. The outcomes turn out to be too smooth with low detail.

POCO F2 Pro review: Verdict

Xiaomi POCO F2 Pro is certainly one of the best affordable flagships on the market. A powerful set of specs, high-quality display, beefy battery, and decent camera setup are packed inside an attractive metal and glass body.

There are obviously some downsides with an ‘affordable’ phone, like the standard 60Hz display as well as the lack of telephoto camera and wireless charging. However, it is reasonable when you considering its $499 price tag, which is only around Rs. 36,000.

POCO F2 Pro price: around Rs. 36,000

POCO F2 Pro price in India: Unavailable

>>> ASUS Zenfone 7 & Zenfone 7 Pro Announced: SND865/865+ & Rotating Camera