Poco X7 Pro Review

Flagship performance on a budget

The Poco X7 Pro is well - positioned as a phone for gamers who ca n’t afford a flagship gadget . There ’s plenty of exponent , good battery and top - grade charging , all pack into an affordable sound with IP68 protection . But the bloated computer software could be a roadblock to some users and the cameras are ok , but nothing more .

Pros

Cons

Key Features

Introduction

When Poco first popped onto the scene in 2018 , it was all about affordability – almost laughably so . Sitting under the Xiaomi umbrella , Poco ’s aim was to invoke to younger user and volunteer something more accessible .

Alongside Redmi – Xiaomi ’s other low-cost brand – the focus on economic value for money remains , with a propensity towards play the needs of younger users .

That pose a focus on gaming , where we find the Poco X7 Pro offering a comprehensive Seth of computer hardware to make indisputable that you ’re in the game and not excluded because you ca n’t give a flagship phone . get down at £ 309 ( 8/256 GB ) , it squares up against the likes of theSamsung Galaxy A35or perhaps theMoto G85price - wise , but what compromises have been made along the mode ?

Poco X7 Pro rear

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Design

Poco is well known for its lustrous design , particularly using yellow to make this sound stand out from the crowd . In the Poco X7 Pro there ’s a two - flavor finish to the rear with options for icteric , fleeceable or disgraceful . I think the yellow is the most fetching , but it ’s still true that most people take bootleg when they buy a phone , because it ’s safe .

That might not be the good choice , however , as the yellow variation is vegan leather , so it looks premium and feel gravid ( you may ascertain out the yellow version here ) , avoiding fingerprints . The opprobrious and gullible have a charge plate back so do n’t feel quite as premium , while the flat charge card form lends a present-day face .

Poco is n’t rocking the gravy boat here , using a flat back and bland video display , twin with those flat edges , with the tv camera tucked safely in the top left - hand recession . It ’s a two - crystalline lens camera , so the lodging is smaller than on thePoco X6 Prowhich had three camera , although as I ’ll excuse below , the passing of that third lens is actually a good thing .

Poco X7 Pro rear

speak of good , there ’s a soft display case bundled in the boxful to keep your earphone protected , as well as machine - levelIP68 protective covering . While this is an expected feature on flagship devices , it ’s the first time that Poco has offered it , intend you have some protection against debris and water system – which is great on a phoneat the cheaper end of the price range .

At 195 g this is n’t a grievous telephone , while the 8.29 mm thickness ( for the plastic versions ) is svelte enough to not pose too much of a problem when using one - handed .

The Poco comes in a typical card box , with a USB - 100 cable television included , but no courser in the box ( depending on the region ) . Poco recommends that you practice a 90W PD charger or its own Xiaomi 120W baron arranger .

Poco X7 Pro rear

Screen

There ’s a 6.67 - in AMOLED display on the Poco X7 Pro . It ’s a savorless showing , which match with the most recent trends and is preferable for gamers as it gives more operational screen door quad , without stimulate to deal with the vagary of touch sensitiveness on curved border . The bezel are narrow enough and there ’s a single poke hole at the top for the front camera .

It ’s a 1.5k display , so it has a resolution of 2712 x 1200 pixels , resulting in 444ppi , which is befittingly sharp . On newspaper , everything about this presentation makes sense – it has a refresh rate up to 120Hz and it boasts a 3200 nits eyeshade brightness , set it above some flagship devices .

Brightness has been a key trend over the past 12 months , not only for defeating reflections and staying visible outdoors , but to deliver strike HDR visuals , both from pullulate content and from HDR exposure from the camera . I fired up Netflix and observe that the Dolby Vision delivery ofRed Noticelooked great on the Poco X7 professional .

Poco X7 Pro side-on

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I find the display to stray on the side of being a small dim – belike a measure to preserve electric battery life – and nudging up the brightness decidedly helps impart out the best it has to offer . With that , it ’s also deserving heading into the display configurations , as I found the “ Original colour Pro ” setting for the video display colour to be a little timid – for me the “ pictorial ” setting purchase the pop I wanted to gloss .

There ’s a factory - fitted screen protector on this phone and like many protectors , it ’s a little soft , so I found it to have attracted a number of marks within a few day of using it . It give protection on top of the Gorilla Glass 7i surface of the presentation , but whether you opt to leave it there or remove it is up to you .

There ’s a speaker grille on the base of the phone , which work with the auricle speaker to give you a stereo system delivery . I ’m not sold on the positioning of these : when playing landscape game like Call of Duty Mobile , it ’s all too easy to choke up these with your hand leading to muffled audio . The sound is sane , with an option in the options to operate Dolby Atmos , which gives a slightly richer performance .

Poco X7 Pro side-on

Cameras

I remark above that Xiaomi had reduced the television camera numeration on its new flagship X machine , removing the 2 - megapixel macro camera that graced the Poco X6 Pro – as we said in that review “ the macro is just too low - Ra to be look at in most situations . ” So I do n’t drop that tv camera and neither will anyone who uses the phone .

alternatively we ’re looking at a union of a 50 - megapixel Sony IMX882 principal tv camera with a blanket f/1.5 aperture . As is distinctive of all phone , pixels are combined from that 50 - megapixel sensor , resulting in 12 - megapixel photos . If you want to shoot at full resolution you’re able to , but as with all phones that offer this , your warehousing wo n’t thank you and you ’re waste your time if you ’re upload these to societal media , so it ’s perhaps not the holy grail of features that some might believe it is .

The master photographic camera is put up by an 8 - megapixel ultra - panoptic , with f/2.2 aperture . It ’s a piffling blue in the closure interest and that ’s where there ’s a via media in Poco ’s offering – it deliver its strengths as play rather than concenter on photography and that ’s what plays out .

Poco X7 Pro side-on

The master camera is pretty dear in normal daylight precondition , taking prissy realistic shots with plenty of item and benefit from the HDR result in normal Photo mode . You ’ll see in the Gallery in HyperOS and in Google Photos , as the HDR data point brighten the image . talk about brightness , Poco makes a big deal out of the f/1.5 aperture , which allows a great deal of light in , but also shortens the deepness of field , meaning that when you ’re close to a subject , less of it is in focus .

For a landscape that does n’t matter , but get faithful to something to get a more detailed shot and you ’ll find that not much is in focus . This is where a macro would help ( assuming it was good caliber ) , but the 2x zoom offered from the main tv camera gives good results and is deserving using to avoid this depth - of - field problem .

The ultra - blanket television camera is average at best . The color temperature is all dissimilar , which you’re able to see in the sample exposure , where the chief camera persona has a blue sky , but in the ultra - wide-eyed it ’s a kind of grey - brown .

Poco X7 Pro screen

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That ’s manifest through the viewfinder , with a icteric chromaticity to the radical - wide . Take a duet of pictures of the same view and it look like you ’re there on totally unlike days . The radical - all-inclusive also introduces disturbance in shadows even at low ISO and in reasonable light .

The front camera seems competent enough , able to piece out edges well for portrait photo , with the ability to adjust the blurring result – “ bokeh ” – and with a range of lulu effects you’re able to dig into , if that ’s your matter .

The low-down - brightness performance is reasonable for the monetary value , if you stick to the master camera . It suffers from lens flare and reflections pretty easily and this can obnubilate images . The use of high ISO level entail that detail can be soften and darker areas really noisy . But it will likely get that snap you wanted so you’re able to portion out it on societal mass medium . Although the primary tv camera will detect low light and impel a longer exposure , the Night mode is a quite a little more in effect .

Poco X7 Pro screen

Poco offer a range of AI blue-pencil tools for its image , get at via the Gallery app . This includes contemplation removal , a one - touch exposure enhancer , eraser , expander ( to recrop the image ) , and the alternative to change the sky . This is very much in the mineral vein of other AI image editor in chief and although I test a few of these out , at the time of composition , those lineament are n’t work – something other Poco owners are reporting .

Performance

There ’s a MediaTek Dimensity 8400 - Ultra powering the Poco X7 professional . This computer hardware sits under the flagship 9000 series chips , but only just – so do n’t think that because you ’re looking at phone that costs a little over £ 300 that it ’s going to be a slouch . This is where Poco really take in its point , with performance being the focussing .

There are two versions of this phone , the 8/256 GB or 12/512 GB , the latter of which was the model I had in for review . Despite the high-pitched RAM and storage modeling cost a niggling more – it lift the price to £ 350 – it ’s still frighteningly good time value for money for the operation it offers . This speech sound is slick and immobile in day-after-day use and , unsurprisingly , it ’s a dandy phone for play .

I spent far too many hours act Call of Duty Mobile on the Poco X7 Pro and found it to be nice and antiphonal . That performance does n’t seem to swing off either and I found that it did n’t heat up excessively when gaming . Some of that will come down to the big liquid cooling system that Poco has in the X7 Pro – it for sure seems efficient – as well as optimisation of the hardware .

Poco X7 Pro screen

The gaming experience is boosted by the gaming feature , permit entree to coarse circumstance with a swipe , without have to will the game . This means you could screen out out things like pestering auto - brightness easily – but be warn that once you ’ve finished gambling , that auto - smartness wo n’t be turned back on , so if you think your phone is excessively bright for the residue of the daylight , you ’re correct – it is .

That upstanding performance is ponder in the benchmarks we run for and from a operation perspective , the Poco X7 professional can hold its own against flagship phone that be double as much .

Unfortunately , the performance of the telephone was spoilt by connectivity problems , often dropping fluid phone connectivity for protracted flow . I factory readjust the phone to sample and fix this trouble , but still found that I ’d lost my connection for up to 20 second , with intermittent access . This might be a fault with my critical review building block , or it could be a wider problem – something deserving checking against other follow-up .

Poco X7 Pro screen

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Software & AI

As Poco is a Xiaomi phone , it ’s no surprise to find that it runs Xiaomi ’s software , here salute as HyperOS 2.0 , and base on Android 15 .

Getting to the update situation first , Poco says you ’ll get three Android version updates and 4 long time of protection updates , which put Poco a farsighted way behind the likes of Google , which offers 7 old age on the Pixel 8a and Samsung , which extend 7 years on its flagship machine , but only 4 OS update and 5 years of protection on its Galaxy A35 . Still , Poco is behind .

HyperOS 2.0 makes some changes to line Android demeanour , presenting rip notification and quick setting when lift down from the top , for example , while also splitting your apps into category in the apps tray , allowing you to hook between different types of apps . This makes the telephone set look really busy , but thankfully , you could turn that off and just have a clean apps tray or else .

Poco X7 Pro screen

Poco – or Xiaomi rather – be intimate its themes and something like changing the wallpaper is more fiddly than it needs to be , as you ’re send out off into a minefield of wallpaper options , interlaced with adverts , as you seek to line up something attractive . Just using your phone images takes many more chink than it should . I only mention this , because it ’s a keen analogy for the software experience as a whole .

It ’s a everlasting workover and rearrangement of Android – if you ’d rather have a cleaner software experience , you ’ll find that in a speech sound like theMoto G85 . You ’ll also have to step around a fair amount of duplicate – a 2nd app computer storage , a second picture gallery , a 2nd and third web browser – while there ’s a wealth of pre - installed applications , including AliExpress , a handful of game , Booking.com , WPS Office and others .

On inauguration you ’ll be prompted to install a full selection of “ recommend ” apps . I found this to also include app - du - jourDeepSeek , which you might require to cerebrate twice about before put in , as it ’s already starting toraise question about privacy .

Poco X7 Pro screen

you may uninstall a lot of this stuff , but you get the point – it ’s a messy experience – and I especially dislike the fact that the photographic camera icon looks like a colorful copy of the Chrome icon .

Add to that pocket-size usability elements – like offering speedy launch for the camera on a double press of volume down rather than the power button – just seems at betting odds with most of the rest of the Android market .

Long press the baron button and Gemini will launch , offering Google ’s on - equipment AI , but there ’s a whole reach of other AI features pack into the phone , which all dribble down from Xiaomi ’s offer . That includes Call Boost , Notes , Recorder , AI subtitle , AI Interpreter and those AI feature offered in the gallery .

Poco X7 Pro cameras

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As with most phone , it ’s AI doing rendering and summary in a identification number of native apps . by nature , Google ’s AI feed into its own apps , so this is Poco towing the AI argument rather than volunteer anything unique .

Battery life

One of the attractive features of some of the more affordable phones available is well barrage fire life than flagship rivals . The Poco X7 Pro find itself with a 6000mAh barrage , which is large by any bill – nigh 20 % more capaciousthan the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra . In a gimmick that ’s potentially drain less world power , that means low demands on the battery and real endurance in day - to - mean solar day usance .

The Poco X7 Pro will well last the daylight . If you do n’t charge it overnight it just matters , because it would last the next day too . One of the benefits of a larger shelling is that it appeal to gamers who might be run intensive games for longer periods , which accentuate the sound more .

But this is supported by 90W charging , which is a real asset . There ’s no charger in the box – Poco recommend a 90W PD charger , or Xiaomi ’s 125W charger for even faster charge speeds . I plugged it into the 90W charger from an oldHuawei MateBook X Pro . It will get lovesome during 90W charging and there are options to manage charge to keep stamp battery health – but if you ’re in a tweak and have almost no time to recharge , then the Poco X7 Pro can recharge in a trice .

Poco X7 Pro cameras

In my tests , I found with that 90W courser that I could get from 0 - 100 % in under an time of day , with a 50 % heraldic bearing take around 23 minutes .

There ’s no radio set charging , no verso charging or anything else , but in reality , I ’d rather take immobile charging than those other feature film .

Should you buy it?

The Poco X7 Pro has mickle of business leader for games , a smashing display a great barrage fire life .

The Poco X7 Pro is heavily modified , dilute with bloat and advert , lacking the white Android experience you ’ll incur elsewhere .

Final Thoughts

The Poco X7 Pro render on its intent of extend play mightiness at a miserable price . It will out - perform more expensive rivals and I found it a great headphone for games , backed by near shelling life sentence and that loyal recharging . Premium touches like IP68 tribute tally to the parcel and is less common on low-priced devices . The camera is o.k. , but it ’s not a highlighting of this phone .

But the software experience could be better . There are a lot of additional apps and service that are summate to this gimmick , with adverts seem when you ’re prove to do something elementary like change the wallpaper . Some of this bloat can be transfer , while many of the changes that step away from a distinctive Android experience can be turned off , but it ’s still more work than it should be .

If it ’s a cleaner experience you want , then wait to Motorola – a phone like theMoto Edge 50 Neooffers a much uninfected experience for around the same price .

Poco X7 Pro cameras

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How we test

We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly . We use industry - standard test to equate features properly and we utilize the phone as our principal gimmick over the review period . We ’ll always tell you what we find and we never , ever , accept money to review a merchandise .