Poco X4 Pro 5G review: you choose for screen and autonomy

The Poco brand, an offshoot of Xiaomi and a brand that has grown a lot in recent years thanks to products with an interesting quality / price ratio, returns to the protagonist of one of our reviews. Today is the turn of Little X4 Pro 5Gthe latest smartphone presented by the Asian company and which seeks to improve some points that we have often criticized when we talked about products like F3 or X3 Pro.

One of the not particularly positive features that many readers have always emphasized on little smartphones, concerns the build quality, the design and the Poco writings that have often been inserted in a very conspicuous way.

Poco X4 Pro 5G manages to find the taste balance and although it is difficult to call it beautiful, it is equally true that, considering the price range below 300 €, it is a smartphone that looks good. The design is nice, understated with boxy lines and has a really nice build. Plastic with aluminum effect on the edges, rear glass, excellent assembly and a front display with symmetrical bezels except for the lower chin which is slightly thicker.

A smartphone, however, pleasant to hold and that gives a feeling of strength and care in the assembly. A significant improvement over last year’s model it replaces. The choice of inserting the Poco logo on the rear plate of the cameras was also good: although it is always quite conspicuous, it is certainly less evident than in the past and does not clash with the overall design of the smartphone.

To have an excellent quality / price ratio, Poco has often saved money on displays and in the past we have criticized a lot the panels used on smartphones released in 2021. Poco X4 Pro 5G not only has a 6.7-inch Super Amoled display, but the panel is truly of excellent quality and superior even to much higher-end smartphones.

First of all, it is one of the few smartphones under € 300 to have a very good oleophobic treatment and that allows you to minimize fingerprints during a classic day of use. Secondly, the brightness of the display is very high and stands at 700nits but with a peak that reaches almost 1200nits in direct sunlight.

In other words, on the outside it reads really well, it has very few reflections and a quality that you would not expect for this price and especially for the Poco brand. The anti-reflective treatment is also very good, which combined with the Amoled panel allows for excellent reproduction of multimedia content and very good readability in all light conditions.

Finally let’s talk about a panel that can be set at fixed 120Hz and, with the autonomy it has, it is certainly not a problem to use this setting as the default one.

Another aspect that convinced me was autonomy. Although the MIUI 13 is a software customization that tends to close many applications in the background, consequently decreasing consumption, Poco X4 Pro allows you to do two full days of use without particular difficulties, reaching over 8 hours of screen on.

I 5000mAh they make themselves felt but even when setting the “high performance” mode I did not notice any abnormal consumption and any type of overheating. Charging is then ultra fast thanks to the 67W charger pack.

The audio part is also very good which uses the lower case and the ear capsule (with holes at the top to improve the sound performance) to have a sound stereo. The volume is loud in all conditions and movies, games or music are heard very well although there is no noticeable bass boost. There is also the Audio Jack.

The audio on call is also good, although I would have preferred a higher volume at the maximum level. It is not low in an absolute sense but it does not break eardrums. On the other hand, reception that can boast compatibility with the network is good 5G, dual sim and MicroSD expansion is not lacking as long as you give up a physical SIM.

Important note, the proximity sensor is always virtual but Little / Xiaomi has evidently improved the algorithm with which the system turns off the screen by bringing the smartphone to the ear during a call and I must say it has never given me problems. In short, nothing to do with some Xiaomi models that we have repeatedly criticized in the past.

The GPS did not give me problems and even when used on the move it always locked the signal and updated the indications in real time in a precise way. In these situations, the brightness sensor also worked well, which did not prove to be lazy or incorrectly calibrated.

Final note: call recording is present but it alerts via a pre-recorded message as soon as we activate it.

If up to now I have spoken highly of the smartphone, it is the software experience that has not fully convinced me. Little X4 Pro defined it a monotasking smartphone. Although the RAM is plentiful (6GB), the MIUI 13 closes applications too easily and the Snapdragon 695 processor fails to give that boost that one would expect from a $ 300 smartphone.

It is not a question of missing optimization, it is a hardware / software bottleneck that makes everyday use not particularly exciting. Small or large lags, general slowdowns, not exceptional fluidity and in general a certain difficulty in managing multiple applications at the same time.

A pity since MIUI 13 still has many interesting options for managing apps in the window, floating bars and split-screen multitasking. As long as you work with two apps, the problem is limited but when, perhaps with the browser active, open Telegram, then Chrome and then return to the home, lag and lack of fluidity will be evident.

In general, however, there is a lot of bloatware, that is an exaggeratedly high number of applications and programs that makes the first phase of configuration and the two days of subsequent use, a continuous giving consent, removing popups or even managing settings that are too complex.

Then there continues to be advertising active by default which appears at every software installation, even from the Play store, due to the internal control of the packages and also present in some resource management / cleaning programs. It can be deactivated from the settings but you understand that a smartphone of this type is not suitable for a basic user: there are too many changes, choices and options that must be managed in the initial stages and in the first hours of use.

If the software experience doesn’t shine, the photographic part doesn’t excel as well. The 108MP number attempts to lure the less attentive user and the large rear tile deceives by suggesting above-the-norm photographic performance.

However, as we now know, i 108MP of these mid-range smartphones are certainly not sensors comparable to those of the top of the range. On the one hand, the software makes the difference and image management algorithms are now essential for the final result of a photo. On the other hand, the processor ISP has a fundamental role in the performance and that of the Snapdragon 695 is certainly not the same as the Snapdragon Gen.1.

During the day the photos are good, the pixel binning technique is used and the 12MP photos are still pleasant, easy to share with satisfaction and socializable. However, if we go to see the shot in detail, both at 12MP and 108MP we notice little detail, an uneven paste and a general yield that is only sufficient.

At night the situation obviously worsens but it is also special to see how, depending on the sensor you will use, the photos are fundamentally different. Although AI and HDR are present, the scene will have very different contrasts, color range and highlight management if you shoot with the Wide, the normal, at 108MP (dedicated mode) with AI or without AI – this in all conditions, both day and night.

There are two other aspects that have not convinced me: the slowness of processing the photos after shooting and the videos. If you shoot with blur effect or with 2X optical zoom (especially in this case), the rendering of the photo can take a long time to be done preventing you from both erasing the image and seeing it in its final form for many seconds. The processor, I repeat, does not work miracles.

Add to this the 1080p 30fps limit for video which is absolutely way below standard and inexplicably so limited: a 60fps would have been the minimum.

Considering the price, € 269 in promotion launch for a week in 6 / 128GB version, Poco X4 Pro 5G is a smartphone that is difficult to recommend to everyone. Basically if you are looking for uno smartphone with excellent display, good audio and lots of autonomy, probably better under € 300 you will not find. On the other hand general performance, MIUI 13 and camera are aspects that have not convinced me completely and even taking into account the price range, it is difficult to recommend Poco X4 Pro 5G beyond the three aspects reported.