Skilled’s Score
Professionals
- Worth for cash
- Slick efficiency
- Massive 120Hz AMOLED display
- Stable fundamental digital camera
Cons
- Flimsy plastic body
- Extra cameras disappoint
- Numerous pointless apps
Our Verdict
A pocket rocket with a great display, respectable cameras and greater than a day of battery life, the Poco F5 Professional suffers from having a cheap-feeling physique and a barely wonky UI, one thing many will be capable to forgive as soon as they see the value.
Poco is a sub-brand of Xiaomi, and its newest Android flagship cellphone the F5 Professional – to not be confused with the F5 itself, or the X5 from the identical firm – packs some critical specs for a extremely fairly affordable worth.
The Poco F5 Professional comes with a set of specs that had been leading edge only a few quick months in the past. It shares a processor, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, with the Asus ROG Telephone 6, OnePlus 10 Extremely and even the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 – all high-end cellphone.
There’s little in the best way of reducing corners elsewhere with 256- or 512GB storage choices, whereas the 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM within the top-end mannequin is greater than you’ll discover in an incredible many laptops.
All this comes packaged in a fairly skinny black plastic case, which is without doubt one of the cellphone’s drawbacks: it feels low cost and flimsy compared with glass or ceramic fashions, however a great stable case ought to put this sense to mattress.
Design & Construct
- Light-weight for its measurement
- Buttons within the typical locations
- Can really feel flimsy
From the entrance, the F5 Professional is unremarkable, a black slab (white can also be out there) punctured solely by the small gap of the front-facing digital camera, which is excessive sufficient up the display to not get in the best way of internet pages and video content material.
The plastic body and glass sandwich building helps to maintain the cellphone pretty gentle for its measurement at 204g however feels flimsy, so a sturdy case will seemingly be prime of the listing for brand new house owners – a comfortable silicone one comes within the field.
Ian Evenden / Foundry
There’s Gorilla Glass 5 on the entrance, nonetheless, so no qualms in regards to the solidity there, however the again of the cellphone is toughened glass with kevlar detailing down the edges and, dealing with the naked cellphone with out a case, it could actually slide by the hand reasonably simply. It’s additionally shiny and attracts mud and fingermarks.
Every thing else is precisely the place you’d count on it to be, with an oblong digital camera bulge angling up from the highest left of the cellphone’s again, lock and quantity buttons on the best, and a USB-C port on the bottom alongside the SIM tray. There’s no headphone socket, however there are two audio system, one every on the prime and backside of the cellphone.
Display & Audio system
- Good AMOLED show
- Responsive fingerprint reader
- The standard poor audio system
The audio system are small traces of 5 holes minimize into the plastic of the cellphone physique, however there are two they usually’re intelligently positioned, with one at every finish of the cellphone so you’ll be able to at the least get some try at stereo sound when watching movies with the cellphone in panorama mode.
As is commonly the case with cellphone audio system, we’d advocate a pair of the very best wi-fi headphones, or a Bluetooth speaker, as an alternative of really utilizing them, however for speakerphone functions, they’re usually fantastic, the low high quality of the audio in such conditions being nicely inside their capabilities.
Ian Evenden / Foundry
The display is a 6.7in AMOLED panel with a QHD+ decision of 3200 x 1440 for a pixel density of 526ppi – virtually precisely the identical as that on the OnePlus 11. It will possibly address HDR within the Dolby Imaginative and prescient and HDR 10+ flavours, with a peak HDR brightness of 1400 nits, although it extra usually sits at 500 nits.
The max refresh charge of 120Hz means the animations and transitions of Android are fully easy, one thing that provides to the sensation of responsiveness you get from the cellphone.
It’s a great display to take a look at, and has rounded corners with a bigger radius than I’ve seen on different telephones, which contributes to a pleasant look. You will see brighter fashions on the flagship telephones of different producers, however it’s acquired sufficient brightness output for a typical spring day in Britain, and use in brilliant daylight shouldn’t be an excessive amount of of an issue.
The fingerprint reader buried underneath the display can also be fast to react, recognising my thumb immediately and with out having to resort to a number of tries.
Specs & Efficiency
- Highly effective chipset
- Loads of RAM and storage
- Good for gaming
With a sizzling chipset just like the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 inside, and loads of RAM to again it up, you’d count on affordable efficiency out of the Poco F5 Professional, and that’s precisely what you get.
Ian Evenden / Foundry
The Geekbench multi-core benchmark sees it degree with Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 telephones such because the Xiaomi 12S Professional and Extremely and outpaces equally priced telephones. Sadly, the GFXBench exams wouldn’t work on the cellphone.
Solely the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 telephones, such because the Samsung Galaxy S23 household, and (rarer) MediaTek Dimensity 9200 fashions provide better efficiency on Android.
This naturally carries over to on a regular basis dealing with, as apps and video games spring open and, simply as importantly, disappear rapidly. Picture enhancing, equivalent to Google Images’ modifications to the sky in a picture, are virtually instantaneous, whereas 3D graphics in XCOM: Enemy Inside are easy.
Poco is advertising the F5 Professional as a cellphone to play video games on, and with its widespread 6.7in display measurement, it’ll slot in many recreation controllers. There’s additionally a recreation mode that auto-detects video games and boosts the cellphone’s velocity if you’re enjoying one.
Cameras
- Good fundamental digital camera
- Others much less spectacular
- Digicam app filled with options
With a big 64Mp unit with picture stabilisation as its fundamental digital camera, you’d count on wonderful outcomes from the Poco F5 Professional.
What you get, nonetheless, is a combined bag. That fundamental wide-angle digital camera – which relies on the Omnivision OV64B 1/2in sensor, has an f/1.8 aperture and bins its photos all the way down to 16.1Mp recordsdata – is okay however does its greatest work in good lighting situations like another cellphone digital camera, with low light-shots receiving numerous seen processing. There’s a 2x digital zoom and the power to shoot 8K video at 24fps if that’s your factor.
Ian Evenden / Foundry
The ultrawide digital camera is one other matter. It’s an 8Mp f/2.2 mannequin with a extremely huge 120° discipline of view however wants good gentle to supply a viable picture and tends to smear particulars. The 2Mp macro digital camera is a little bit of a head-scratcher too – it’s good to have and is ready to focus shut sufficient to indicate you all of the crumbs littering your laptop keyboard, however the fairly low decision photos it produces aren’t a lot good for something apart from displaying on the cellphone’s display.
You should use it like a magnifying glass to examine beetles and uncommon cash it’s possible you’ll come throughout in the middle of your adventures, however that’s about its solely use.
On the entrance is a 16Mp digital camera that’s good for video calls and selfies. It doesn’t do any pixel binning, so that you get a bigger file from the entrance than the ultrawide on the rear.
It may be used for video too, together with the twin video mode that layers one shot over one other for actual time response pictures and vlogging. All the usual Android video modes are current, equivalent to time lapse and slow-mo, plus portrait and night time modes for nonetheless photos, and a Professional mode that provides you management over the digital camera settings.
There’s additionally an AI toggle on the prime of the digital camera app that lets it intelligently change between PASM modes relying on the scene you’re photographing.
Battery Life & Charging
- Quick 67W charging with included charger
- 30W wi-fi
- All-day battery and past
With a 5160mAh battery on board – bigger than that within the Pixel 7 Professional or Galaxy S23 Extremely – you’ll get respectable battery life out of the Poco F5 Professional, and given the slender profile of the cellphone it’s a outstanding factor that Poco has managed to engineer area for all that energy storage.
Ian Evenden / Foundry
It will possibly simply go all day, with the period of time you spend earlier than charging it the following relying in your utilization. There’s an extremely battery saver mode to actually eke out the utilization to a few days or extra, however it lowers efficiency and restricts 5G connectivity.
Charging comes through a 67W wired charger which is included within the field and there’s additionally 30W wi-fi charging too – a uncommon discover on a mid-range cellphone.
Full-speed wired charging is extraordinarily quick, with a 15-minute cost providing you with 35% cost from zero and hits 50% after 30-minutes. The battery life benchmark in PCMark took a complete of 12 hours and 32 minutes, which is a stable effort.
Software program & Apps
- Responsive Android 13
- MIUI has some issues
- Numerous pointless apps
Android 13 is a good cell working system, however the skins cellphone producers wish to put excessive of it could actually range in high quality. Poco makes use of Xiaomi’s MIUI as you’d count on, and in contrast with the OS it’s layered over it could actually really feel like a downgrade.
Firstly, by default it swaps the positions of the again and app-switcher buttons both facet of the house button on the backside of the display, that means it’ll take a short while to your muscle reminiscence to adapt and cease swapping apps if you wish to go to the earlier internet web page.
It’s a UI that may be customised very simply with themes through a devoted app. These themes range from reasonably stunning wildlife and nature images to graphic patterns, cityscapes, animated flowers and butterflies, and even smiling shiba inus, however a few of them have completely dire icons and the change stopping a theme from altering dwelling web page icons didn’t seem to work for me.
Ian Evenden / Foundry
A whole lot of time may should be spent customising the interface to your liking. One factor that’s additionally price noting is that the corporate guarantees solely two OS updates and three years of updates. Examine this with the three years of OS patches, and 5 years of safety fixes, for the newly introduced Google Pixel 7a and much more for the Samsung Galaxy A54, and it doesn’t look so good.
Alongside all this come the pre-installed apps you’ll most likely by no means use and are simply taking on area: video games like Bubble Shooter, Jewels Blast and Mud Settle 3D, filled with adverts and IAPs. There’s the ever present Reserving.com app, plus Qeeq automotive rental and Asia-Pacific on-line journey agent Agoda.
Poco has its personal app retailer, plus a Group and Video app – a half-hour spent Googling the names then uninstalling slims down the default app drawer properly however is an undesirable chore.
Value & Availability
You should buy the Poco F5 Professional in its 12/256GB guise for £559, which is absurdly low cost – tons of of kilos lower than the OnePlus 11 Professional and Pixel 7 Professional.
That is the model most generally out there on-line and is out there from the official Mi retailer. Alternatively, you’ll be able to import different fashions from AliExpress together with the 512GB storage choice.
Availability could turn into an issue, nonetheless, because it’s not presently out there from a variety of retailers. Even the Poco X5 Professional is a extra frequent sight on the pages of on-line retailers than its F5 cousin however that may change over time together with Amazon.
See extra choices in our greatest mid-range telephones chart.
Verdict
There’s one factor that can instantly entice potential cellphone purchasers to the Poco F5 Professional – its worth. For the sort of cash, it’s an incredible cut price.
The specs are in-line with 2022 flagship fashions, and greater than succesful for the on a regular basis makes use of we put our pocket supercomputers to. That you just get lengthy battery life, a pleasant fundamental digital camera, and really quick charging tops off an incredible deal.
There are, in fact, some caveats. I’m not too troubled by the plastic body as more often than not this cellphone goes to stay in a case, however the UI’s points and quick replace life (a cellphone like this will simply stay helpful past the three years of safety patches which are being supplied) imply the attractive {hardware} is let down by its software program.
Specs
- Android 13 with MIUI 14
- 6.67in WQHD+ AMOLED show with fingerprint reader
- 120Hz max refresh charge
- Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 octa-core SOC
- 8/12GB RAM
- 256/512GB storage
- 64Mp fundamental digital camera with OIS
- 8Mp ultrawide digital camera
- 2Mp macro digital camera
- 16Mp entrance digital camera
- 5160mAh battery
- USB-C port
- 67W charging
- 30W wi-fi charging
- Twin-SIM
- Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, IR blaster
- IP53 splash-proof
- 163mm x 75mm x 9mm
- 204g