Poco X6 Pro Review: Total Bang for the Buck

Poco has been making good phones for a while, especially in the budget and mid-range segment. The Poco X6 Pro is one such phone, and it’s definitely going to rough some feathers in the mid-range segment. It reminds me of the Poco F1, which was an excellent first phone from the Xiaomi sub-brand. With the X6 Pro, you get features that are usually found on phones costing a lot more. There’s a lot to like with this phone, but there are a couple of things to dislike. I’ve been using the Poco X6 Pro for over a week now, and here’s what I think of it.

Poco X6 Pro 5G price in India

The Poco X6 Pro is available in India in two variants. The base model is priced at Rs. 26,999 and has 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. Our review unit is the higher-end variant with 12GB RAM and 512GB of internal storage. This model is priced at Rs. 28,999.

Poco’s new phone is available in three colour options – Poco Yellow, Racing Grey, and Spectre Black. The Poco Yellow variant has a vegan leather finish back panel, whereas the other two colours have a glossy plastic panel. I’ve been testing the Racing Grey option, and I must say that it is a beautiful colour.

In the box, the Poco X6 Pro comes with a silicone case, a SIM ejector tool, some paperwork, a USB Type-A to Type-C cable, and a 67W fast charger. The phone also comes pre-applied with a screen protector.

Poco X6 Pro Review: Design

Poco X6 Pro starts at Rs. 26,999, but looks like it’s worth more. Although there’s no glass back or metal frame, I was fooled when I first laid my hands on the phone. The glossy plastic back panel feels and looks like glass. The same is the case with the flat plastic frame, which feels like it’s made from aluminium. It also feels good in hand and is comfortable to hold thanks to the curved back and rounded edges.

The phone has a nice weight to it, and everything is finished well. It also has the now familiar sizeable rectangular camera module that covers the entire top part of the rear panel. You get four separate rings that house three cameras and an LED flash. It also features the Poco branding.

On the front, things once again look premium. The display has thin bezels all around with a chin that’s only a little thicker than the rest. At first glance, I thought all the bezels were uniform. The Poco X6 Pro has a hole-punch cutout at the top and a slit right above it for the earpiece. The volume and power buttons are on the left frame.

The Poco X6 Pro gets an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance, which means that the phone should be okay to use in rain. However, don’t submerge this phone underwater. This is an excellent feature to have at this price, but the recently launched Redmi Note 13 offers the same for a lesser price.

Poco X6 Pro Review: Specifications and software

Alright, let’s take a look at the specifications of the Poco X6 Pro. The phone is equipped with a 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra SoC. Our review unit has 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage. There is no extra microSD card slot. Therefore, you cannot expand the storage. A virtual RAM boost feature is available, though, and it can add 6GB of additional RAM if and when required.

The SIM tray at the bottom supports dual SIM cards with dual 5G standby. The phone also gets a USB Type-C 2.0 port at the bottom alongside the microphone and a speaker. There’s another speaker on the top rail, a microphone, and an IR blaster. The Poco X6 Pro features Bluetooth 5.4, dual-band Wi-Fi 6, NFC, and most GPS connectivity options.

Poco has included an optical in-display fingerprint scanner on the phone that’s placed towards the bottom of the display. Although I didn’t really like the placement of the sensor much, I must say that it did work quite well when I was using it. The sensor is fast and worked every time I used it.

The phone has a 5,000mAh battery that, in my time with the phone, performed very well. I could easily get over a day of battery life with some gaming, photography, watching YouTube, and using the phone for day-to-day chores. The battery is also relatively quick to fill. Thanks to the included 67W fast charger, the Poco X6 Pro went from dead to 100 percent in 58 minutes. However, I could charge the phone from 6 percent to 100 percent in just 47 minutes. That’s very close to the advertised 0 to 100 percent charging time of 45 minutes, which is impressive.

Now, coming to the software, the Poco X6 Pro is one of the first phones in India to launch with Xiaomi’s new HyperOS user interface. The phone gets Android 14-based HyperOS out-of-the-box that brings a better UI with a new control centre, a customisable lock screen, AI object detection, hidden apps, new fingerprint animations, a new system font called MiSans, a slightly better multi-window interface, large folders, and a Game Turbo mode. Poco has promised three years of OS updates and four years of security updates.

Although the software is pretty good, many pre-installed apps are still on the phone. Now, you can delete most of the apps, including games, but there are a couple that you cannot get rid of. This is probably the only downside of the new HyperOS on the Poco X6 Pro.

Poco X6 Pro Review: Performance

The Poco X6 Pro is a beast in its category. Even the more expensive Oppo Reno 11 Pro (Review) and the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ don’t get close to this phone in terms of performance. The 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra performs very well. In AnTuTu, with performance mode enabled, the phone achieved an overall score of 14,37,717. In Geekbench 6 the phone got a single core score of 1420 and a multi-core score of 4404 with the performance mode enabled. However, even with the mode disabled, the phone still hit 1.39 million on AnTuTu. The Geekbench scores were also very close to the scores achieved in performance mode.

This is an excellent phone for gaming, period. It also has a WildBoost Optimisation 2.0 feature that further improves the gaming experience. A 5,000mm square liquid vapour chamber also keeps the phone from getting too hot. I could play BGMI in the highest settings in HDR mode without any lag.

Poco has also included an excellent display on the phone. It gets a 2160Hz touch sampling rate, which is excellent when gaming, and a 120Hz refresh rate. The 6.67-inch AMOLED display offers 1.5K resolution with HDR 10+ and Dolby Vision support. The panel provides 500 nits typical, 1,200 nits HBM, and 1,800 nits of peak brightness. The display gets quite bright indoors and is legible even under direct sunlight. It gets 68 billion colours and supports the DCI – P3 wide colour gamut. The Poco X6 Pro offers three preset colour modes (Original Colour Pro, Vivid, and Saturated) and an Advanced mode where you can play around with the RGB colours individually. The viewing angles on the phone are really good.

The phone features dual stereo speakers that are quite good in terms of audio quality and can get very loud. There is not a lot of bass, but there’s also no distortion at high volume.

In my time with the Poco X6 Pro, I did not face any software lag or stuttering. The heat when playing intensive games is very manageable. The phone hardly got super hot to touch, even when using the camera app extensively. For general daily use and some extreme gaming, the Poco X6 Pro is a great phone to get.

Poco X6 Pro Review: Cameras

The cameras on the Poco X6 Pro aren’t its strength. The phone gets a 64-megapixel OmniVision OV64B rear primary camera with OIS. The secondary rear camera is an 8-megapixel OmniVision OV08D ultrawide unit that can take photos at 0.6x and has a fixed-focus lens. Finally, there’s a third 2-megapixel Macro sensor.

Photos from the primary camera are good, with lots of details and some saturation. The camera performs pretty well in daylight but can struggle in low light, especially when it gets dark. It can shoot 4K videos at up to 30 fps and 1080p resolution at up to 60 fps. There’s an HDR mode available in both photo and video, but the results are mixed. The stabilisation isn’t excellent, and there is some noise, even in videos shot in bright sunlight. A 2x in-sensor zoom option is available, which also works well in good daylight. And shoots good photos in daylight. When it comes to low light, the ultrawide performs decently. The details are lost, and there’s lens distortion around the edges. 

Poco X6 Pro takes good photos in daylight and in Night mode

 

The Macro mode is hidden away in the drop-down menu, and for good reason. It does take some decent close-up shots, but it’s nothing to be proud of. The Portrait mode is also nothing great, and I noticed a lot of issues with detecting the edges of an object. You can control the depth on the camera app even after taking a portrait photo. 

Top: Macro mode | Bottom: Portrait shot

 

There’s a 16-megapixel OmniVision OV16A sensor for selfies and video calling, which takes decent photos. The phone offers a portrait selfie mode, night mode, and AI beauty features. The front camera can shoot videos at 1080p up to 30 fps. 

The camera interface is easy to use, with all controls available on the Main screen. There’s a 64-megapixel mode that takes photos in full resolution with plenty of details. Slow motion video recording is also available with up to 120 fps support at 1080p resolution. A Night mode is available and does a decent job of capturing more light, but the results aren’t that much better than without Night mode. Overall, the Poco X6 Pro can take well-detailed but slightly saturated photos in daylight and do a good job even when things get dark. 

Poco X6 Pro Review: Verdict

After using the Poco X6 Pro for over a week, I would recommend the phone to anyone looking for a midrange beast. If you’re looking for a powerful smartphone under Rs. 30,000 that can play all your favourite games, has a great display, offers good battery life, and has a decent set of cameras, then the Poco X6 Pro is an excellent choice. HyperOS is also good; if you can ignore the bloatware, you’ve got a total bang for the buck. Apart from the camera performance and the IP rating, I’d recommend this over the Oppo Reno 11 Pro and the Redmi Note 13 Pro+.