Sunday, November 14, 2021

POCO M4 Pro 5G Review

The POCO M4 Pro 5G sports a 6.6-inch 90Hz display, MediaTek Dimensity 810 chipset, 50MP camera, a 5,000mAh battery, and a starting price of PHP 11,990. Given the specs and price, it aims to be an affordable and solid daily driver. Can it deliver? Find out in our review.

Design and Construction

As we’ve mentioned in our hands-on, the POCO M4 Pro is slightly identical to the Redmi Note 11, which isn’t surprising since the POCO M3 Pro was also based on the Redmi Note 10 design.

The body is made out of polycarbonate with a matte finish, which feels nice. However, we still recommend using the jelly case included in the box as it still attracts dust and smudges. The device has a decent thickness and the sides are curved which makes it comfortable to grip.

At the back, there is a huge POCO branding next to the cameras. From afar, it looks like it has a quad-camera setup due to the circles, but half of them are just for aesthetics as it only has two rear cameras.

The POCO M4 Pro 5G comes in three colors – POCO Yellow, Cool Blue, and Power Black. What we have is the latter.

Flipping to its front, it has a large screen with thin bezels, a slightly thicker chin, and a hole-punch at the middle top for the 16MP selfie camera. Just above it, in the bezel, is the earpiece.

For buttons and ports, on the right side are the power/lock button that also doubles as a fingerprint scanner, and the volume keys. The buttons are firm and clicky. Despite it being a tall device, the buttons are easy to reach as they’re placed near the center of the frame.

Meanwhile, on the left side is a hybrid card slot for either 2 nano-SIM cards or 1 nano-SIM plus a microSD card.

On top, we get a loudspeaker, an IR blaster, and a secondary microphone.

And at the bottom, you can find its down-firing loudspeakers, USB Type-C port, 3.5mm headphone jack, and main microphone.

Overall, the phone feels nice and solid in the hands and it is light enough for you to carry around.

Display and Multimedia

The M4 Pro 5G features a large 6.6-inch IPS Dot Display with a 2400 x 1080 resolution or equal to 399ppi, 90Hz refresh rate, and 450 nits typical brightness. The panel also has a touch sampling rate of up to 240Hz and can switch its refresh rate between 50Hz, 60Hz, and 90Hz. For protection, it has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with a screen protector pre-installed.

The screen is sharp, bright, and has accurate colors, which is good enough for watching videos on YouTube or Netflix or playing games. However, at a maximum brightness of 450 nits, it’s a bit lacking when used outdoors when the sun is high up.

The phone has a single downward-firing speaker but works in tandem with the earpiece for a stereo effect. The output is not equal as the bottom speaker does most of the heavy lifting. Getting past the imbalance of sound between the speakers, the phone can still produce a good enough sound for most cases. For those who want more, the headphone jack is always there at your disposal.

Camera

Going back to the dual-rear cameras, it is composed of a 50MP AI main and an 8MP ultra-wide. For selfies, there’s a 16MP front camera.

Camera performance does not disappoint. Shooting in well-lit conditions, the phone managed to snap sharp photos. Even with the ultrawide, details are present and the dynamic range is good. However, with HDR turned on, the colors are a little muted and flat, which calls for a bit of post-processing, mostly in the saturation and contrast parts.

Portrait shots, on the other hand, are also nicely done. As for Night mode, shots taken look decent. However, details are a bit muddy and noise is still present, it’s still usable for social media postings.

For selfies, shots taken in bright conditions have decent sharpness and natural colors. Portrait effects also work great here. There’s also a beauty mode that you can tweak on if you want to enhance your selfies.

When it comes to video recording, it can shoot up to 1080p at 60fps. Quality is okay, details are present, however, colors are a bit off and there’s no video stabilization here so expect it to be shaky. Better use a tripod or avoid taking videos with your free hand.

OS and Apps

For software, it runs on Android 11, skinned with MIUI 12.5.1. There are plenty of extra features, especially for customizing the POCO Launcher. Pre-installed apps are also present, like Amazon, Facebook, TikTok, WPS Office, iQIYI, LinkedIn, 92, and Booking.com, but these can be easily uninstalled.

It offers an app drawer, but unlike on the Redmi phones, you cannot disable it on the POCO M4 Pro 5G. It automatically organizes your apps into categories. It has dark mode also and you can opt to choose what dark mode style you want.

The POCO M4 Pro 5G is available in either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage. The unit we have has the latter, and out of the 128GB, we get a usable 108GB out of the box. You can expand it through the hybrid card slot if you still need more space.

Biometric security options available here are the side-mounted fingerprint scanner and face unlock. Both are reliable enough, but of course, expect the fingerprint scanner to work faster.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering this device is a MediaTek Dimensity 810 paired with a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, 4GB or 6GB of RAM, and 64GB or 128GB of storage. Performance-wise is good. There are no lags or choking when launching apps and multitasking. There are some stutters when gaming for long periods and a bit of warming at the back, but performance is relatively ok for demanding games like Genshin Impact in its highest graphics settings at 60 FPS, and Asphalt at its default setting.

For numbers, check out the benchmark scores that we got:

• AnTuTu v9.1.7 Storage Test – 35,306 (982.0 MB/s Seq. Read, 454.1 MB/s Seq. Write)
• Geekbench 5 – 597 (Single-Core), 1,799 (Multi-Core), 1,591(OpenCL)
• PCMark – 8,878 (Work 3.0)
• 3D Mark – 2,652 (OpenGL 3.1), 2,410 (Vulkan), 362 (WildLife Extreme)
• AndroBench – 958.48 MB/s Seq. Read, 493.94 MB/s Seq. Write

Note: For some reason, we’re getting errors running AnTuTu v9 so our own results are not yet available. In the meantime, Kimovil’s AnTuTu v9 benchmark got a score of 355K.

Connectivity and Battery Life

When it comes to connectivity, it features Dual-SIM with 5G, fast WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, GPS, and IR Blaster. The battery is also large at 5,000mAh w/ 33W fast charging.

PC Mark’s Work 3.0 battery benchmark rated it at 16 hours and 48 minutes, while our video loop test which involves playing a 1080p video on loop at 50% brightness and volume in Airplane mode with headset plugged in and refresh rate set to 60Hz, and we got 17 hours and 46 minutes of playback. Both of these are good results and definitely can provide you with a whole day of use even with heavy gaming.

Conclusion

The POCO M4 Pro 5G is priced at PHP 11,990 for the 4GB + 64GB variant, and PHP 12,990 for the 6GB + 128GB model. It has some features that flagship phones have, like a display with a higher-than-average refresh rate, high-res main camera, 5G connectivity, and a battery that will last you an entire day. So, if you’re on a budget for a solid daily driver, the POCO M4 Pro 5G is worthy of consideration

POCO M4 Pro 5G specs:
6.6-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080) Dot Display
90Hz refresh rate w/ DynamicSwitch
MediaTek Dimensity 810
ARM Mali-G57 MC2 GPU
6GB LPDDR4X RAM
128GB UFS 2.2 storage
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Dual rear cameras:
50MP F1.8 (main)
8MP F2.2 (ultrawide)
16MP front camera
5G, 4G LTE
Dual-SIM
WiFi
Bluetooth 5.1
GPS, A-GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou
NFC
IR blaster
Fingerprint scanner (side)
Face unlock
3.5mm headphone jack
USB Type-C
MIUI 12.5.1 (Android 11)
5,000mAh battery w/ 33W fast charging
163.56mm x 75.78mm x 8.75mm
195g
POCO Yellow, Power Black, Cool Blue