Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro review

Introduction

Almost two years after the release of the original Pocophone, the long-awaited successor named Poco F2 Pro is finally here. Last year, we called the Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro the spiritual successor of the Pocophone and it kind of filled that gap in the segment so we weren't wrong. Especially seeing how the new Poco F2 Pro is mostly a re-branded Redmi K30 Pro (the previous version of the phone K20 Pro was also known as the Mi 9T Pro in some markets). Complicated, right?

But enough about semantics. The real question is, does the Poco F2 Pro live up to the hype as its successor once did. Surely, there was some corner-cutting to allow the original Pocophone to be so competitively priced while this time around, the specs sheet of the F2 Pro doesn't really give us that notion.

Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro specs

• Body: 163.3 x 75.4 x 8.9 mm, 219g; Gorilla Glass 5 front and back, aluminum frame.
• Screen: 6.67" Super AMOLED, 1080 x 2400px resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 395ppi; HDR10+ support.
• Chipset: Snapdragon 865 (7nm+): Octa-core (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 585 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 585 & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 585); Adreno 650 GPU.
• Memory: 6GB(LPDDR4X)/8GB(LPDDR5) RAM, 128GB/256GB built-in UFS 3.1 storage.
• OS/Software: Android 10, MIUI 11.
• Rear camera: Main: 64MP, 1/1.72" sensor, 0.8µm pixel size, 26mm equiv., f/1.9 aperture, PDAF. Ultra wide-angle: 13MP, f/2.4, 123Ëš FoV, fixed focus; Telephoto macro: 5MP, f/2.2, 50mm equiv. AF; 2MP depth sensor.
• Front camera: 20MP, f/2.2, 1/3.4", 0.8µm.
• Video recording: Rear camera: 8K 4320p@30fps, 4K 2160p@30/60fps, Full HD 1080p@30/60/120/240/960fps, 720p@480fps. Front camera: Full HD 1080p@30.
• Battery: 4,700 mAh, 33W Power Delivery 3.0, supports QC 4.0+ (comes with the charger).
• Misc: NFC; optical under-display fingerprint reader; motorized selfie camera;

With a significantly higher price, the Poco F2 Pro has yet to prove its salt. It follows the same formula of arriving with the latest and greatest from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 865 in this case, but the F2 Pro also adds a couple of welcomed improvements in key areas. The screen is now bigger, notch-less, and employs a crisp OLED panel. Additionally, the camera setup covers almost all of the focal lengths you'd want from a modern smartphone and the battery along with the charging have received some love this time around too.

And before we start pointing fingers, we would like to remind you that the prices of current flagships have risen in the past two years a lot. This gives the "flagship killer" segment some headroom to increase its pricing as well. That way, affordable flagships can offer true flagship experience, at least spec-wise, with a minimal price increase.

There's also the 5G part. All Snapdragon 865-powered phones this year are more expensive, which probably has something to do with Qualcomm's way of building and licensing all the parts and antennas for the 5G. That doesn't take away the bang for the buck factor of the Poco F2 Pro as the phone is still much cheaper than the popular top-shelf smartphones and offers plenty of performance per dollar. But its pricing means its purchase is no longer a 'no-brainer' in stark contrast to the original Poco F1.

Let's dive deeper to see what else the much-anticipated Poco F2 Pro has to offer.

Unboxing the Poco F2 Pro

The phone came in its original box containing the usual user manuals along with the compatible 30W wall charger and the USB-C to USB-A cable for charging and data transfer. There was also a transparent silicone case with slightly textured back for extra grip and a big cutout at the top for the 3.5mm jack and the pop-up camera.

Special thanks to GearBest for providing the review unit.

Design and build quality

Despite its considerably lower price than the true flagship competition, the Poco F2 Pro boasts high-quality, premium build. We've got a Gorilla Glass 5 sheet on the front, and the same goes for the back. The latter, however, has that frosted matte finish that's super nice to touch and gives the notion of a metallic back, especially when it's painted in that distinct Cyber Gray color. The downside is that the surface attracts fingerprints easily, and they are also easy to spot. More importantly, it makes the phone quite slippery.

And the unusually hefty chassis doesn't help either. It's about 8.9mm thick and weighs 219g. For comparison, the OnePlus 7T Pro and the Galaxy Note10+ (both with similar displays) are lighter, with the former even having a pop-up camera mechanism. We suspect that the big 4,700 mAh battery and the pop-up selfie camera add to the overall weight quite a lot.

We appreciate the rather unusual back design. The four cameras fit inside a circular module, which is also surrounded by what feels like a ridge giving that distinct look. The module doesn't stick out as much and since it's centered, the phone doesn't wobble too. Looking at the camera alignment, we think that Xiaomi decided to put that extra 2MP depth sensor just for the sake of symmetry.

The frame that sticks the two glass sheets on the front and back is made of aluminum and has a glossy finish. It connects seamlessly with the glass panels without forming any big, unpleasant ridges. The bottom houses the USB-C connector, the grille for one of the speakers, and the SIM card tray. The left side is clean while the right accommodates the power button along with the volume rocker. We like the accented power button a lot. When combined with this color, it adds to the overall industrial appeal. And as for the top, it has the pop-up selfie camera and the 3.5mm audio jack. Yep, you read that right, the Poco F2 Pro retains the audio jack.

Speaking of the pop-up camera, the mechanism feels smooth and secure, and more importantly - it feels fast. It's also rather small in comparison to other implementations, but that didn't stop Xioami from putting LEDs on each side of the camera lens. And you can customize those LEDs with different colors.

Like it or not, the periscope-like selfie camera allows for an immersive full-screen design on the front. All of the bezels are really thin, while the bottom one is a bit thicker. It doesn't ruin the symmetry, though, and we can say it's one of the thinnest ones around. It's a struggle for OEMs to bring down the thickness of the bottom lip.

To sum things up - the F2 Pro impresses with the impeccable build and a design that stands out. Surely, it's an unwieldy and hefty phone, but we are sure some of you will appreciate the added weight. Some of the GSMarena staff prefer heavy phones, and we can see why. It gives you the perception of a high-quality, well-built product.

And if the pop-up camera is of any concern to you, keep in mind that this design is already a year old and we are yet to hear of any widespread pop-up cam failures on other phones. Judging by past experiences, it should fare well in the long run.

Zero distractions OLED

The first Pocophone came with an LCD panel and it wasn't that good to begin with. The Poco F2 Pro has a superior Super AMOLED panel.

Aside from the lack high-refresh-rate capability, the F2 Pro's display checks the most important checkmarks. It has a reasonable 1080 x 2400px resolution (20:9 aspect ratio) that fits in a 6.67-inch diagonal, it offers full-screen design and it gets bright. Really bright.

In our tests, the display easily hit the advertised 500 nits, 516 nits to be exact, and in Max Auto mode, it got the flagship worthy 854 nits. Take a look at the table below, where you can compare it to the most recent flagships.

Display test	100% brightness
	Black,cd/m2	White,cd/m2	Contrast ratio
Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro	0	516	∞
Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro (Max Auto)	0	854	∞
Xiaomi Pocophone F1	0.314	461	1468:1
OnePlus 7T	0	525	∞
OnePlus 7T (Max Auto)	0	743	∞
Apple iPhone SE (2020)	0.434	670	1544:1
Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite	0	400	∞
Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite (Max Auto)	0	705	∞
Realme X50 Pro 5G	0	525	∞
Realme X50 Pro 5G (Max Auto)	0	635	∞

As far as color accuracy is concerned, the display fared pretty well here too. With the auto color preset, the screen got a respectable average dE2000 of 4.8 and maximum deviation of 8.5. As you'd expect, the whites were rather blue-ish while greens, cyans, and yellows were a bit over the top. Luckily, you can set the color mode to Standard and get a nice average dE2000 of just 1.8 and a maximum of just 4.4. Expect lower maximum brightness in Standard mode, though.

If you are more into "eye candy modes", stick to the so-called Saturated mode as it gives you punchy and vibrant colors. The average dE2000 is 5.8 there.

HDR10+ support is also on the list of features so you won't be missing on that kind of content on YouTube or Netflix.

Battery life

As expected from a 4,700 mAh unit, the battery life is excellent. The Poco F2 Pro has one of the best battery lives among the phones with flagship SoCs, and it does so without housing an exceptionally large battery. The screen-on runtimes are solid, and so is the standby result from our tests.

The charging capabilities are no less impressive. The included 33W Power Delivery 3.0-compliant charger is able to charge the phone in just 65 minutes, which is pretty impressive for a handset carrying 4,700 mAh battery. In our 30-minute charging test, 60% of the capacity was replenished.

We also give Xiaomi some bonus points for opting for the Power Delivery standard instead of using a proprietary one. This means that if you come across a Power Delivery-compliant charger, you will be able to squeeze out some sort of fast charging.

Speaker test

Unfortunately, the phone relies on a single, bottom-firing speaker, which is, admittedly, quite loud but it can't go against the stereo loudspeakers in terms of quality and fullness. Vocals do sound okay while the songs in general sound flat. The bass is almost non-existent.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.

Audio output quality

We've recently discontinued our audio output quality test.

The reason for that is that most phones that were arriving for testing were already excellent in this regard and whatever difference there was between them, it was marginal and probably indistinguishable to anything but our lab equipment.

MIUI 11, Android 10

The Poco F2 Pro runs on its own Poco launcher based on - MIUI 11 and Android 10. And it runs the software fast too. We didn't notice any hiccups or lags, but we don't expect anything less from a Snapdragon 865-powered handset.

Anyway, if you've used previous iterations of MIUI, then you'll be greeted with familiar feel by this Poco launcher. However, the skin feels more mature in a way. It's way more simplified, streamlined, and borrows some aesthetics from the stock Android, such as the quick toggles in the drop-down menu. In fact, in the Poco launcher, the OS defaults to the app drawer instead of putting everything on the home screen like the stock MIUI does. The latter has it as an option in the settings menu, though.

Speaking of the general settings menu, we found one odd thing about all the categories. There's too much spacing between each sub-menu, making an unusually long scroll to the bottom. It's something that only a few people would mind.

General settings menu

Another small annoyance we had with our short time with the Poco launcher is the lack of that thin navigation bar at the bottom that some of the ROMs have. It's pretty much an Android 10 default setting. Although Xiaomi was like a pioneer with the Android gestures and was first to introduce the iPhone-like back gesture, some of us still appreciate the pill on the bottom. It makes switching between apps effortless and fast. The current switch between the last two apps is by swiping from the edge of a screen as if you are performing a back gesture and holding for a split second. If you are not fond of that quick switch, you can disable it in the settings menu.

Full-screen gestures

On the other hand, some of you may like the recent apps menu as it displays more apps on the screen with a vertical scroll. There are also quick shortcuts to some tasks at the top end of the screen, which in turn pushes the apps towards the lower half of the screen making manageable to operate with one hand.

Home screen, notification shade

Okay, we got the small misfires we found in the Poco launcher out of the way, let's talk about what we liked and what we found most useful when lurking around the menus for cool functionalities.

The vibration motor is one of the first things that springs to mind as a major improvement over the predecessor. Sure, it's more of a hardware feature but how it's implemented into the software is what matters. Scrolling, typing, and performing gestures will give nice, gentle haptic feedback. But when it needs to, the vibration motor can really hit it. Sometimes a little bit too much, but it's easy to adjust with the slider in the menu. We also found it to be really precise. It's nice to see more and more OEMs paying attention to the vibration mechanics.

Sound and vibration

The fingerprint reader is also on par with the competition. We found it to be quite reliable and fast. The unlocking animations are a bit on the slow side, but if you don't keep your finger on the screen long enough, the screen unlocks mid-animation. Interestingly, the placement felt a bit odd at first as it's a bit higher than on most handsets, but after a while, we started to like it. It really does make sense on big-screen devices with tall aspect ratio. Our only complaint would be that the fingerprint area doesn't light up as bright as it should, and it's hard to notice when you are outside under the sun. This one bit needs some more work.

While we are on the lock screen, we can't miss giving some praise to the lock screen designs and the always-on function as a whole. It's highly customizable, gives you a ton of options for the lock screen along with its behavior.

The display settings menu is pretty extensive too. It gives you pretty granular control over the display settings, but one feature stuck out - the Sunlight Mode. Some people still prefer the manual control over the display brightness for one reason or another and the said mode gets rid of one major issue - when it's really bright outside, your last-used brightness level might leave you staring at some weird angles at the screen just to move the slider. Well, Sunlight Mode does that for you when it detects bright ambient light.

Lock sreen, always-on and display options

Notifications are also more customizable than ever, giving you choice even between how notification cards appear in the notification shade. Although not in the same menu, there's a quick reply option for messengers directly from the card. You can find in the Special features sub-menu.

Notifications

The app drawer is customizable as well. You can arrange your apps by colors, while different categories on the top of the screen help you find your apps faster. It's pretty neat. If you are a "search by typing" type of person, you will find a search bar at the bottom of the app drawer where it's easy to reach with your thumb.

App drawer

There's also the Game Turbo selection of features if we can call it that. It boosts performance and gives you quite a bit of control over certain game-related things. What blew us away were the individual profiles you can set for each game. You can adjust the touch response (why would you want a slower response, though) and sensitivity to repeated taps. We can see how that one is useful in certain games that require lots of tapping on a single control.

Game Turbo options

Setting up an area of the screen that doesn't react to touches is also a thing. It prevents accidental touches from users with bigger hands. And visual effects to each game can also be added. The slider increase the contrast and sharpens the picture.

Last, but not least, in the Special features sub-menu, there are a couple of customizations for the LED notification light. And if you are wondering where the hell Xiaomi managed to stick an LED with a full-screen design, it's pretty clever - in the pop-up mechanism. It already has LEDs inside of it, why not just make a small cut so that it can shine through for notifications, incoming calls or when charging.

Special features menu

For those of you with battery anxiety, you'd be pleased to know that the Poco launcher gives you granular control over your battery settings and app behavior. Each app can be tinkered individually, and you can receive notifications when they misbehave in the background. But just to be sure, Xiaomi has a nuke button that clears the cache each time you lock the device. Keep in mind, however, that might kill an important app and you won't receive notifications from it.

Battery menu options

Overall, we enjoyed using the Poco launcher on the F2 Pro. Keep in mind Xiaomi's MIUI 11 can be set to look identical - you just have to dig in the Settings menu to enable the app drawer. We also didn't find any visual differences between the stock MIUI 11 and the Poco launcher aside from the fact that the Poco launcher defaults to the app drawer, while on the MIUI 11, you have to switch to it ON in the settings menu.

Performance

The phone is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset based on the improved 7nm+ EUV manufacturing process. The SoC holds an Adreno 650 GPU for graphically-intensive tasks as well as an octa-core CPU that consists of 1x Kryo 585 core ticking at 2.84GHz, 3x Kryo 585 cores running at 2.42GHz and 4x of the same cores clocked at 1.8GHz.

The chipset is paired with either 6 or 8GB of RAM, but it's important to note that the 6GB version settles for the LPDD4X memory while the 8GB model gets the new LPDDR5 memory, which is more efficient and faster. Going for the 6GB model gives you 128GB of storage while the 8GB model comes with 256GB of internal storage. In both cases, the storage is not expandable as there is no card slot.

The internal storage has also received an upgrade to UFS 3.1 instead of UFS 3.0. Honestly, though, you wouldn't notice much of a difference when using the phone for your normal daily activities. Both are fast enough, that's what we are saying. The same goes for the LPDDR4X vs. LPDDR5 dilemma.

Of course, we ran our usual synthetic benchmark tests so here's how it fares against the competition and even higher-priced models.

GeekBench 4.4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  13295
• Honor V30 Pro
  12824
• Realme X50 Pro
  12761
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  12557
• OnePlus 7T
  11394
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  11151
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  9003

GeekBench 4.4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  4958
• Realme X50 Pro
  4305
• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  4255
• Honor V30 Pro
  3932
• OnePlus 7T
  3644
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  3524
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  2438

GeekBench 5.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  3332
• Apple iPhone SE (2020)
  3237
• Honor V30 Pro
  3204
• Realme X50 Pro
  3175
• OnePlus 7T
  2858
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  2750
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  2732

GeekBench 5.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone SE (2020)
  1334
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  931
• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  916
• Realme X50 Pro
  911
• Honor V30 Pro
  778
• OnePlus 7T
  776
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  738

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• Realme X50 Pro
  592447
• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  538221
• Galaxy S20 (120Hz, 1080p)
  525029
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  515538
• Honor V30 Pro
  500571
• OnePlus 7T
  485585
• Apple iPhone SE (2020)
  462253
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  459497

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  51
• Realme X50 Pro
  51
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  51
• Galaxy S20 (120Hz, 1080p)
  51
• OnePlus 7T
  48
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  43
• Honor V30 Pro
  42
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  35

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme X50 Pro
  45
• Galaxy S20 (120Hz, 1080p)
  44
• OnePlus 7T
  41
• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  40
• Honor V30 Pro
  35
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  34
• Xiaomi Pocophone F1
  31
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  

class="value">26

3DMark SSE Vulkan 1440p

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro
  6660
• Realme X50 Pro
  6472
• Galaxy S20 (120Hz, 1080p)
  6398
• Galaxy S20 (60Hz, 1440p)
  6248
• Honor V30 Pro
  5627
• OnePlus 7T
  5540
• Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
  4892

As you can see, the Snapdragon 865 chipset performs as expected. Samsung's Exynos 990 takes a beating in the multi-threaded scenarios but offers better single-core performance in return, which is to be expected with the big Mongoose M5 main cores.

The rest of the differences - even in the GPU-only tests - are mostly within the margin of error.

Four cameras, one just for the aesthetics

In terms of camera count, the Poco F2 Pro doesn't fall behind the competition. And the good news is that they cover all of the focal lengths. The main camera boasts a big, 64MP sensor, effectively shooting in 16MP. It's 1/1.72" big, and the individual pixels are 0.8µm, but when binned, you get 1.6µm pixels. The unit is paired with a lens that offers f/1.9 aperture, which is a little narrow in today's standards.

That 5MP camera you see on the specs sheet, however, isn't a telephoto. And don't get fooled by the focal length equivalent. The 50mm focal length, which is practically 2x magnification (or just a tad less to be exact) gives you a little bit more room when focusing on a subject. You don't have to get too close, and the best part is that it has autofocus. But you can't use it for proper telephoto shots, though.

The ultra-wide camera promises really wide field of view - 123 degrees achieved through a 13MP sensor coupled with a f/2.4 lens.

As we said earlier, we believe the fourth 2MP camera's role is more about aesthetics so there's no asymmetry in the camera module. Xiaomi says it's used for depth sensing but when we tried to cover it in portrait mode, the results were indistinguishable from the usual portraits and the software didn't prompt us with a message to unblock the depth sensor.

Camera menus

The camera app is pretty straightforward and easy to use even if you are coming from another Android phone. Swiping left and right will take you through the main modes. Icons on the top of the viewfinder give you quick toggles for the AI, HDR, Macro mode, and filters. The so-called "hamburger" menu gives you a bit more options to tinker with.

Camera menus

The general settings menu offers controls over pretty much everything you'd expect. You will even find some pop-up camera customizations that change the LED lighting when it goes up as well as the accompanying sounds.

Camera menus

Daylight samples

Main camera

The overall performance of the camera during the day is good but we observed rather inconsistent performance. Let's say that about 20% of the pictures looked soft, lacked detail, and had abnormally high noise. However, the rest of the images had nice color reproduction, a bit on the saturated side, good sharpness and high amount of detail.

Main camera daylight samples

The noise was rather visible on uniform surfaces. The contrast also seems a bit high, but some may prefer it that way. This comes at the expense of the dynamic range, but it's not a deal breaker.

Main camera daylight samples

Going indoors, you will see a noticeable drop in detail and increase in noise, which is to be expected, but it was pretty bright outside, and the windows let a lot of light in.

Main camera daylight samples

Ultra-wide camera

The ultra-wide camera offers similar rendition to the main one in terms of colors, contrast, and exposure. Expectedly, though, the camera produces softer images with a tad narrower dynamic range.

What we really liked was the ultra-wide lens correction. Notice the sign on the third photo - it looks pretty straight in comparison to other ultra-wide photos. And on the fifth photo with the buildings, the ones to the side don't look nearly as tilted.

Ultra-wide daylight samples

Ultra-wide daylight samples

2x zoom

There's a 2x zoom toggle in the viewfinder, but all it does is a crop from the main camera due to the lack of a proper telephoto. The results aren't nearly as bad as you might think. We've seen real telephoto cameras do worse (cheap ones but still). We were surprised by how sharp the pictures look as well as how much detail is resolved.

Unfortunately, though, the imperfections of the main camera become even more apparent here - most notably, the noise.

2x zoom daylight samples

Low-light photos

Main camera

In the standard Photo mode during the night, the noise is plenty; the pictures look generally soft and smudgy. However, the dynamic range seems adequate, as light sources look excellent. Only the shadows are a bit too dark - probably to achieve more contrasty output. Otherwise, color saturation is well preserved.

Low-light main camera samples

Switching over to Night mode fixes most of the issues we've mentioned above. The noise suppression algorithm is working overtime but without ruining the picture. In fact, the Night mode introduces much more detail and sharpness. It brings out some objects from the shadows that can't be seen otherwise and restores the highlights further. The lights sources look even better. We strongly recommend using the Night mode in pretty much every low-light situation.

Night mode

Ultra-wide camera samples

If you are looking at the samples on your phone's screen, you may find them rather okay. But upon closer inspection, we are quite unhappy with the low-light performance of the 13MP unit. The photos look smudgy, noisy, and lack detail. And the worst part is that there's no Night mode for the ultra-wide to fix any of these deficiencies.

Low-light ultra-wide samples

You can also take a look at our photo compare tool and see how it stands against some of its rivals.

Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro vs Realme X50 Pro 5G and the OnePlus 7T in our Photo compare tool

Macro camera samples

Hands-down, Poco F2 Pro has the best dedicated macro implementation we've tested so far. It's far superior compared to other 2MP fixed-focus cameras as it uses a 50mm equivalent lens with 2x magnification and has autofocus. This makes snapping macro shots super easy, and you don't have to stick the camera so close to the subject. The stills appear sharp, with pleasant colors, and you can easily see the fine detail. We've also found it to work well even in not so ideal lighting conditions.

Macro samples

The camera falls behind only against the higher-resolution ultra-wide cameras with autofocus that some makers use for macro shots like Huawei, Honor, OnePlus, etc.

Portraits

The portraits came out pretty nice with plenty of detail, wide dynamic range, natural skin color, and sharp enough even in challenging lighting conditions. The edge detection is also quite competent, although when you introduce a more complex backgrounds behind your subject, the software gets confused sometimes. Notice the phone our subject is holding on the third photo - the software thinks it's part of the background, so it smudged it.

Portrait samples

Selfies

The pop-up selfie camera snaps some nice-looking stills with plenty of detail, nice skin tone and it appears to be doing well even when there's not enough light coming into the sensor. We noticed there are some oversharpening halos here and there and the noise is easy to spot even in conditions that can't be categorized as "challenging".

Normal selfies

Also, expect a tad softer images with the portrait mode turned on.

Portrait selfies

Video

The usual shooting modes and resolutions are at hand in addition to the 8K recording in 30 frames per second. The flagships from this year usually cap at 24 frames per second, but for some reason, the Poco F2 Pro is capable of outputting 30 frames at 4320p. However, the unit we received output corrupted 8K videos, so once the issue is resolved, we will make sure to update this section with 8K footage. Now let's see how it fares with the standard 4K and Full HD resolutions.

In 2160p@30fps, the phone produces sharp videos with wide dynamic range and barely visible noise. Colors are punchy, while the contrast is just a little bit more for our liking. We can't say we have any major complaints about the overall quality.

The ultra-wide camera is capable of doing 4K videos as well and demonstrates similar processing with a little drop in sharpness and no noise. Definitely one of the better ultra-wide videos around.

Full HD videos taken with the main camera follow the same processing as the 4K videos with inferior sharpness and detail - nothing out of the ordinary. The one we shot still looks good, though, especially for a 1080p video.

There's also a cinematic mode that makes the video in 21:9 resolution, we appreciate the added dramatic effect. Everyone seems to be doing that lately.

To our surprise, there's a macro mode switch in the viewfinder in video mode. There's no stabilization at play here, so it's hard to shoot in this mode. You do get detailed and sharp video.

It seems like Xioami has stayed away from the flashy marketing terms for its own take of the gimbal-like stabilized videos, and it calls it "Steady Video". It caps at 1080p and when you put it with the standard stabilized 4K video, the difference isn't as big as we expected. The movement of the camera is indeed a little smoother than on the 2160p video, nevertheless, we can't say it's worth loss in resolution. You might want to stick with the standard EIS and 4K.

You can also take a look at our Video compare tool and see how it stands against some of its rivals.

4K: Poco F2 Pro vs Realme X50 Pro 5G and the OnePlus 7T in our Video compare tool

Alternatives

Well, Xiaomi did it again. Two years after the release of the Poco F1, the company was still able to undercut the competition even with this significant price increase. The Poco F2 Pro will probably cost less in India than in Europe, but the point stands - this phone is still lighter on the budget compared to the alternatives powered by the Snapdragon 865 chip. It was able to find a sweet spot in the "flagship killer" price bracket. But there are still some phones worth considering that roam in the same territory.

The Realme X50 Pro 5G comes to mind as a potential alternative first. The handset might be a bit more expensive than the Poco F2 Pro at around €600 in Europe and a little less in India - INR 47,999 - but it's the better phone overall. The overall camera experience with proper telephoto, the high-refresh rate display, and the faster charging might be worth your extra money.

Ultimately, the F2 Pro offers the same performance for less while having a better battery life as well. And besides, there's nothing wrong with F2 Pro's screen. If the cleaner, cutout-less design fits you better and the pop-up selfie camera still entertains you, it may even be the better buy.

Realme X50 Pro 5G • OnePlus 7T

If the Poco F2 Pro's price fits your budget but you can wiggle only a little, the OnePlus 7T could make a potential case for itself. Sure, it's a last year's device from, but the 7T is significantly cheaper now asking €529 in Europe, and it's just INR 34,999 in India which is almost as low as the F2 Pro. The OnePlus 7T, however, will grant you a high-refresh-rate OLED screen (unfortunately, with a notch), a proper 2x telephoto camera, the same quality, if not better, macro shots and leaner, stock-ish OxygenOS, if you are into that sort of Androids. The 7T's overall camera performance is better too.

The downside of this deal would be the shorter battery life and the older Snapdragon 855 chipset. But if you don't have any immediate plans of switching to a 5G network carrier, last year's flagship SoC would do just fine for at least a couple of years.

And in case the F2 Pro is really your upper limit price-wise, why not eyeball the Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite, too. The camera isn't better, that's for sure, but the battery life and screen quality are quite comparable. Also, Samsung might win you over with its One UI. With the European pricing, the S10 Lite is about €60-70 cheaper making an even bigger case for Samsung contender if you don't mind the older chipset.

Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite • Apple iPhone SE (2020)

Finally, if you are an iPhone user or an Android fan looking for something fresh, the popular iPhone SE (2020) falls in the same price category. If you go with the specs sheet, the F2 Pro has won the match before it started - superior and brighter OLED display, much longer battery life, faster charging and more cameras covering more field of views. There are some things, however, that Apple does better. One of them is cameras. Even with one, the iPhone SE is a better shooter than the F2 Pro. And you do get that extra-long software support, so that's a plus.

Verdict

Don't let the extensive list of alternative options above fool you - we are happy to recommend the Poco F2 Pro. It remains true to its flagship killer heritage - the same thing that made the Poco F1 famous. And despite the significant price increase, we think that Xiaomi has found a nice market niche for it.

There are some considerations, though. The camera experience has its flaws, and it's far from polished. But when have the flagship killers offered flagship-grade camera performance?

The lack of a proper 2x telephoto is a misstep, as well as skipping the expandable storage, although you get a couple of rare commodities these days - a 3.5mm audio jack and full-screen design. The lack of a high refresh rate is a strange omission for a new €500+ phone coming out in mid-2020. Still, it's an excellent screen - it gets super bright and brings HDR10+ support.

Battery life is remarkable, fast charging is at hand and the Poco Launcher just flies on this thing and it comes with numerous features that are hard to find all in one place.

So yes, overall, the Poco F2 Pro is an excellent all-rounder that's worth every extra penny on top of its predecessors. Perhaps in a different way and perhaps for a different crowd, but it remains a 'flagship killer' nonetheless.

Pros

• Really nice build and a design that stands out.
• Super bright and color accurate OLED screen without any cutouts.
• Record-breaking battery life.
• Competitive fast charging solution over Power Delivery.
• Good price/performance ratio.
• Satisfactory main camera performance with great Night mode and nice macro camera.
• Has 3.5mm audio jack and LED notification indicator.
• Mature and feature-rich MIUI 11.

Cons

• No HRR screen.
• No stereo speakers or microSD slot.
• No telephoto camera and unsatisfactory ultra-wide camera performance.
• The chassis is a bit on the hefty side - it's thick and heavy.

Special thanks to GearBest for providing the review unit.

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