Poco has been known for its bright colour smartphones that often reflect the identity of the brand catering to the youth. With the Poco X8 Power, the smartphone maker brought back its iconic yellow colour, which now even gets a vegan leather finish that you can even use without a protective case easily. Once sounded like a big deal, this smartphone comes with a monstrous 10,000mAh battery.
In India, this smartphone is available through Flipkart. It is currently priced at Rs 30,999 for the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage while the higher 8GB + 256GB variant is selling at Rs 33,999. Considering this price, can the neat design and a massive battery be enough to convince you to buy this smartphone? Let us find out in this review.
Poco X8 Power 5G Review: What’s Inside the Box
I received my review unit in the yellow colour (8GB + 256GB). This smartphone also comes in the black colour option. Apart from the device, the box has a SIM ejector tool, a USB-A to USB-C cable, a protection case, the paperwork and a 100W charging adapter.
Poco X8 Power 5G Review: Design
The Poco X8 Power 5G feels slightly chunky in the hand. Weighing nearly 229 grams and being 8.65 mm thick, you may feel the device is fairly big. But that has to be a trade-off if you are getting a monstrous 10,000mAh battery.
What is worth highlighting is that the yellow colour does the job of attention grabbing. The vegan leather offers a strong grip and keeps the smudges away from this device. A black frame, vegan-leather back and a matching camera module, give the device a bold look.
Speaking of ports and buttons, the right side of the Poco X8 Power gets the power button and volume rockers, while the left side is clean. At the bottom of this device, you get a dual nano-SIM tray, main microphone, speaker and a USB 2.0 port. The phone also features another microphone and an IR blaster at the top of the device. Moreover, it comes with stereo speakers and an in-display fingerprint scanner. It is worth mentioning that the fingerprint scanner works decently well. Out of 10 times, I found it working nine times easily. The brand is also giving Gorilla Glass Victus 2 to guard the display along with IP66, IP68, IP69 and IP69K rating to protect it from water and dirt.
Poco X8 Power 5G Review: Display
Poco X8 Power 5G is one of the devices that will actually make you feel that you have a large display in your phone. It features a 6.83-inch flat 1.5K AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. You can surely feel the higher resolution while scrolling reels, watching a video and as you play games. Colours are vibrant, blacks are deep and contrast is good for the price. Text also looks sharp, ideal for reading. This handset even supports Dolby Vision and HDR10+ on Netflix content.
The display works very well in the harsh day light conditions and indoor settings. You can get up to 3500 nits of peak brightness. You also get Wet Touch 2.0. This screen also gets support from the stereo speakers. The speakers are loud and the audio quality is decent as per this price range. Importantly, the brand has done a decent job of maintaining its size and proportions with round edges and the punch-hole display along with thin bezels.
Poco X8 Power 5G Review: Performance
The Poco X8 Power is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 processor and my review unit came with 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.1 storage. It is not a flagship processor, but you would not really notice that in day-to-day use. The phone feels quick, apps open without much issue and switching between apps is generally smooth. I also did not have any complaints about how it handled apps in the background.
I spent some time playing BGMI on the phone, where the game runs smoothly with the Extreme frame rate setting. That means you are limited to 60fps. After 40 to 50 minutes, I faced slight frame drops and stuttering. This device is definitely capable of handling casual gaming sessions; however, it is not the ideal phone for competitive gaming.
The benchmark results were decent as well. The Poco X8 Power scored 11,78,025 on AnTuTu. On Geekbench, it scored 959 in the single-core test and 2,981 in the multi-core test. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 processor is positioned in a similar performance segment as the MediaTek Dimensity 7500 Turbo. For comparison, the iQOO Z11 5G, powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7500 Turbo, scored 11,11,629 on AnTuTu in our testing. This puts the two devices in a broadly similar range in terms of benchmark performance.
The Poco X8 Power runs HyperOS 3 based on Android 16, and the overall experience is quite smooth. Animations feel fine and I did not notice any issues while using the phone. Bloatware is something you will have to deal with. There are several pre-installed apps including Agoda, Indus App Store and more. The good thing is that these third-party apps can be uninstalled without much trouble. There is also a small catch during the setup. The handset suggests installing a bunch of third-party apps and there is an option to avoid it. If you want a cleaner setup, make sure you untick it before continuing.
Poco is also offering four years of Android OS upgrades and six years of security updates which is good for the long term commitment. In terms of the AI features, the smartphone offers AI Writing, AI Speech Recognition, AI Notes, AI Recorder, AI subtitles and more. Moreover, you also get a few AI-powered editing features like erase, sky replacement and more.
Poco X8 Power Review: Camera
The Poco X8 Power comes with a 50MP (f/1.5 aperture) main camera with OIS, paired with an 8MP (f/2.2 aperture) ultra wide lens. For selfies, the device gets a 32MP (f/2.2 aperture) shooter on the front. The camera app covers most of the basics, including 50MP, Panorama, Night mode, Slo-mo, Time-lapse, Pro, Dual Video and AI watermark.
In daylight, the main camera does a decent job. Colours look good but sometimes could be slightly processed and the camera handles bright and dark areas reasonably well. Photos also look quite nice on the phone’s display. The dynamic range and skin tones look accurate.
For everyday use, photos are worth posting on your Insta stories without much editing. Things could change when you start zooming into the pictures. Fine details can look a little smudged. I noticed this in both well-lit and darker scenes. Low-light shots are okay for casual use. When it comes to the ultra-wide camera, it may slightly miss details.
Speaking of the selfie camera, it is actually a good part of the setup. Selfies offer enough detail, skin tones appear clear but skin smoothing is clearly noticeable despite reducing the beautification. look natural and portrait shots do a good job separating the subject from the background. Video recording goes up to 4K at 30fps on both the front and back cameras. Overall, the camera performance was decent and ideal for day-to-day photography needs.
Poco X8 Power Review: Battery
The Poco X8 Power 5G comes with a 10,000mAh battery. It is evidently one of the strengths of this smartphone. With the heavy usage that includes scrolling reels, watching YouTube videos and frequent calls, the device can easily stretch to the second day. It comes with a 100W wired charging support and also gets 27W reverse charging. What needs to be noted is that the device takes slightly longer to charge because of its battery size in comparison to a 5,000mAh device. It took nearly 95 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 per cent.
Poco X8 Power 5G Review: Verdict
As mentioned, the biggest strength of this mobile is its giant battery. The 10,000mAh battery can keep the device running for nearly two days straight. Moreover, the large display with a 1.5K 120Hz AMOLED screen, thin bezels, Dolby support, stereo speakers and long term software support make the device ideal for day-to-day usage.
If you are someone whose key purpose is to go for a gaming device, then this smartphone may have a few limitations. Similarly, you must also keep the bloatware in mind and the weight of this smartphone which makes it slightly bulky.
Given the price hikes across the industry because of the AI chip crisis, the smartphone emerges as a compelling device for those who just want to consume a lot of content, post pictures without much editing, and a handset that actually lasts longer on a single charge. If the battery life, display and the software upgrades matter more to you than gaming performance, the Poco X8 is worth considering.
