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Despite the allure and cult-like status that flagships hold, the truth is most Indian consumers are looking for a mid-range smartphone. A device that offers both performance and longevity, and one that makes sense to spend their hard-earned money on. The new POCO F5 5G is one such mid-ranger with a lot of promise, and here’s if it meets my expectations.
Design
The POCO F5 5G is one of the lighter mid-rangers I’ve used. Despite weighing just over 180 grams, it sports a massive 6.67-inch AMOLED display and measures 7.98 mm at its thickest. All the physical buttons are mounted on the right bezel, with the power button doubling up as a fingerprint sensor. The display is protected against scratches by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. And the outdoor visibility was not an issue even on bright Indian summer days.
Despite the massive 6,7-inch display, the POCO F5 feels light | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
The smartphone is available in Carbon Black, Snowstorm White, and Electric Blue, all of which interestingly have different textural design on the rear cover. I got the black variant for review, although I personally find the snowflake design on the white one way more appealing.
The rear panel on the Carbon Black variant has diagonal lines, and is a massive smudge magnet | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
Multimedia
The display - like most these days - was bright and vivid, and generally a pleasure to consume multimedia on. I had the Reading Mode on most times to reduce eye strain. Bingeing on a few episodes of supernatural survivor drama, Manifest, was good fun on the POCO F5. Although the speakers are loud enough, they don’t offer the most well-balanced acoustics I’ve come across in this category. The phone offers a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, making scrolling and gaming appear fairly fluid. This kicks in once I manually opt out of the 60 Hz default.
Camera quality
The camera setup on the POCO F5 5G | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
The POCO F5 has a three-lens camera setup with the primary being a 64-MP camera, along with an 8-MP ultra-wide camera and a 2-MP macro camera. Shots taken outdoors in daylight were well-saturated and sharp. Shots taken indoors, even in relatively low light turned out to be impressively noise-free. The Document mode comes in handy with its ability to auto-crop the image I’ve clicked super accurately. Auto-focus quick on the primary is snappy and there are a ton of modes, including VLOG mode, which makes for a handy guide to shooting for social media or just making a sweet lil’ video on vacation or a celebration.
The 16MP front camera definitely over-exposes the subject, maybe in an attempt to lighten skin tones, even with effects turned off. So, with portraits, I always ended up with a lightened version of the subject’s skin tone. The primary camera is capable of recording 4K video (3840 × 2160) @ 30fps, and the video stabilisation works really well to deliver shake-free videos. I also wish the camera icon didn’t look so uncannily similar to the Google Chrome icon though!
Tech Specs
The POCO F5 runs on Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 mobile platform. On AnTuTu benchmarking tests, it scored around 11,24,278 points, placing itself in the top-ten league of benchmarked smartphones.
In real-life usage, multitasking was smooth, and extended use was easy without any heating or stutter. You can choose from a massive 8 GB or a 12 GB RAM variant. The unit I reviewed had 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage.
The smartphone runs on MIUI 14 and Android 13 with some features I’ve always found handy. For starters, the in-phone app search bar pops up at the bottom-right where the thumbs are anyway. New features include a deeper ability to personalise how the UI looks - including widgets and bigger folders.
There is a fair bit of bloatware I see upon powering on the device the first time, however it’s nothing that a quick round of uninstalling stuff can’t fix. The smartphone also has an infrared blaster, which lets users control a smart TV, air conditioner, or a sound system right from your phone. The company has said the phone will get two years OS updates and three years of security updates.
Battery life
The POCO F5 has a 5,000 mAh battery with impressive use time post one full charge cycle. With some YouTube bingeing, Spotify, and catching up on the news, the smartphone kept me company for easily more than a full day. There’s a 67W turbocharger provided in the box to make life easier. It takes less than an hour to charge fully from zero.
Verdict
As mid-rangers go, the POCO F5 checks a lot of boxes - lightweight design, snappy processor, long battery life. The only set of flaws I can find is some aspects of the camera experience. I’d have also liked to see uniformity in the design language for this model, because the choice of a colour option shouldn’t end up in dramatically different patterns in the same model.
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