If you are looking for a powerful phone on a budget, but are worried about the cost’s possible negative impact on performance, the POCO M8 Pro 5G could be the one for you. With a long-lasting battery life packed within a slim profile, and a chip strong enough to handle even the latest, demanding mobile game releases, this shows that the POCO M8 Pro 5G can give you a great powerhouse at a competitive price, without sacrificing quality and performance.
Build and design
The POCO M8 Pro 5G is a powerhouse packed into a very sleek and portable design. Coming in at only 8.31mm thin and weighing 205.9g, this phone could easily slip into your pockets. The curved edges and 163.34mm x 78.31mm screen size further makes this phone easy to grip.
Even without a phone case, this device is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 and an internal multi-level shock-absorption structure, is rated IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K dust and water resistant, and passed the SGS 5-stars Premium Performance Certification. This gives you that extra peace of mind in the event of accidental drops, bumps, and spills. This phone also supports Wet touch technology 2.0, allowing you to use your phone even in wet, moist, or humid environments, or even when there is moisture on your fingertips.
This device comes in three colors: Silver and Black if you would like a more monochromatic and neutral tone, and Green if you would prefer a pop of color in your device. Keep in mind that the Green version is a more muted and pastel tone than a vibrant one, so it keeps a calmer aesthetic.
Connectivity
The POCO M8 Pro 5G supports 5G, allowing you higher, more reliable data speeds at ultra-low latency, great for browsing, gaming, and everyday use. It uses Bluetooth 5.4, allowing you good connections with your connected devices, and Wi-Fi 6 and 5GHz Wi-Fi for access to great Wi-Fi speeds and lesser interference. A Dual SIM (nano SIM 1 + nano SIM 2) card slot is also included, allowing you the flexibility of having multiple SIM cards for your convenience.
Display
With a 6.83″ 1.5K CrystalRes AMOLED display at 447 ppi, the POCO M8 Pro 5G gives the user a high-quality viewing experience. It can reach a peak brightness of up to 3200 nits with ultra-bright eye-care display for your eye comfort, and Sunlight display 4.0 allowing display clarity even under direct sunlight. It also has 3840Hz PWM dimming and is TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light (Hardware Solution) Certified, helping to reduce visual fatigue.
The refresh rate reaching up to 120Hz gives a smooth scrolling experience for everyday users. Even more impressive for avid mobile gamers is the 16x super-resolution touch and 2560Hz instant touch sampling rate, allowing for a highly responsive gameplay. Having 12-bit color depth and DCI-P3 wide color gamut, as well as HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, this phone gives you a vibrant display of colors and great contrast for your viewing pleasure. It makes the POCO M8 Pro 5G suitable for lounging and watching your favorite TV shows and movies, as well as adding great vibrancy to your gameplays.
Audio
Aside from the display, this phone does not disregard the importance of audio. Further enhancing your streaming experience, the POCO M8 Pro 5G has symmetrical stereo speakers with a Dual Gold Hi-Res certification and Dolby Atmos certification giving you a good and balanced sound quality as well.
POCO also introduced the 400% volume boost in this device. This really does get very loud as I experienced during my testing of the device, and this can definitely add to the user experience as you can hear the audio well from all sides of the phone, and even if you are outdoors. It kept a good amount of base and clarity when listening to music and watching different videos on the device. The mix of a good display and good audio in this phone compounds to give the user an even more immersive experience.
Camera
The POCO M8 Pro 5G’s cameras take the spotlight on the back panel of the phone. The camera module nearly takes up the whole back side of the phone’s width containing its 50MP main camera with an aperture of f/1.6 allowing a shallow depth of field and more light to pass, as well as an 8MP ultra-wide camera with an aperture of f/2.2. The main camera also uses a Light Fusion 800 image sensor (1/1.55”) and contains Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), which is good for added stability when taking your photos. This reduces the possible blurriness of your shots.
The front-facing camera is 32 megapixels with a 1/3.6″ sensor and an aperture of f/2.2. It is very discreet on the front of the phone, barely creating any obstruction to allow you to maximize what you see on your screen.
The camera takes decent photos, especially in well-lit scenes. The camera application has an Ultra HD mode which uses the full 50 megapixels of your phone, a Video mode, a Photo mode, a Portrait mode, and a Pro mode. The Pro mode gives you more adjustability to your settings if you prefer to do things manually to get the shot that you are looking for. It even includes a histogram so you are able to better see your highlights and shadows. It is important to note that zoom does not work when you are using the 50MP camera or in Ultra HD mode, and that RAW photos are limited to the 12.5MP setting.
When using the zoom, however, the photo could sometimes show a bit of noise and pixelation on certain subjects. Night mode automatically gets recommended when capturing dark scenes, and this feature lets the camera keep the shutter open longer in order to let in more light. This can easily be toggled off within the camera application if you prefer to toggle it off. In general, however, most photos taken at night would have quite a bit of noise or pixelation, if not a bit of blur. This was true even when using the Pro mode on the camera app. Keep in mind that there may be some minimal chromatic aberration in night photos as well.
For video, the POCO M8 Pro 5G supports 4k recording at 30fps. As mentioned above, it contains OIS, which can help with the stability of your recordings and hand shakiness. Although in my testing, I find that it is still useful to try to be as steady as possible if you are moving while taking videos. This is especially true if you would like to minimize any jerky motions within your video, as the OIS isn’t as reliable if you introduce a lot of movement. It does better at controlling simple hand shakiness, though.
This phone also has different creative features you could use within the Gallery application to assist you in your creativity. Under the Creativity tab, you can make a photo collage, edit a video montage with Video editor, or even have AI automatically create an edit for you.
Collage allows you to select photos and stack them in different layouts. There is even a Poster layout as well as a Film roll layout which could be really fun to play with, and could give an edge to your Instagram or Facebook stories. The Video editor is a dedicated video montage creator within the phone. This also has a few templates you could choose from to make it even simpler for you and help you start out, or you could choose to create a Custom edit for a blank canvas, giving you free rein with your edit.
AI Auto lets AI create your montage for you, allowing you to also type in a prompt or idea for your video, which in turn, creates a complete video for you, including music and transitions. You are also shown even more templates after the video is created, so you could change the theme if you aren’t fully satisfied with it. The aspect ratio can also be changed before or after the AI editor creates your video. All in all, it’s a bonus to have multiple features that could help you with editing your photos and videos, especially since it allows you to create within the Gallery app without having to download a separate collage or video editor application on your phone.
There are even more creative possibilities when it comes to post-processing your images. There are different AI Creativity Assistant tools like AI Erase Pro and AI Beautify, available when editing your photos within the phone. If you want to delve into the photo manipulation side of things, you could even change the sky under the Create mode, which changes the time of day or weather of the captured scene. This does a bit well in some photos but just take note that it doesn’t always look realistic.
Likewise, you could also change the Bokeh (which I found to perform quite well), as well as change between different filters and watermarks for even more customizability. It is important to note that some of these features require you to sign in with a Xiaomi account and may need you to have an active internet connection.
Performance
For those who enjoy streaming services and watching content, as well as for mobile gaming enthusiasts, the performance in this phone can be more than enough for what you may need. Its Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip and advanced 4nm 5G processor could give you a smooth gameplay and performance, especially on top of the device’s fast refresh rate. This allows you to efficiently browse, stream, and game within your portable handheld device. It is available in 8GB+256GB or 12GB+512GB if you would prefer even stronger performance.
To test its performance to a great extent, I downloaded and played “Where Winds Meet,” which is a new, highly demanding, open-world action-RPG that contains high-graphics that need good hardware to run the game smoothly.
Even with all visual and graphic settings set to high, the phone still managed to operate the game really well. The phone was easily able to handle all the combat scenes smoothly, showcasing the high-end specs that the POCO M8 Pro 5G is capable of. I didn’t notice any significant stutters in my gameplay, even while watching a Youtube video at the exact same time by using its multitasking feature.
Everything felt responsive, although there was one minimal moment during my gameplay where a combat move that I did, took a split second to register. The only other fleeting moment occurred during a cut scene. This may have been due to my choice of having it played at 3x speed (with a message subsequently popping up suggesting to keep it at the normal speed), as well as the game informing that it was automatically stopping background downloading. Both of these were suggested in-game in order to improve gaming performance.
However, it is also important to note that all of this was tested while all the graphic settings were set to high. This means that lowering some of the quality settings and enhancing the touch controls with the phone’s dedicated Game Turbo sidebar can optimize the performance even more.
Additionally, even with the game’s high-spec requirements, it still powers through and only barely makes the device warm to the touch. This aligns with the POCO M Series introducing their POCO IceLoop Cooling System — a heat dissipation system to help with performance stability in sustained entertainment sessions — in this device for the first time. However, the game did give a warning that it was using a high device load and overheating, despite the minimal warmth. With that, tinkering with the settings can enhance gaming performance and efficiency even more.
I also played another demanding game to test out the Game Turbo settings, placing it on Performance mode instead of Normal mode. This resulted in a constant 60fps and I did not notice any stutters or lags in my gameplay. I also found the phone to be very responsive to my controls. This further supports that the POCO M8 Pro 5G can easily handle mobile gaming.
OS and UI
The device is powered by Xiaomi HyperOS. It has a nice minimalistic interface with circular icons that give off a clean and modern aesthetic. It supports NFC, allowing you access to contactless options, and an IR blaster to control different compatible household appliances with your phone. You could also choose between Fingerprint unlock, Face unlock, Pattern unlock or Unlock with Bluetooth device (or have all of them enabled at the same time) for more options when unlocking your device. You are also able to multitask by having a pop out window of the desired application while simultaneously using another application below it. You could even do this while gaming (as mentioned above) and have instant access to the apps with a quick swipe to view the game bar.
Customization can be further done to the POCO M8 Pro 5G’s user interface to allow you to personalize your device even more. You are able to choose between numerous different free or paid fonts, icon colors, themes and widgets for your phone. A lot of these options look really good and can completely change the look, vibe, and visual style that you would like your phone to have.
I personally enjoyed looking through the different themes and choosing what I would prefer. Your wallpaper could also be a video which makes your lock screen look even more dynamic. Take note, you are also able to choose to watch ads in order to gain access to a specific theme you may like without having to spend for it, which is what I did with the theme of my choice.
A small downside is that this phone does come in with a lot of pre-installed software. This led to some confusion on my end when searching for specific apps and games to download and seeing them unavailable, before realizing that I was using the Game Center app that came with the phone. These also include other applications like Mi Video and Mi Browser already downloaded on top of Google’s applications and other video apps, leading to a redundancy of apps, as well as a number of pre-installed games.
However, this bloatware could easily be removed if you prefer to not keep them and improve the device’s storage, battery life, and performance. Ads also may show up often when opening or using specific apps, so consider that if it may bother you or be something of concern. On the other hand, you may choose to avoid or delete those specific apps to remove this possible issue.
AI
Aside from the photo and video editing features with AI Creativity Assistant, there are also a few other AI features that can help you with your productivity within the phone. Google Gemini and Circle to Search with Google help make searching for something on the internet even faster and more seamlessly integrated within your phone.
Battery and charging
The POCO M8 Pro 5G ports an impressive 6500mAh (typ) battery, big enough to match the POCO F8 Ultra’s battery, as well as deliver a 27% larger capacity than the previous generation, all without adding extra bulk to the device. This allows the phone to last up to a couple of days at moderate use. Even after playing demanding titles on the phone, I also noticed that it depletes the battery at a slow rate.
It also supports 100W HyperCharge through a USB Type-C port which can be done with the included power adaptor. I noted in my testing that it increases the device’s charge by 50% in just 30 minutes. The POCO M8 Pro 5G also gives up to 22.5W reverse charging, allowing its high-capacity battery to charge your other devices, lessening your worry of losing a charge when you’re out and about.
With the charging speeds taking you less than an hour and a battery life that could reach up to two days, this phone is more than capable for one’s daily needs without having to worry often about a low battery status.
Verdict
The POCO M8 Pro 5G is a good choice for users on a budget wanting a good entertainment experience on a phone that is more than capable for everyday use. As laid out above, despite the phone’s slim and sleek profile, it does not compromise its battery life, features, and all-around performance. Ideal for those who are heavy media consumers, mobile gaming enthusiasts, or even just users who appreciate a phone that lasts long on a single quick charge, built into a durable phone with a decent camera, this POCO M8 Pro 5G may be the phone that you are looking for.
The POCO M8 Pro 5G is available in two variants: 8GB + 256GB (PHP 13,149 promo price from PHP 16,999), and 12GB + 512GB (PHP 15,899 promo price from PHP 19,999).
