The Poco F8 Pro Review: Flagship Thrills Without the Premium

The Poco F8 Ultra is the sub-brand’s new flagship-class entry, sporting Qualcomm’s best and brightest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, a huge 6.9-inch display, and 2.1-channel Bose-tuned audio, with a built-in subwoofer – but it didn’t launch alone.

Arriving alongside it, the Poco F8 Pro also embodies the brand’s penchant for affordable power but in a more compact form and with an even lower price tag.

It’s only been eight months since the Poco F7 series dropped, so you’d hope this next generation had some noteworthy upgrades to shout about. While it’s clear that the Ultra takes the cake – with Poco framing the phone as its first true all-round flagship – the F8 Pro builds more directly on the foundation of the Poco F7 Ultra. It features the same chip but matches it with new display tech, better audio, improved cameras, faster charging, and Xiaomi’s latest HyperOS user experience.

Design & Build

• Glass-backed design
• 199 grams
• IP68 rated

Given how often copycats crop up in the mobile space, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Poco saw the iPhone 17 Pro‘s broad new camera plateau and figured that was the element to crib to define the look of the F8 series. But wind the clock back further and you’ll see that it’s essentially the other way around.

Both the iPhone and the F8 Pro follow in the footsteps of last year’s Poco F6 Pro. Although this model has a more squared-off form, it otherwise looks a lot like its 2025 successor.

The F8 Pro features more curves than the F6 Pro, especially the corners of its frame and camera island, all of which sport matching radii for a balanced, premium look. The edges of that straight-sided aluminum frame also feature some generous rounding, meaning it’s plenty comfortable in the hand, even if that makes it look thick (it’s still only 8mm) in this year of super-slim smartphones.

It’s one of the most grown-up looking and refined of the brand’s phones I’ve handled

While it isn’t as exciting to look at as some previous Poco entries, it’s one of the most grown-up looking and refined of the brand’s phones I’ve handled. For once, there’s no signature bright yellow colorway, but instead three muted tones, in black, Titanium Silver (pictured) and (pale) blue.

What also helps give the phone a premium feel is its milled glass back which, despite a pleasing surface contrast of diffuse and reflective finishes, is a single piece, giving it a cleaner look. It’s a first for the brand.

The mirror-like portion surrounding the camera has the potential to help frame up rear-sensor selfies too, but it smudges easily. It’s also the only section of the phone’s back that’s exposed when you slap on the included dark grey TPU case.

Tactile metal buttons are easily accessible along the phone’s right side, and underneath lies the SIM slot. But this model and the F8 Ultra both embrace a long-requested Poco feature in the form of eSIM support. IP68 water and dust resistance carries over from the F7 series as well.

Screen & Speakers

• 6.59in 120Hz Poco HyperRGB Display
• Protected by Gorilla Glass 7i
• Stereo speakers w/ Bose-tuned audio

At 6.9-inches, the Poco F7 Ultra boasts one of the largest-ever displays on a Xiaomi phone. By comparison, the F8 Pro’s 6.59-inch panel is far more compact and pocketable, even if that is at the expense of immersion.

Not only is it set within one of the thinnest bezels we’ve ever seen on a Poco phone (again, aiding the phone’s premium feel), but the F8 series debuts the company’s new HyperRGB Display tech.

The clarity and sharpness of the Poco F7 Ultra’s screen and that of the Galaxy S25 Ultra were comparable

It apparently uses an unconventional sub-pixel structure, paired with a new M10 material (which the company states has 11.4% improved luminance efficiency), to offer better clarity than a conventional PenTile display while using 22.3% less power than the screens found on the F7 line.

In real-world terms, the company claims that its tech delivers the clarity of a 2K OLED screen, despite only using a 1.5K panel, and in side-by-side comparisons with the sharpest phone I had to hand – the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (498ppi versus the Pro’s 419ppi) – I’d have to agree.

Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd

Aside from a visible difference in pixel structure under magnification, the clarity and sharpness of the Poco F7 Ultra’s screen and that of the Galaxy S25 Ultra were comparable. Under scrutiny, font serifs look just as sharp, with the panel’s wider contrast, color, and brightness proving excellent as well.

The F8 Pro’s panel supports 12-bit color depth and a peak brightness output of 3500nits (with a panel-wide peak of 2000nits), meaning it’s a great choice for enjoying HDR content. The ability to drop down to just 1-nit and ‘all-day’ DC dimming help with eye comfort in low light scenarios, paired with some assistive viewing features in the phone’s settings, such as Reading Mode.

As for touch response (how fast the screen reacts to your touch inputs), the phone defaults to 480Hz most of the time but has a dedicated 2560Hz boosted option for lightning-fast, precision response when gaming (via the OS’s Game Turbo overlay).

Practically speaking, I never ran into tangible input lag or frame drops swiping around the general UI, while Poco’s gaming optimizations here led to a rare winning streak when I settled into successive rounds of Call of Duty: Mobile.