Can the POCO F4 able to set the benchmark in the market?
POCO, a sub-brand of Xiaomi had a good start with the launch of its first smartphone i.e. POCO F1 packed in some very good specifications like a powerful Snapdragon 845 chipset and much more. Last year we had the POCO F3 GT (Review) that targeted gamers and brought in the powerful Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset, a gaming-centric design and a great set of cameras.
While there are a lot of offerings from different brands like Xiaomi, iQOO, Realme, OnePlus, etc in the premium mid-range segment, POCO stepped up into this segment this year with the POCO F4 that seems to be a true value-for-money premium mid-ranger as we see it has some very good specifications like a 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset, good set of cameras and much more.
So will the POCO F4 raise the bar for itself and would it hold the respect as that of the POCO F1 we had in the past? Let's find out in the full review.
POCO F4 Design:
In terms of build and design, the POCO F4 sports a glass sandwich design where you get Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the front for protection and on the back there is a glossy finish that does catch a lot of fingerprints. The back has a reflective pattern that does shine when light strikes the back. The back like the Xiaomi 11i Hypercharge (Review) is flatter without any curves except for the corners.
The camera module is slightly different here compared to other smartphones as you get a rectangular camera module where the cameras are arranged in a circular pattern which houses the triple cameras with the main 64MP camera on the top, the secondary 8MP ultrawide and 2MP camera just sit below the main camera. Below all these cameras, there is a single strip of LED flashlight.
The camera module does protrude slightly and you can feel that when the smartphone is kept on a flatter surface. Around the sides, a polycarbonate frame houses the power button and the volume buttons on the right side whereas the left side remains completely cleaner. At the top is a secondary noise cancelling microphone, a speaker setup and IR Blaster to control various devices.
Coming to the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a primary microphone, a loudspeaker grille and a dual SIM card slot and there is neither a dedicated slot for a microSD card for storage nor there is room for any 3.5mm headphone jack. Around the sides, the POCO F4 is 7.7mm thick and weighs around 195grams which makes it slightly heavier while holding it in your hands.
At the back, POCO F4 has an IP53 rating, making it splash and dust resistant. On the front, there is a single punch hole display with minimum bezels around the display and the punch hole is very much smaller in size compared to other smartphones on the market. Overall the build and design feel really premium on the POCO F4.
POCO F4 Display:
On the front, the POCO F4 sports a larger 6.67-inches Full HD+(1080x2400 pixels) E4 AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. Since this is an AMOLED display, you get great colour reproduction and viewing angles look very good. This display has support for 120Hz refresh rate which makes it much smoother while scrolling and multi-tasking between the applications.
Here the refresh rate has two different options - Custom and Default. Talking about the refresh rate, the 120Hz refresh rate is a dynamic one when kept at 120Hz, the refresh rate switches between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz depending on the application in usage on the display. This has been implemented to save battery life and also you can constantly keep it at standard 60Hz to save more battery life.
Combined with the 120Hz refresh rate, you get a massive 360Hz touch sampling rate which provides much faster touch responses while scrolling through webpages or playing games. In terms of display brightness, since this is an E4 AMOLED panel, it can reach a peak brightness of 1300nits which is very good and this display has good visibility under direct sunlight.
The colour temperature of the display can be set as there are three different settings - Vivid, Saturated and Standard where if the colour temperature is set to Vivid provides punchier colours and covers the DCI-P3 gamut whereas setting it to Standard results in natural colours on the display and it also covers the sRGB scale. There is also an Advanced setting where you can choose between sRGB and DCI-P3.
Since this is an AMOLED display, you do miss out on an in-display fingerprint scanner so you have the side-mounted one where the power button doubles up as a fingerprint scanner and it works very fast but still at times it is not accurate. There is support for Widevine L1 so you can stream HD content on OTT platforms and also support for HDR on YouTube.
Currently, Netflix supports HDR10 content and also you get Dolby Vision support for a better watching experience. Other features include an AI Image Engine and MEMC where the display uses frame interpolation and converts a low frame rate video to a higher frame rate video thus making the streaming smoother. Overall, the POCO F4 is a great smartphone for multimedia experience in this price segment.
POCO F4 Performance:
The POCO F4 sports a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset that has been considered one of the best stable performing flagship chipsets compared to many other more powerful Snapdragon 888 or the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. Since you have the Snapdragon 870 under the hood, daily performance feels really good in all the tasks and also gaming experience is very good.
However, in some tasks like switching between applications, there were some minor stutters or lags noticed which was slightly disappointing. In games like BGMI, the smartphone could easily run on Smooth and HDR graphics with Extreme frame rates without any lags or stutters. There are no lags or stutters as such during the gameplay.
POCO has provided a Gaming Mode which also shows the CPU and GPU usage and blocks incoming messages and calls during gameplay thus ensuring a smoother experience. After long hours of gaming, the back of the smartphone did not feel much warm as there is a vapour cooling chamber underneath which is made up of 7 layers of graphite sheets thus helping dissipate heat much faster.
In terms of benchmarks, the scores came out good but still if you compare it with other Snapdragon 870 chipset-powered smartphones, the scores are very lower. In terms of the CPU throttling test, the POCO F4 could easily maintain a sustained performance of around 85-90 per cent which is excellent and no thermal throttling was noticed.
The POCO F4 is available in two different storage variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5 RAM with 128/256GB storage with UFS 3.1 speeds. In terms of network connectivity, there is support for good carrier aggregation and you have support for 10 bands of 5G. Overall, the gaming experience and performance remain excellent.
POCO F4 Software:
Like all POCO smartphones, the POCO F4 also runs on MIUI 13 based on Android 12 out of the box. MIUI 13 does not feel like much of an upgrade over MIUI 12 as you get the same features as the Control Center, and then there is the Always-On display with different styles and a lot of themes available. You can customize the shape and size of icons, and other than this GetApps is present.
All MIUI applications are present like Mi Video, Calculator and File Manager. Now MIUI13 supports Memory expansion by using Dynamic RAM technology where you can extend another 2GB of RAM for better multi-tasking. There is the Sidebar also where you can set all your favourite applications and can use them whenever needed.
However, you do get some bloatware and that can be uninstalled. As it is based on Android 12, the colour in the system gets applied to the settings, quick toggles, etc. depending on the wallpaper but you do miss out on the Android 12 widgets and Privacy Dashboard is also not present where you can see which application is using the camera and microphone.
Overall, the software experience is very good as everything feels polished but the presence of bloatware and lack of features does let it down.
POCO F4 Cameras:
The POCO F4 comes with a triple camera setup that consists of a main 64MP f/1.8 OmniVision OV64B sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. The main camera has support for OIS and the front camera is 20MP f/2.4 having the Sony IMX596 sensor.
The images from the main camera come out with a good amount of detail and dynamic range. The details look sharper and there is very less noise in the background present. The colours look natural without any oversharpening and the contrast looks good. The captured images are saved in 16MP by default and if you take images in 64MP, you get a good level of details but it does apply some crop around.
At night, the main camera does a good job in terms of the level of details that look sharper and the dynamic range is good with good exposure in the surroundings and less noise in the background as the Night Mode automatically triggers while taking images during the night. If you use the Night Mode manually, the images do take some time to process but these images have much better contrast and colours look punchier.
The 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of dynamic range but the level of details does look slightly softer and this can be noticed when you zoom into an image taken by the ultrawide camera. However, the presence of a 119-degree field of view ensures a wider frame but around the edges, there is a lot of distortion present. However, colours come out natural and there is no overexposure in the background.
At night, the ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of details that look slightly softer but the dynamic range is good. There is some oversharpening noticed in the images during the night. The level of noise is present on the slightly higher side and if you do turn on the Night Mode, things do improve as noise gets reduced, dynamic range becomes better and also some oversharpening is reduced.
The 2MP macro camera is just average as it is a fixed focus camera that takes macro images with poor dynamic range, a larger amount of noise and also colours that look washed out. It is better to use the main camera with 2x digital zoom for getting better details and dynamic range. In terms of portraits, the edge detection and dynamic range are very good with proper background blur which can be adjusted accordingly.
In terms of selfies, the 20MP camera does a good job as selfies come out with a good dynamic range and skin tones look natural without any oversharpening and no skin smoothening as such. The details look sharper and the contrast also looks good. In terms of portrait selfies, the details look good and edge detection is on par with the background blur.
In terms of videos, the main camera on the POCO F4 can shoot 4K videos at 60fps and these videos have an excellent level of detail and dynamic range. The colours look natural without any oversharpening and since there is OIS present, the noise is very low in the background. The 1080p videos shot at 60fps come out with a good dynamic range and the colours look natural.
The ultrawide camera can record at 1080p at 30fps which is slightly disappointing as the chipset does allow support for 4K recording on the ultrawide camera. The videos from the ultrawide camera come out with a good level of detail but they do look softer and a lot of noise is present in the background. The front camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps and these videos come out with a good level of detail and dynamic range.
Overall, the cameras are good but could have been slightly better.
POCO F4 Battery Life:
The POCO F4 sports a 4500mAh battery which can easily last for a single day with heavy usage that includes playing games like BGMI, Call Of Duty, etc for longer hours, streaming social media and wifi calling for longer hours and with normal usage, the smartphone easily lasted for two days with some charge left.
The standard screen on time was around 5-6 hours which is not the best considering the Snapdragon 870 chipset that is very efficient. MIUI 13 does not feel much optimized as it kills applications in the memory. In terms of charging speeds, there is support for 67W fast charging and the fast charger is bundled inside the box only.
The 67W fast charger takes around 15 minutes to charge from 0 to 50 per cent and a full charge to 100 per cent takes around 40-45 minutes which is very good. Overall, the battery life could have been better but the charging speeds are very good.
POCO F4 Audio Quality:
The POCO F4 sports a dual stereo speaker setup that sounds louder and the level of clarity is very good from the speakers. The level of bass is very good but at the highest volume settings, there is a slight amount of distortion present. There is also support for Dolby Atmos but you do miss out on a 3.5mm headphone jack but POCO does provide a USB Type-C to 3.5mm converter inside the box.
Verdict:
Overall, the POCO F4 feels like a complete premium mid-range smartphone that brings the best of all things like a premium glass design, a nice 120Hz AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 870 chipset for daily performance and gaming, a good set of cameras and faster-charging speeds. However, there are some areas where it could have been better.
The MIUI 13 though being well polished lacks some basic Android 12 features and has some amount of bloatware, the battery life is not so good and the cameras could have been slightly better. Other than these, the POCO F4 is a good premium mid-range smartphone that can definitely give stiff competition to other smartphones in this segment.
It definitely carries the moniker of the best performance as we have seen in all POCO smartphones.
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