A solid mid-range smartphone with a flagship-grade performance.
POCO is one of the best smartphone manufacturers present in the budget and mid-range segment of smartphones where the main focus has always been towards the best performance in each segment. With the POCO X series, POCO had a huge sale in the market last year thus surpassing many brands in the market. Last year we had the POCO X5 Pro (Review) which was a solid put-together smartphone with all the bells and whistles.
It bought in some of the best specifications for its price and similarly, with its successor i.e. POCO X6 Pro, there are a huge amount of expectations. Now talking about the POCO X6 Pro, it brings a similar polycarbonate back but you get a newer and powerful MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra chipset, a 64MP triple camera setup, a 120Hz AMOLED display, a 5000mAh battery and much more.
Now it is also one of the first smartphones to run the newer Xiaomi's HyperOS based on Android 14 which is a big improvement over previous iterations of MIUI. Like the POCO F1 which launched in 2018 blew the competition with its specifications, can this newer POCO X6 Pro create the same ambience and is it a true flagship killer?
Let's find out in the full review.
POCO X6 Pro Design:
In terms of design, POCO has always stuck to its larger camera module at the back like all POCO smartphones so here you get a larger rectangular camera module that houses the triple cameras with an LED flashlight and POCO logo under which there is the 64MP OIS print is present which means that the main camera is of 64MP and has OIS.
This design at the back may be liked or disliked and it is slightly different from its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro where the rectangular module was divided into two halves with one half housing the triple cameras with LED flashlight and the second half having the POCO logo. The camera module on the POCO X6 Pro is not much protruded which is good.
Unlike the POCO X5 Pro which had a flat back, this one is all curved around the sides and fits in easily in the hands. The POCO X6 Pro is available in three different colours - POCO Yellow, Spectre Black and Racing Grey where if you choose the yellow colour, the back has a leather finish and is the signature colour of most POCO smartphones thus making it look much more attractive.
However, the grey and the black colour variants have a polycarbonate finish with a glossy finish that catches a lot of fingerprints. The POCO X6 Pro has an IP54 rating which makes it splash and dust resistant. Around the sides, there is a polycarbonate frame running all around which houses the power button with the volume buttons on the right whereas the left side remains completely clean without any controls.
At the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grille, a dual SIM card slot and a primary microphone whereas on the top, there is a secondary noise-canceling microphone, an IR Blaster and a secondary loudspeaker also. The POCO X6 Pro weighs around 186 grams and is thicker at 8.3mm which makes it slightly thicker than the 7.9mm thickness of its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro.
However, with the POCO X6 Pro, you do miss out on the 3.5mm headphone jack as present on its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro. On the front, the POCO X6 Pro like its predecessor has a single punch-hole display with the punch-hole located at the centre to the top but now the bezels are much slimmer also making it look stunning.
In terms of protection, the front display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Overall, the build and design feel good but the inclusion of a glass back would have made it premium compared to the polycarbonate build.
POCO X6 Pro Display:
The POCO X6 Pro sports a larger 6.67-inches 1.5K (1220x2772 pixels) AMOLED display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9 and just like its predecessor, this one also has a 10-bit display which has great viewing angles and good colour reproduction. The POCO X6 Pro has a 120Hz refresh rate which is an adaptive one where you get two different settings to choose from - Custom and Default.
If you choose the Custom mode, you can only switch between two different modes - 60Hz or 120Hz whereas setting it to Default, the display switches between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz or 120Hz depending on the content in the display. Combined with this, POCO has also doubled the touch sampling rate at 480Hz compared to its predecessor which will provide smooth scrolling and faster touch response while gaming.
In terms of brightness levels, the display of the POCO X6 Pro can now reach a peak brightness of 1800nits which is doubled from 900nits of peak brightness on the POCO X5 Pro. The normal brightness is somewhere around 600-800nits and has good visibility under direct sunlight. In terms of colour reproduction, there are three different modes to choose from - Original, P3 and sRGB.
If you set the display to Original mode, it produces punchier colours and similarly is the case with P3 also. Switching to sRGB provides a balanced colour look with not-so-punchier colours and slightly off-white colours on the display. The display of the POCO X6 Pro has support for Dolby Vision which provides great contrast while watching the content in Netflix with vivid colours.
Apart from there you also have support for HDR10 on YouTube and there is Widevine L1, so you can stream all HDR content on OTT platforms easily. The POCO X6 Pro is also the first POCO smartphone that now comes with an optical in-display fingerprint scanner instead of the physical power button-mounted fingerprint scanner and works accurately and is faster.
Overall, the display of the POCO X6 Pro is great for multi-media consumption.
POCO X6 Pro Performance:
The POCO X6 Pro brings a powerful and flagship grade Mediatek Dimensity 8300 Ultra chipset which has: a 1x3.35GHz Cortex-A715 core and 3x3.20GHz Cortex-A715 cores with another 4x2.20GHz Cortex-A510 cores combined with a powerful Mali G615-MC6 GPU and is built on an efficient 4nm process. This chipset is one of the best chipsets in terms of gaming and performance.
In terms of daily tasks, whether scrolling through web pages, playing games, or other daily activities, the smartphone handles everything easily without breaking a sweat. In terms of gaming, all heavy games like BGMI, Call Of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, etc. can easily run at the highest graphics settings without any such frame drops.
In BGMI, the smartphone could smoothly run at Ultra frame rates and HDR graphics and also Smooth graphics and 90fps frame rates easily thus delivering a flagship-level gaming experience. After longer hours of gaming i.e. 3-4 hours, the back of the smartphone does not heat at all which means thermals are well under control and the dedicated vapour cooling system underneath works really well.
When it comes to benchmarks, the scores are the best in class thus even surpassing the scores in smartphones that have the powerful Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset which is the 2022 flagship chipset whether it is in Geekbench 6 or Antutuv9. The scores come out much closer to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset so definitely when it comes to benchmarks and gaming, this is a solid competitor to flagships.
In terms of the CPU throttling test, the smartphone could achieve a sustained performance of around 75-80 per cent which is good with minimal throttling present. When it comes to network connectivity, there is support for 14 bands of 5G and also you get support for good carrier aggregation. The POCO X6 Pro is available in two different variants - 8/12GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256/512GB storage with UFS 4.0 speeds.
It is one of the first smartphones in this mid-range segment that has faster UFS 4.0 storage speeds. Overall, the smartphone is a boon in terms of gaming and performance.
POCO X6 Pro Software:
The POCO X6 Pro is the first smartphone which introduces the newer MIUI-based HyperOS with Android 14 out of the box. The newer HyperOS brings a host of changes and also introduces some newer features over MIUI. The significant changes include the newer Control Center which now has no text labels, and then there are newer lock screens where you now get newer clock styles for Always-on Display.
Also, there are newer lock screen wallpapers along with magazine effect wallpapers. Then there is the newer font called HySans, a newer multi-window look is present, the large folders are present which are of two types - Enlarged and XXL, and now the task switcher or multitasker can be scrolled vertically instead of horizontally on previous MIUI versions.
Now some of the Pixel features are also trickling down to HyperOS where you can cut out subjects from a photo inside the gallery app, then there is the dynamic island implementation like whenever the smartphone is silent or in vibration mode it throws notifications on top of the display just like in iOS in iPhones. Other than that there is some amount of bloatware present which can be uninstalled easily.
There are a lot of in-house applications like Gallery, Music, player, Videos, File Manager, Security application, Mi Remote, and a Mi Browser present. There is also a Game Turbo application which increases the fps during gaming, shows pop-ups of messages during gaming and also cuts unnecessary/spam calls during gaming.
In terms of software updates, the POCO X6 Pro will receive another three years of AndroidOS updates and four years of security updates which is a good improvement over its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro.
POCO X6 Pro Cameras:
The POCO X6 Pro sports a triple camera setup that houses a 64MP f/1.7 Omnivision OV64B sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera. This camera setup does seem to be a slight downgrade compared to its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro which had a 108MP main camera. On the front, the POCO X6 Pro has a 16MP f/2.4 camera for selfies.
The main camera captures a good amount of details and you get a good dynamic range with a good level of sharpness but the colours look close to natural without any oversharpening which is really good. However, there is a larger amount of shadow noise which is not under control. You also get 2x lossless zoom which comes out with sharper details and good dynamic range but has some amount of noise present.
At night, the main camera does a decent job in terms of details as they look slightly softer and there is a lot of noise in the background present. The dynamic range comes out to be average but the colours look natural and do not look overshapened which is a good thing. However, all these images have been taken using the Night Mode which is triggered automatically but the details in the shadows look crushed.
At 2x lossless zoom, the details look good but there is a huge amount of noise present and a lot of oversharpening takes place with just the average dynamic range. But still, these zoom images are good, not extraordinary. In terms of the ultrawide camera, the images from it during daylight come out with a decent level of detail and good dynamic range with somewhat less noise in the background.
However, there is some distortion around the edges but you get a larger 120-degree field of view. The colours look good but there is slight oversharpening present at times. At night, the ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of details that look softer and there is a huge amount of noise present in the background. The dynamic range is just average and so are the colours which look slightly muted in the dark.
Now moving to the macro camera, the macro images came out with average details and colours that look washed out with poor dynamic range and since it is a fixed focus camera, it cannot go so close for a clear focus. There is a larger amount of noise present in the background in these macro images. In terms of portraits, the main camera does a good job in terms of details and has a good dynamic range.
The edge detection is perfect and you get a perfect background blur with proper separation of the subject from the rest of the background. The skin tones look natural in the portraits and even while taking human photos, the main camera does a good job in terms of details and has great dynamic range.
In terms of selfies, the front camera takes some selfies with a good amount of details that look sharper.
However, the dynamic range is not so consistent and skin tones are not so natural with some oversharpening present in the background. The noise is less though and in terms of selfie portraits, the edge detection comes out average and details look slightly softer also. When it comes to videos, the main camera can record 4K videos at 30fps which comes out with good details and dynamic range.
Since there is EIS present, the videos come out with good stabilization with very little noise in the background but the white balance is not so stable and the colours look slightly muted at times but still do not make much of a difference. The ultrawide camera can only record 1080p videos at 30fps with average details and dynamic range with a larger amount of noise in the background.
The 1080p videos at 60fps from the main camera come out with sharper details and have great contrast and EIS works here perfectly. The colours look saturated without any kind of oversharpening. The front camera can record 1080p videos at 30fps which come out with good details and have skin tones that look natural with less noise in the background.
POCO X6 Pro Battery Life:
The POCO X6 Pro sports a 5000mAh battery which is similar sized to one on its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro. With normal usage and the display set to Default, the smartphone easily lasts for two days with some battery left which is primarily due to the efficient chipset which is built on a 4nm process. The standard screen on time with normal usage comes around 6-7 hours which is very good.
With heavy multitasking which includes taking images and videos using the cameras, playing games like COD Mobile, BGMI, etc. for 3-4 hours, rendering the videos, running benchmarks, etc. the smartphone could easily last for one single day with some battery left. The standard screen on time comes around 3-3.5 hours with heavy usage.
In terms of charging, the POCO X6 Pro sports a 67W fast charging with the 67W fast charger included inside the box that takes around 45-50 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 per cent which is slightly faster than the POCO X5 Pro.
POCO X6 Pro Audio Quality:
The POCO X6 Pro sports a dual stereo speaker setup which consists of a set of speakers at the bottom and also on the top which together provide a stereo sound which has a good level of bass and loudness levels are good. There is Dolby Atmos for enhanced sound output also. However, you do miss out on a 3.5mm headphone jack which was present on its predecessor i.e. the POCO X5 Pro.
Verdict:
The POCO X6 Pro is a solid all-rounder which can give a tough fight to many of its competitors from different brands in the mid-range segment in terms of specifications. The biggest highlight of this smartphone is in terms of performance and gaming with the newer MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra chipset which would make many higher-end smartphones go into admiration.
Other than the performance, the design looks good, the 120Hz AMOLED display with Dolby Vision support and a set of stereo speakers provide a great immersive multimedia experience, then the software experience is much better now with the newer HyperOS, the battery life is great with support for faster charging and the cameras are good.
However, there are some areas where the POCO X6 Pro could have been slightly better. When it comes to cameras, the main camera struggles with low light performance and the front camera is not so well optimized, the back is still made up of polycarbonate, and then if you want a clean software experience, HyperOS is not the option as it has bloatware present.
On an overall basis, if you are focusing mainly towards the cameras, then this might not be the right smartphone but other than this it combines all the right specifications for a great all-rounder and will many hearts.
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