The POCO X5 Pro 5G comes across as an iterative upgrade to the POCO X4 Pro smartphone (Review), which was one of the most promising smartphones under Rs 20,000 last year. The new X5 Pro 5G has the same general shape and size as its predecessor, but the handset comes with a new chipset and slightly better camera setup. There are other minor improvements to the phone as well, which you’ll find out about in the POCO X5 Pro 5G review below. So, without any further ado, let’s get started:
Decision
The POCO X5 Pro 5G might not be setting new benchmarks, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a capable smartphone. Despite its older chipset, the handset doesn’t disappoint with its performance at all. It also offers a decent viewing experience with its rich AMOLED screen and stereo speakers, while the cameras are more or less at par with its competitors. The battery life of the phone seems a bit short for a 5G device, but the 67W fast charging solution makes up for it.
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- Design wise, it hasn’t changed much for the new POCO X-series smartphones. The POCO X5 Pro 5G still rocks the same flat edges and a centered punch-hole display as it was introduced last year. Even the placement of ports, buttons and stereo speakers have remained unchanged. The 3.5mm headphone jack is inconveniently placed on the top edge of the smartphone, along with the speaker grille and IR blaster. The bottom edge houses a USB Type-C port between the secondary speaker grill and the SIM ejector tray. All buttons are on the right side of the handset, with the power button rocking a fingerprint scanner, which unlocks the device in a jiffy.
- This is not to say that the POCO X5 Pro 5G looks exactly like its predecessor. Poco has made a slight change to give a new look to the back panel of the handset. The X5 Pro 5G now comes with frosty glass on the back instead of glossy which does a good job of hiding fingerprints and smudges. Also, there is no big camera bump. It has been replaced by a smaller rectangular module that houses the triple cameras and an LED flash. The module has a glossy finish which extends to the POCO branding and gives the phone a nice contrast look. That said, the X5 Pro’s camera juts out quite a bit from the frame and makes the device wobbly when lying flat on a surface. Be that as it may, the smartphone is well built. It features a plastic unibody design that does not crack or flex when applied under pressure. The handset is also almost slim and light which makes it feel comfortable in the hand. The thickness of the phone is 7.9mm and 181 grams. There is also an IP53 rating for dust and splash protection.
- The POCO X5 Pro 5G also shares some traits with the X4 Pro in the performance department. The 6.67-inch AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection, FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080p) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and DCI-P3 wide color gamut remains unchanged. However, POCO claims that the X5 Pro 5G has thinner bezels than the previous generation X-series offering. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support is available in the handset for true-to-life picture quality. Additionally, the display can display over 1 billion colors through 10-bit technology and a high 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio. All that translates to an ultra-immersive viewing experience with life-like colors and deep blacks. The POCO smartphone is also Widevine L1 certified. The handset can stream content from OTT platforms in FHD resolution.
- Viewing angles are also excellent on this device, while the 120Hz refresh rate makes the UI and supported apps feel smooth. The refresh rate on the POCO X5 Pro 5G can either dynamically adjust depending on the content played on the screen to reduce power consumption or stay locked in preferred settings between 60Hz and 120Hz. I wish the handset also had 90Hz refresh rate support, but other than that, it’s an excellent screen for viewing both indoors and outdoors. The display is paired with Dolby Atmos-enabled stereo speakers, which are loud and balanced for consuming multimedia content and playing games. Also, the audio setup barely distorts at maximum volume.
- The Snapdragon 778G SoC is ticking the POCO X5 Pro 5G. It is a 6nm chipset with eight Kyro 670 cores and 2.4GHz clock speed. The chipset is supported by Adreno 642L GPU and 6GB/8GB RAM + 3GB Virtual RAM. As far as storage is concerned, the phone packs up to 256GB of UFS 2.2 ROM onboard, which is not user-expandable. Hence, choose the variant wisely. With that out of the way, let’s talk about performance. Syntactically, the handset outperformed some MediaTek Dimensity 1080 SoC-powered phones in the price range. The device scored 5,25,085 on AnTuTu, while its Geekbench 5 multi-core score was 2,943. Additionally, there was no performance throttle when running 50 threads for half an hour on the CPU Throttle test. As impressive as this may sound, I did notice a slight warmth to the 12-layer graphite’s cooling phone. But you have to understand that the device was pushed to its limits, and some thermal issues were inevitable.
- In daily use, the handset did not heat up at all in Delhi’s February weather. The two-year-old chipset handled everything thrown at it with aplomb. Free Fire Max ran smoothly on ‘Ultra’ graphics and ‘Normal’ resolution smartphone, while multi-tasking, with a dozen Chrome tabs open and a bunch of apps running in the background, worked like a charm. My only qualm with the POCO X5 Pro is that it doesn’t have Qualcomm’s latest mid-range Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC. The SoC is more power and battery-efficient than the Snapdragon 778G chipset. This intrigues me about the battery life of the POCO X5 Pro.
- The POCO X5 Pro packs a 5,000mAh battery, the same as last year; However, its PC Mark 3.0 Battery Benchmark test score was quite low. The handset could only return a score of 12 hours and 15 minutes. To give you some perspective, the POCO X4 Pro scored 16 hours 57 minutes in the same test. Be that as it may, the handset lasted me close to a day between charges, which included going through email, checking Slack, streaming an episode or two of a web series, playing games, and browsing. I didn’t have to plug the phone in to charge before sleeping. The good thing is that the X5 Pro has a 67W fast charging solution, which takes about 45 minutes to reach full charge without a single charge.
- In terms of optics, the POCO X5 Pro 5G packs triple rear cameras that include a 108MP Samsung ISOCELL HM2 primary sensor paired with an 8MP ultra-wide lens and a 2MP macro sensor, while the front camera is a 16MP shooter. The 108MP sensor captures images in 12MP resolution by default. The results looked good in a sunny and bright environment. Images captured had ample detail, and there were hardly any issues with the sensor’s shutter speed and focus. That said, the HDR on the POCO X5 Pro saturates the colors a bit too much. This makes images more likeable and ready for social media, which is what most people want, but not ‘photophiles’. The latter group might not like the handset’s extra processing, where RGB is boosted to make images more vibrant and functional. Furthermore, the 108MP sensor creates a shallow depth of field, which blurs the background when the subject gets closer. The sensor’s lowlight photography wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but the results were usable. Night mode does a good job of brightening up the image while keeping noise levels down and preserving key details.
- The X5 Pro 5G uses a typical 8MP ultra-wide lens for landscape shots found in other budget and mid-range smartphones. The lens offers a wider 120-degree field of view (FOV) than the primary camera. However, due to its smaller sensor size, images appeared gloomy due to the low dynamic range and contrast ratio even in daylight. The colors were also looking dull. The sensor performed average in low light. Also, the phone uses a 2MP macro shooter, which does a decent job of capturing close-up subjects. This is true as long as there is an adequate light source and frame stability. The X5 Pro doesn’t have a dedicated depth sensor, but it does have a software-based portrait mode that delivers impressive results with the 108MP primary camera. Edge detection and background blur both work like a charm. The phone’s front-facing 16MP sensor captured selfies with good facial detailing and accurate skin tones when the sun was out. However, the portrait mode of the sensor was hit-and-miss as it had a bit of trouble with edge detection.
- In terms of software, the POCO X5 Pro runs the latest custom skin MIUI 14 running on the slightly dated Android 12 OS out of the box. Like previous MIUI builds, the new custom Android skin is also free of ads. The phone has some pre-installed apps, but they can be uninstalled. That said, most of the MIUI 14 features are missing on the POCO X5 Pro, while the animation and UI look pretty similar to the 13. This may be due to Android 12. Once Android 13 is rolled out, the device may get all the features of MIUI 14. POCO has promised two years of major software and three years of security updates for the X5 Pro smartphone. The 5G-enabled smartphone supports seven bands in India and is compatible with both Airtel 5G and Jio 5G networks.
final call
The POCO X5 Pro 5G doesn’t come cheap, and the handset is the costliest X-series smartphone in India so far. But this should not come as a surprise to you as handset prices across all segments have been on the rise lately. The X5 Pro 5G competes with the Realme 10 Pro Plus (Review), with which it shares a lot in common. However, the Realme smartphone runs Android 13 out of the box, which is not the case with the POCO phones. The X5 Pro also lags behind in the camera department, with a 108MP HM2 primary sensor instead of the latest 108MP HM6 sensor.
That being said, the POCO X5 Pro does a better job than its counterpart in the performance and performance departments. The handset also has a decent audio setup to go along with that beautiful screen. What’s more, the smartphone is more affordable than the Realme 10 Pro Plus. These things make the POCO X5 Pro 5G smartphone a good buy for its price, at least for now. The handset is selling in India for Rs 22,999 for the 6GB RAM variant, while the 8GB RAM option costs Rs 24,999.
Editor’s rating: 3.5 / 5
pros
- thin and light
- Lovely AMOLED Screen
- stereo speakers
- decent battery life
Shortcoming
- The wobble of the protruding rear camera is annoying
- Chipset could have been better
- runs Android 12 out of the box
