POCO F5 REVIEW: The best gaming phone

The beloved POCO F5 arrived, much more beautiful than the 4, with the latest Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, a processor that beat several top of the line in performance. Is this the best cost benefit of 2023?

When we take the POCO F5 out of the box, what comes inside is a silicone cover, the manuals, 67W charger and USB cable, it’s simple, but the materials used were of good quality.

POCO F5 Review

cameras

In cameras we have a triple set at the rear, with a 64MP stabilized main sensor, an ultrawide lens with an 8MP sensor and finally a macro lens with a 2MP sensor. The selfie camera is 16MP. It has the ability to record 4K videos at 30 fps on the main camera, but the selfie only takes FullHD videos at 60 fps.

Let’s start talking about the 64MP main sensor, it has the best condition for photos. I made some during a sunny day, testing the HDR and how it would behave with different light conditions, check out the photos.

The photos had an excellent result in this regard, where there was low exposure it was high and where the photos were with a lot of light conditions, it was reduced. Even in the photo of Davi, with the red shirt in the sun, we can see a great light attenuation, with few blown spots.

Look at the portrait that the rear camera made, something I really liked, you can see the areas in blue in the photo, they are points where they are at the same distance from the face, leaving the background and areas in the background blurred.

Now see a focus test, first on Davi’s face, the light had better control. When I focused on Buddy, the image needed more exposure because of his dark hair. It ended up bursting the sky in the background, but that’s ok, the image had great sharpness.

Now another photo where I found a problem, or inconsistency. It was in the white balance. Look at this first photo, the fruit tree has green, red and yellow colors. Pay attention to the green apple, now see when I zoomed in to focus only on it. I can say that the color of the first photo is the original, and when there was a lot of area of ​​a single color, the camera did not know how to deal with the white balance and color saturation, everything became opaque.

night photos

Night mode works well, I put it side by side with the Galaxy A54 and check out what the Poco F5 camera is capable of producing:

I really liked the result, now don’t try to take this photo if it’s not in night mode.

ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera does not have the same quality and settings as the main camera, so comparing a 64MP sensor with an 8MP sensor in the same software is not ideal. There is little light in the photos, the colors are different and we also found slight deformation in the corners of the photos due to the wide angle of the lens.

Selfies

The same happens with selfies, the colors are much less saturated, but there is good sharpness in the photos. HDR does not work well on several occasions, so be careful when taking selfies with a bright background.

One thing I liked about the camera software was that the side button by default has a 3s timer, in my view the idea helps more than it hinders. Photo with time is good for you to organize the scene, frame everything and not shake. The part that gets in the way is having to have time every time, to solve this, just click on the button on the screen, in which case the photo will be taken instantly.

Battery

Now let’s talk a little about the battery, with a capacity of 5000mAh, the POCO F5 promises to deliver high autonomy. In the Oficina da Net battery test, where we put the smartphone in seven different scenarios during a period of 7h45min to see if it can handle all that screen time. The idea is to simulate heavy daily use, if at the end of the test it arrives with battery, it is considered a good result.

The POCO F5 completed the entire period and still had 18% battery left. A result that guaranteed him the 12th position in the battery ranking, where we have already analyzed more than 50 smartphones. That is, certainly if you use the cell phone with enough intensity, you will still have battery left over at the end of the day, what I mean is that you will have battery for more than one day.

Its charging time left me embarrassed, it took 50 minutes to complete the charge from 0 to 100%, thanks to the 67W charger that comes in the box.

hardware and performance

In hardware we have Qualcomm’s brand new Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 processor, with a strong core of 2.91GHz. It comes with 8GB of RAM and a single version of 256GB of internal storage.

This processor and memory set did a great job in our tests. In the AnTuTu benchmark, one of the most complete tests, POCO scored 802,459 thousand points, against 673 thousand for the POCO F4. It was better than many high-end smartphones we’ve tested here.

In CPU Throttling, POCO had an average of 292 thousand points, against 202 thousand for POCO F4. I’ll leave here a link to the complete performance ranking, where you can compare cell phones.

POCO F5 in games

In games we have the newest champion, the POCO F5 has beaten all other cell phones already analyzed here on the channel. That’s right, it even beat the mighty S23 Ultra, Edge 30 Ultra and Rog Phone 6. Why did this happen, after all we have a Qualcomm 7 series processor, how does it beat an 8 series? Well, POCO has already shown that it has partnerships with game developers, so much so that only its cell phones managed to reach a performance of 90FPS in Free Fire among the smartphones that we analyzed here on the channel.

PUBG Mobile is another example, hitting the 90FPS mark with 100% stability. In Genshin Impact, one of the heaviest games we reviewed, it did 60FPS with 100% stability, showing that it is capable of running all Google Play games with maximum graphics.

Construction

The smartphone has the construction basically made of plastic and glass, the front is glass and the back and frame are plastic.

The smartphone does not have any protection against water and dust, but on the other hand, it kept the 3.5mm connector, something good for those who like to play games, in addition to the fingerprint on the side, next to the off button, which in my opinion is the best choice. In addition to making the screen cheaper, without having to worry about the ultrasonic sensor, it is located in an easily accessible area, where the finger is usually already positioned.

Xiaomi ships a silicone case with the smartphone, something we’ve seen disappear from boxes in order to cut costs. I prefer to receive the cover right away, in addition to avoiding the trouble of finding it, you save a few bucks.

Bodies

The POCO F5 screen is an OLED panel, with 6.67 inches, big, flat and beautiful. It has FULLHD resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, technology features Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and reaches 1000 nits at peak brightness. It has 12 bits of color depth, which enhances landscapes and colorful objects well. To watch videos on Youtube and Netflix, it’s a good size, but it’s not one of the best screens I’ve reviewed here.

Price and competitors

The POCO F5 arrived at an imported price of R$1800 to R$2000, increase the import tax by this amount. Taking this value into account, we come to the direct competitor, the Galaxy A54.

The two really look alike, they have a 120Hz FULLHD OLED screen, a 5000mAh battery, a triple camera set with the same sensors. Samsung lets you record in 4K on the front, and for me it delivers better photos. Now, in terms of performance, which is the strongest point of the POCO F5, it destroys this comparison.

The A54 has IP67, has 4 years of Android update against 2 of the POCO F5 and on top of that it has a national guarantee, for me the choice is easy.

POCO F5 is indicated for purchase when the main need is to play, exclusively in high performance. Otherwise, the Galaxy A54 will offer more.

When to buy the POCO F5? I would recommend buying it, imported, for R$ 1500.

Conclusion

The key point of the POCO F5 is undoubtedly its performance capacity, for people who like to play on smartphones, this smartphone is undoubtedly the best choice to balance cost and benefit.

Xiaomi’s cameras still need improvement, adding a 64MP sensor in the main and only 8MP as an ultrawide does not bring consistency to the photos.

The Xiaomi/POCO interface is another thing that bothers me, I say clearly that I don’t like it, it could even be something personal, but who needs an app to clean? If a cell phone in 2023 needs cleaning, it has serious memory management problems.

With this result, the POCO F5 took 12th place in our ranking of the best cell phones analyzed here at Oficina da Net, behind the Galaxy A54.

Xiaomi LITTLE F5 – See the full technical sheet here