POCO F5 Pro Review

Over the years, POCO has built itself a good reputation for providing fast-performing, almost flagship-level phones at a fraction of the cost. All the way from the legendary Pocophone F1, we are now on the 5th iteration of POCO’s flagship lineup with the POCO F5 Pro.

But does it deliver on the POCO name and reputation?

Let’s find out in our review of the POCO F5 Pro!

Design and Construction

Let’s start with design. The POCO F5 Pro is POCO’s flagship smartphone for 2023 — and it definitely feels like it. It has a glass back, a metal frame, and an overall thin profile.

The back of the F5 Pro has a nice curve to it on the sides, making it really comfortable to hold as it feels like the phone seamlessly fills the palm of your hand.

Our review unit is in this very classic white colorway and the F5 Pro will be offered in black as well. While the whole phone feels and looks really premium, we do have to note that the glass back makes the phone a bit slippery or slick to the touch.

Personally, I’d invest in a case to add a bit more grip to the F5 Pro. We also have a unique camera bump at the back, that looks futuristic and classy. For water and dust protection, the POCO F5 Pro is rated for IP53 splash resistance. We would’ve loved it if it had a higher IP rating but we’re just glad it has one in the first place.

Overall, it’s a big thumbs up for the F5 Pro in terms of design and construction. This is undoubtedly a premium-built smartphone.

Display, Biometrics, and Multimedia

The POCO F5 Pro features a 6.67-inch WQHD+ Flow AMOLED DotDisplay, with a 3200 x 1440 resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. It has a peak brightness of 1400 nits and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

The display on the F5 Pro is definitely one of its best features.

The AMOLED screen produces really good colors, offers impressive viewing angles, and can get pretty bright. Under direct sunlight, you won’t have any trouble using the F5 Pro with its bright screen. The 120 Hz refresh rate also makes the whole navigation experience feel really fast and fluid.

While it’s clear that POCO didn’t skimp out on the F5 Pro’s display, we also really appreciate that they used a flat screen instead of the curved displays we usually find on flagship phones. Flat displays are still much easier to handle and we love to see it here on the F5 Pro.

The small bezels also help make the overall viewing experience on the F5 Pro feel really immersive. Under the F5 Pro’s display, we have an under-screen fingerprint sensor for biometrics. It’s fast and accurate and we didn’t experience any missed reads of our fingerprints during our testing.

We also have face unlock on the F5 Pro which was also surprisingly fast — although this isn’t as secure as the fingerprint so do keep that in mind.

In terms of speakers, the F5 Pro has a stereo setup comprised of a downward-firing speaker at the bottom and an earpiece speaker at the top. The two speakers work together surprisingly well producing a balanced, full sound that doesn’t distort at high volumes — making the overall content consumption experience really, really good.

One thing that really impressed us with the F5 Pro is the haptics.

The vibrations and haptic feedback on the F5 Pro felt really tight and finely tuned. It felt like vibrations for things such as keyboard taps, powering on the device, or using the fingerprint sensor were all tastefully customized and calibrated to give varying degrees of vibration strength. This made our experience using the F5 Pro feel even more premium and top-quality.

Lastly, the F5 Pro has an IR Blaster at the top — a feature we’ve sorely missed to have and is going to be perfect for those who want their phone to double as a universal remote.

Camera

Moving on to the camera, the POCO F5 Pro features a triple camera setup that’s led by a 64MP main with an f/1.79 aperture; an 8MP ultra-wide at f/2.2; and a 2MP macro camera at f/2.4.

Photos from the F5 Pro are above average. They’re not the best in the game but they’re certainly not the worst. In good lighting, photos came out sharp and detailed, with good color (just like most Android phones in the upper mid-range segment).

We did notice that photos from the F5 Pro tended to have a blue or cooler overall temperature to them — which may or may not be your cup of tea so that is worth mentioning. The ultrawide is good but the colors here are more muted than the images we get from the main.

For selfies, the F5 Pro has a 16MP front camera with an f/2.45 aperture. Photos from the selfie camera are sharp and skin tones were decently reproduced. However, we did observe that some selfies were a bit overexposed, even with lighting that wasn’t too challenging to work with.

It’s the same story on the video side for the F5 Pro. The footage from the F5 Pro, while clear and smooth, would sometimes come out with blown highlights and it was clear that, at times, it struggled to figure out how to light subjects in a given video situation.

Despite that, the camera performance from the POCO F5 Pro gets around a B- to B. This is definitely not a smartphone that should be on top of your list if you want a great camera but for the occasional snap or video, it’ll serve you just fine.

Performance and Benchmarks

Now for the part that we’ve all been waiting for — performance. Powering the POCO F5 Pro is a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM, and 256GB or 512GB of internal storage. Our review unit comes with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage.

As expected, the POCO F5 Pro just flies. You can throw any task at it and the F5 Pro will handle it with no problem.

Navigating the UI, using apps and social media, and playing games are a breeze — and that’s to be expected given that POCO has built its name on offering performance-oriented devices.

For benchmarks, the F5 Pro got these results:

• Antutu – 1,057,338
• Geekbench 6 – 1,298 (single-core); 3,887 (multi-core)
• Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL Score – 4,742
• PC Mark Work 3.0 performance score – 13,532

For gaming, casual games like Mobile Legends and Call of Duty Mobile can run at the highest settings without any issue. Meanwhile, Genshin Impact did default to Medium — which ran smoothly once you set the framerate to 60fps.

But if you want to run Genshin at the highest setting, you will experience some dropped frames here and there, but nothing too jarring in terms of gameplay. Overall, the fast display, zippy performance, and great speakers make the POCO F5 Pro an amazing option for gamers and non-gamers alike.

Performance on the F5 Pro definitely doesn’t disappoint.

OS, Apps and UI

Now for its OS, the POCO F5 Pro runs on Xiaomi’s MIUI 14 based on Android 13, with the POCO launcher skinned on top.

Poco F5 Pro Top Down 2

Xiaomi and Redmi users will be right at home with MIUI 14 — which is to say that it offers a refined and polished experience, with a heavy helping of bloatware, app recommendations, and ads within the UI.

I personally would have loved it if MIUI 14 was cleaner and had less bloat overall, especially since you’ll need around 15-20 minutes to hide and organize all the unnecessary apps you get out of the box.

Beyond that though, MIUI 14 is a really good Android skin. Animations and transitions feel smooth and snappy, and there’s a decent amount of customization afforded to users here.

I personally liked the different Always On Display options that you could choose from within MIUI 14.

There is also a theme store for those who want to give their device a whole new look . During my testing though, I just kept everything stock as is.

The main benefit we found with the POCO launcher is the app drawer.

It automatically categorizes your apps into different sections depending on their use, such as grouping apps for Communication, Tools, Entertainment, or Photography. You can even have the launcher organize apps in the app drawer by color, which is pretty cool and something I personally haven’t seen done anywhere else.

Save for the bloat and the ads, MIUI 14, and the POCO launcher, offers a really good OS experience that I would personally have no trouble daily driving for the long term. You’ll just have to be willing to take some time at the start to clean everything up.

Connectivity and Battery Life

For connectivity, we of course get 5G on the F5 Pro as well as support for NFC and dual SIM slots (for two nano SIMs) at the bottom. No microSD card expansion to be found here.

For battery, we have a 5,160mAh Li-Po battery with support for 67W wired turbocharging and 30W wireless fast charging. From our testing, the POCO F5 Pro can last the whole day with no problem.

Using it for gaming, taking photos and videos, social media browsing, and day-to-day tasks couldn’t kill the battery in a day —even with the large, high refresh-rate display.

On PC Mark’s Work 3.0 battery test, the F5 Pro lasted for 13 hours and 12 minutes; while on our proprietary video loop test, where we played a 1080p video at 50% brightness, airplane mode on, and volume down to 0 —- the F5 Pro lasted a whopping 22 hours, 45 minutes, which is on the upper end of scores among similar devices.

Again, it is worth noting that the POCO F5 Pro is the first POCO smartphone to feature wireless charging.

Conclusion

To conclude — we are happy to report that the F5 Pro definitely lives up to its POCO name. It has fast performance, a great screen, really good haptics, and a premium design fit for a flagship phone.

While the cameras are only above average and MIUI still has more bloatware than we prefer — the overall package you get with the F5 Pro is strong enough to overcome these drawbacks.

At a price starting at Php 26,999USD 460INR 39,003EUR 438CNY 3,351 for the 8GB and 256GB models, there is a strong case to be made for the POCO F5 Pro as one of the top Android phones of the year. We highly recommend it.

For those interested in getting the POCO F5 Pro, these are the prices with their corresponding memory skews:

• 8GB + 256GB – Php 26,999USD 460INR 39,003EUR 438CNY 3,351 via official e-commerce channels
• 12GB + 256GB – Php 28,999USD 494INR 41,892EUR 471CNY 3,599 via official e-commerce channels
• 12GB + 512GB – Php 30,999USD 528INR 44,781EUR 503CNY 3,847 via official e-commerce channels

The POCO F5 Pro will also be available for purchase at an early bird price of Php 24,999USD 426INR 36,114EUR 406CNY 3,102 (8GB + 256GB), Php 25,999USD 443INR 37,558EUR 422CNY 3,226 (12GB + 256GB), and Php 27,999USD 477INR 40,447EUR 454CNY 3,475 (12GB + 512GB) respectively starting May 9 via POCO’s Official Store in Shopee.

So what do you think of the POCO F5 Pro? Are you considering getting one for yourself?

Let us know in the comments down below!

Specs and Pricing

POCO F5 Pro specs:
6.67-inch WQHD+ AMOLED DotDisplay @ 3200 × 1440 pixels
Up to 480Hz touch sampling rate, 120Hz refresh rate
Corning Gorilla Glass 5
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset
Octa-core CPU, up to 3.0GHz
Adreno 730 GPU
8GB, 12GB LPDDR5 RAM
256GB, 512GB UFS 3.1
64MP main f/1.79
8MP ultra-wide f/2.2
2MP 3macro f/2.2
Supports 4K and 8K video recording w/ OIS, EIS
16MP front-facing camera, f/2.45
5G, dual nano-SIM| 4G/LTE
WiFi 802.11ac
Bluetooth 5.3
NFC
IR Blaster
IP53 Rating
USB Type-C
Android 13-based MIUI 14
5,160 mAh battery, 67W wired charging, 30W wireless
White, Black

Pricing:

• 8GB + 256GB – Php 26,999USD 460INR 39,003EUR 438CNY 3,351 via official e-commerce channels
• 12GB + 256GB – Php 28,999USD 494INR 41,892EUR 471CNY 3,599 via official e-commerce channels
• 12GB + 512GB – Php 30,999USD 528INR 44,781EUR 503CNY 3,847 via official e-commerce channels

What we liked:

• Flat (not curved), high-quality 120Hz AMOLED display
• Finely tuned haptic feedback
• Premium build quality
• Fast, zippy performance
• Long battery life
• Wireless charging, a first for POCO

What we didn’t like:

• Bloatware and ads in MIUI 14 OS
• Photo and video cameras could be better
• Can be a bit slippery on the hand