Poco X5 5G review: A mixed bag

Poco expanded its smartphone portfolio with the Poco X5 5G and Poco X5 Pro 5G, both phones competing in the mid-range space. Poco sent us the X5 for review, the smartphone which offers mid-range specs to compete in the Rs 20,000 price segment.

Poco X5 comes in two variants, 6GB+128GB and 8GB+256GB, priced at Rs 18,999 and Rs 20,999, respectively. As a launch offer, there's a flat Rs 2,000 discount on its first sale. The smartphone goes on sale in India on March 21, exclusively on Flipkart. With only a few days to go for the sale, here's our review of the phone.

Some of the key features of the Poco X5 are:

1. 6.67" FHD+ AMOLED DotDisplay with120Hz refresh rate
2. 48MP + 8MP (ultrawide) 2MP (macro) rear camera setup
3. 13MP front camera
4. Snapdragon 695 5G CPU
5. 6+128/8+256GB (expandable up to 1TB)
6. 5000mAh battery with 33W fast-charging

What's good?

Poco X5, despite being overshadowed by its Pro sibling, manages to score some brownie points for itself. The biggest factor is its design, which is bold, vibrant and has a youth appeal. It certainly looks better and is comfortable to hold and use, thanks to its lightweight design. The body construction is solid, though the use of plastic is hard to miss. The colour combination is where Poco X5 takes the limelight away. The green and black combination looks trendy and gives away a premium impression.

The camera module, the signature branding on it, and the subtle 5G imprint is a minimalist yet bright design. The sides are flat, housing all the essential controls for volume and power/lock alongside the ports (for charging and headphone). With all this, the phone gets IP53 dust and water resistance, which should add a sense of assurance.

The Poco X5's display falls well in the category of what's good in the phone. The 120Hz refresh rate boosts the user experience, but the AMOLED FHD+ display is both responsive and great to interact with. The screen can get quite bright, making outdoor viewing easy. But under harsh sunlight, the visibility is pretty average.

Poco X5 has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which is snappy. Once registered, simply placing the finger on the power button unlocks the screen. Though it came as a challenge, having used under-display fingerprint sensors in almost every phone these days, once you train your muscles, it's something you can get used to.

Despite its sleek body and light design, Poco X5 packs a 5,000mAh battery, which lasts a day with heavy usage. If you're a light user, expect the phone to run for the second day as well. In our tests, the phone delivered 8 hours of screen time, and a full day battery with medium to heavy use. It involved camera use, GPS, 5G, social media browsing, streaming content and some games here and there. As far as the battery goes, the Poco X5 is a reliable choice. The icing on that is it comes with 33W fast charging, which can power up the phone in under one hour. Well, it actually takes around 45 minutes to full or get a full day's worth of battery life in 30 minutes.

The smartphone can also handle day-to-day tasks without any issues. We did not hit any glitches or bugs related to the phone's performance during our review period. The software is a different story.

What's not good?

A good display is otherwise held back by the protection, which is done by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 — an ageing piece of screen protection. But that's as far as we go in picking faults related to the display. The next room for improvement is clearly in the camera department as low-light photography is not up to the mark in the Poco X5. The secondary and tertiary lenses seem to be filling the spec sheet, the macro is mostly unusable.

Moving on, Poco's decision to go with an ageing Snapdragon 695 is hard to explain. The chip, in itself, isn't all that bad, but Xiaomi used it in its own Redmi Note 11 Pro last year. If you're looking for a performance bump, the Poco X5 Pro is where you should be looking as the Poco X5 is just delivering the essentials here. Don't expect to run those graphic-intense games at peak settings.

Finally, the software. The phone runs MIUI 13 out of the box. Even with those extreme customisation options, the phone doesn't run short of bloatware. Thankfully, the storage is ample, even then Poco could ease up on the pre-loaded apps.

Camera

The camera does get tricky. The primary sensor is a capable one of the three sensors. With good lighting, you can get some good shots with natural tones, decent details and dynamic range. But the challenge is in the low light. Even with the night mode, the noise is evident as quality takes a plunge. Colours shot in low light are all over the place, and switching between ultra-wide and zoom will give different results. This was expected given the specs, which lack OIS and higher aperture.

The macro sensor wasn't usable. For one, it was a challenge to get the focus right and even then the results weren't worth mentioning. The ultrawide changed the colour tones, lost details and sharpness to an extent that it is evident.

The only good thing that came out of the camera is the front sensor. It was surprisingly decent if you can ignore smudged skin tones. Overall, the Poco X5 is not a camera phone, but a phone that has a camera which you can use when required.

Check out some samples below:

Verdict

Poco X5 is a mixed bag. It has some things going its way, some holding it back. The design language, display and battery are some strong elements. But the camera and performance is average at best. This is taking into consideration the competition it faces in the market, even from its own Xiaomi Redmi-series phones.

Poco X5 is for those who want a phone that looks good, and does the daily chores without giving you battery anxiety. The pricing may be less, but it's not remarkable when trading for other specs.