POCO X5 review: a VFM purchase?

The POCO X5 shares a lot of its traits with last year's X-series offering, X4 Pro

• By Ashish Kumar
Published On: 12 April 2023 | 11:13 IST

The POCO X5 Pro, introduced earlier this year in India, was considered good value for its price. However, the company priced it above Rs 20,000 due to the increasing cost of the smartphone components. This left a gap in the sub-Rs 20,000 segment for the brand. Now, to fill that void, POCO has introduced the X5 smartphone in India, starting at Rs 18,999. Curious to know if the X5 offers the best value for its price like its elder sibling POCO X5 Pro? Read this POCO X5 review to find out. Worth mentioning that the X5 seems quite similar to last year’s X4 Pro, so don’t be surprised if you see references to the latter popping up in quite a few places.

Verdict

The POCO X5 feels like a variant of last year’s POCO X4 Pro, which continues to sell in India. The two devices share many similarities, including the price point, and buying one over the other may depend on individual preferences. The POCO X5 should be your choice if the latest software and higher storage capacity are what you are after.

What’s new

• At first glance, the POCO X5 may look similar to the X4 Pro, but there are a few noticeable differences. For one, the X5 features a curved back panel instead of a flat one, and its edges are sleeker than last year’s X-series offering. The handset measures 7.98mm in thickness and weighs 189 grams. Additionally, like the X5 Pro, the handset has a plastic back panel instead of glass, and the oversized camera bar is flush with the chassis, with only the camera platform protruding from the surface. This makes the phone lightweight (188 grams to be precise) and comfortable to wield. The phone also sports a matte finish, which gives it a less glossy appearance. But, despite that, the handset gets dirty rather quickly and requires regular cleaning to wipe off those sweaty fingerprints and smudges. Besides this, there aren’t many significant differences between the two smartphones, except for the top edge where the POCO X5 has a 3.5mm headphone jack and IR blaster.
• The POCO X5 utilises a mono bottom-firing speaker for sound output, which can get quite loud but unfortunately doesn’t sound great. Apart from this, the phone comes with a 33W charging solution, which is over 50 percent slower than the POCO X4 Pro’s charging tech. The POCO X5 takes more than an hour to juice up its 5,000mAh battery from 0-100 percent. In contrast, the X4 Pro, with its 67W fast charging, can fully charge the same battery in about 40 minutes.
• In terms of optics, the POCO X5 packs triple rear cameras with a 48MP primary unit instead of a 64MP, an 8MP ultra-wide lens, and a 2MP macro sensor as offered by the X4 Pro. The selfie camera on the handset has also been downgraded from 16MP to 13MP. Let’s take a look at the cameras’ performance:

• The 48MP primary sensor on the POCO X5 performed well in daylight, with its quick focus speed and capture time. The sensor outputs 12MP images by default, which look good if not great. Compared to the 64MP sensor on the POCO X4 Pro, the lower resolution sensor on the X5 fails to capture as many details. Upon observing the camera shots above, it is noticeable that the POCO X4 Pro captures more well-defined colours, highlights, and dynamic ranges compared to the X5. The X5 also tends to struggle with controlling sunlight flares, as it can be seen running all over the frame. Moreover, unlike the X4 Pro, the POCO X5 does not have an auto HDR mode, and users must enable the feature each time they launch the camera app.

• The POCO X5’s 13MP front camera is excellent, and its performance is close to the POCO X4 Pro’s 16MP front camera, in terms of colour accuracy. Both phones capture selfies with near-accurate skin tones in sufficient light. However, the X4 Pro appears to capture slightly more details than the X5. Observe how the POCO X4 Pro image has more details on the right cheek than the POCO X5. Be that as it may, the POCO X5’s front camera is satisfactory and should meet the needs of most users.

• The performance of the X5’s 8MP ultra-wide lens and 2MP macro sensor is on par with the X4 Pro. There is warping around the edges of the frame in otherwise decent-looking ultra-wide shots on the POCO X5. The 2MP macro sensor is unable to capture crisp shots, and the low resolution often results in a loss of sharpness, while the colours may appear washed out. In low light conditions, the POCO X5’s camera performance suffers. The images lack detail and sharpness, and the colours appear washed out. Moreover, the sensors struggle with slow shutter speeds, resulting in blurry images. The dedicated night mode only helps in reducing the noise level. The images remain usable in extremely low light conditions.
• On the software front, the POCO X5 and X4 Pro both run MIUI 13 based on Android 12. However, there’s a significant difference: the X5 comes with Android 12 pre-loaded, while the X4 Pro received it via a software update. POCO promises at least two major software upgrades for its devices, Android 13 will be the last OS update for the X4 Pro. The POCO X5, in contrast, will get Android 13 as well as the upcoming Android version that is set to launch on May 10th.

• I’m hoping the POCO X5 gets Android 13 soon as the current OS doesn’t have any new features to boast about, and lacks Android’s material UI design. However, the software does have some useful features, such as notification effects that light up the edges of the display for a notification, as well as a floating window, new themes, a memory extension option, and more. The software would have been more likeable had there been fewer push notifications and pre-installed apps.

What’s not new

• The POCO X5 rocks the same chipset, display, and battery as the X4 Pro. To wit, it sports a 6.67-inch centred punch-hole AMOLED display that bears FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080p) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 360Hz touch sampling rate. Although the X5 has a wider chin and punch-hole compared to the X4 Pro, the viewing experience remains excellent. The display is enjoyable to watch both indoors and outdoors, thanks to its wider DCI-P3 colour gamut, 1200 nits peak brightness, and HDR10 support. The viewing angles are impressive too. However, the phone can only stream content from Netflix and other platforms in FHD resolution.

• At the core of the POCO X5 lies the Snapdragon 695 SoC coupled with 6GB and 8GB RAM. Unlike the X4 Pro, the base variant comes with 128GB storage onboard, whereas the top-end variant boasts 256GB storage. However, expanding storage requires sacrificing the secondary SIM card slot. While the POCO X5 outperforms its counterpart in benchmark scores, its day-to-day performance is satisfactory. High-end gaming is not an enjoyable experience due to low graphics and frame rates. Nevertheless, the device can handle regular smartphone usage, such as checking social media accounts, casual browsing, and light gaming, with ease.

• The battery capacity of the POCO X5 also remains unchanged at 5,000mAh, which is sufficient to last for an entire day with regular usage. On the PCMark battery benchmarking test, the X5 scored 16 hours and 6 minutes, which is a healthy result but slightly lower than the X4 Pro’s score of 16 hours and 56 minutes. Additionally, the POCO X5 has an IP53 rating, which makes it splash-resistant. However, I would have preferred a better certification for water and dust resistance. The phone packs a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, which is quick and reliable. Wireless connectivity options on the POCO X5 include 5G, 4G LTE, dual-band Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth v5.1.

Final verdict

The POCO X5 may have an advantage over the X4 Pro in terms of software and storage, but its starting price of Rs 18,999 might be a deterrent for some buyers. The POCO X4 Pro offers a superior camera and charging speeds for the same price. Additionally, utilising the same chipset as last year also doesn’t go down well for the POCO X5, especially since there are other phones in the same segment that could offer better performance. One example is the Moto G73 (review), which boasts a MediaTek Dimensity 920 SoC that marginally outperformed the POCO X5 in the Geekbench and AnTuTu benchmark tests.

All said and done, the POCO X5 is a decent device which has a few things going for it, and just for that, deserves a closer look.

Editor’s rating: 3.5 / 5

Pros

• Lightweight and thin
• Lovely screen
• Capable selfie camera
• Decent battery life

Cons

• No stereo speakers
• Underwhelming primary camera
• Chipset could have been better