POCO X7 Pro review: power-packed performance

POCO’s new POCO X7 Pro incorporates several firsts both within and across segments. It is the first smartphone in the country with the MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultra chipset and the first in the segment with a 6,500mAh silicon-carbon battery. It is also the first POCO X-series device to support 90W fast charging.

Other features include a 50MP Sony LYT primary camera and a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with an impressive peak brightness of 3,200 nits. The POCO X7 Pro also offers industry-leading durability with IP66, IP68, and IP69 certifications. Do these features alone justify a purchase, or is there more to the POCO X7 Pro than meets the eye? Let’s find out.

Verdict

The POCO X7 Pro is a worthy contender for power-hungry users. The smartphone excels in gaming, display quality, and battery performance while offering a distinctive design. That said, it is not the perfect all-rounder for the price, leaving room for improvement in cameras and software experience.

Design and display

POCO has moved away from its sizeable rectangular camera island to a sleeker, more modern design. The handset now features a vertical pill-shaped camera module that houses dual sensors. While the module protrudes slightly from the frame, it’s enough to cause the device to wobble when placed flat on a surface. We received the variant featuring POCO’s trademark yellow colour, which looks striking with its dual-tone finish on the back panel. The back is also crafted from vegan leather with distinct patterns on the black and yellow sections, enhancing both aesthetics and the in-hand feel.

Other minor yet thoughtful additions include glossy camera rings, a yellow power button, and subtle POCO branding at the bottom – all accentuating the overall design. The flat, black-shaded edges not only enhance the overall design but also provide a comfortable and secure grip. Additionally, the device stands out for its resistance to fingerprints and smudges, maintaining a clean and polished appearance even with regular use.

For those worrying about its durability and safety, the POCO X7 Pro includes a high-quality TPU case in the box and offers top-notch ingress protection (IP) such as IP66, IP68, and IP69.

While the smartphone weighs slightly over 200 grams, it doesn’t cause wrist strain during prolonged use. On the bottom edge, it features a USB Type-C port for charging and data transfer, along with dual speakers that support Dolby Atmos. The speakers deliver clear stereo output without distortion or muffling, even at maximum volume.
 
Other features include IR blaster, dual-SIM, 5G, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth v5.3.

For the viewing experience, the POCO X7 Pro offers a flat 6.73-inch AMOLED display with 1.5K resolution, 3,200 nits peak brightness, and up to 120Hz adaptive refresh rate. The 120Hz refresh rate is customisable for individual apps — basically, you can allow only a handful of apps (unless restricted by their settings) to operate at a high refresh rate, helping to conserve battery life. The display is TUV Rheinland-certified, ensuring it is flicker-free and emits minimal blue light for reduced eye strain. Furthermore, it comes with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support, delivering crisp visuals for compatible content on platforms like YouTube.

The viewing angles are also impressive, and the bright and vibrant colours remain legible outdoors even under direct sunlight. During our lab test, the phone achieved a peak brightness of 781 nits with HDR in an ambient light level of 1,700 nits. The X7 Pro boasts razor-thin bezels with a tiny punch-hole for the selfie camera to ensure an immersive viewing experience.

Cameras

The POCO X7 Pro sports dual rear cameras with a 50MP OIS Sony LYT 600 primary sensor and an 8MP ultra-wide lens. The front camera has a 20MP shooter for selfies and video calling.

This camera configuration is standard for smartphones in the sub-Rs 30,000 price range but remains impressive for a device primarily aimed at gamers. As for the camera performance, it is admirable in edge detection for portraits and HDR retention but struggles with colour accuracy, natural complexion, and bokeh quality. In low light and daylight, the handset offers a competitive edge.

Here’s a comparison of the POCO X7 Pro images with that of its arch-rivals OnePlus Nord 4 (review) and Motorola Edge 50 (review):

Daylight

The POCO X7 Pro is evenly matched with the Motorola Edge 50 in terms of dynamic range. It also excels in capturing finer details, surpassing its counterpart. However, it struggles with colour accuracy, as natural shades—such as the sky—appear white in images taken with the POCO X7 Pro.

The OnePlus Nord 4 leads against POCO and Motorola smartphones in capturing the finer details. This is evident from the clarity of the hedge and floor in the foreground. The handset outshines its competitors with dynamic range. It is worth mentioning that all three smartphones struggle with accurately reproducing the red building’s shade. That said, in terms of appeal, the Motorola Edge 50 outshines them all.

Ultra-wide

None of the smartphones deliver the same colour science as their primary cameras. Each shows a subtle shift, with the OnePlus Nord 4 displaying the most noticeable difference. When switching to its ultrawide lens, the device shifts from warm to noticeably cooler tones. While there is a drop in detail, it is less pronounced compared to the POCO X7 Pro.

The Motorola Edge 50 offers the most pleasing results, with a wider field of view than the OnePlus Nord 4 and POCO X7 Pro. The handset handles the colour and detailing better than its counterpart. The Motorola smartphone also offers exposure to details around the shadowy areas.

Portrait

With human subjects, the POCO X7 Pro delivers subpar performance. It prioritises a slightly warm tone, which appears pleasing but suffers from inconsistencies in colour mapping. Additionally, it smoothens facial details, which may appeal to some users but detracts from naturalness.

The Motorola Edge 50 produces the sharpest portraits, followed by OnePlus. Be that as it may, POCO’s strength lies in edge detection, where it outperforms both Motorola and OnePlus. Motorola’s edge detection is decent, while OnePlus continues to struggle with this feature in its affordable Nord series. The Edge 50 also delivers the most natural and pleasing bokeh effect.

Selfie

POCO persistently smoothens the facial details, resulting in an artificial appearance. The Motorola Edge 50 continues to offer the most accurate complexion in selfies, followed by the OnePlus Nord 4.

As for background exposure, the POCO X7 Pro strikes a good balance but boosts colours excessively, while Motorola introduces a bit of both with some depth. OnePlus falls somewhere between POCO and Motorola.

Low-light (night mode)

Low-light shots were evaluated with night mode enabled, as OnePlus automatically triggers this mode by default. As for the results, each phone has its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, the Motorola Edge 50 produces the most balanced images, with well-managed colours and exposure. OnePlus handles light flares better than its rivals, while the POCO X7 Pro excels in HDR retention and provides slightly more prominent details without over-smoothing surfaces.

Performance and software

Coming to the meat of the matter – the POCO X7 Pro performance, the handset is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultra chipset. It is a new mid-range chipset, with an octa-core ARM Cortex-A725 CPU clocked at up to 3.25GHz and an ARM Mali-G720 GPU for robust graphical performance.

Additionally, it is built to handle AI capabilities on par with MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity 9400 SoC. The chipset ensured solid smartphone performance in both synthetic benchmarks and our gaming tests.

The X7 Pro scored over 1.5 million points on AnTuTu, which, while slightly lower than the claimed 1.7 million, still surpasses its competitors within the same price range and even some in higher price brackets. The same is applicable to the smartphone’s single-core and multi-core Geekbench scores, ensuring swift performance while loading the apps, jumping between them, and more. While impressive overall, its throttling performance leaves room for improvement. In our Burnout CPU Throttle Test, the handset’s peak performance dropped to 66.9 percent, indicating a noticeable decline under sustained heavy loads.

As I mentioned, the POCO X7 Pro stands out for its gaming performance, and we ran popular graphically-demanding titles such as BGMI, Call of Duty, and Real Racing 3. The phone’s large 5,000mm square stainless steel VC chamber cooling system ensured decent thermal management, heating up by 25.7 degrees Celsius on aggregate. Competitors might have an edge in thermal efficiency, but the device showed no noticeable frame drops or stuttering during gameplay.

While we couldn’t get the average frame per second (fps) data on the device, the internal data revealed that the X7 Pro peaked at 71 fps on BGMI with Ultra HDR graphics, Ultra frame rate, and Wild Boost feature enabled. This ensured smooth gameplay even when things got intense during the gameplay. The phone comes with Wild Boost 3.0 optimisation 3.0 which uses AI to boost performance by faster image rendering, responsiveness, and more.

The POCO X7 Pro also boasts LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage, which ensures that your data transfer speeds and multitasking remain right up the alley. Our review unit, with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, efficiently handled multiple apps running in the background. However, the device struggles to capture multiple shots in rapid succession, falling short of speed in this area.

Moving on, the smartphone boots HyperOS 2.0 out of the box. It is the latest custom Android skin from the brand, which is layered atop Android 15. The new custom skin slightly improves the performance and user interface, with an improved transition effect for seamless navigation, custom widgets, and more. The highlight of the new software is its varied AI features. They are similar to those present on other smartphones, but it is good to see affordable devices joining the bandwagon.

Do note that the POCO X7 Pro’s AI features rely on an active internet connection to download additional modules and function effectively. While the features are decent, there is room for improvement. For instance, the AI eraser performs well in removing unwanted subjects from images with static backgrounds but struggles with more complex scenes. The same goes for the AI sky feature, which doesn’t always get the sky right.

On the creative side, the POCO smartphone offers an AI Smart-Clip feature designed for casual users, enabling them to create simple video highlights of their favourite moments. While the results are fairly basic, users can personalise their clips using 18 diverse templates and 30 background music tracks, adding a touch of creativity to their memories. Users can further personalise the results with ‘advanced’ editing options such as adding filters, changing aspect ratio, and more.

Battery and charging

The POCO X7 Pro features a massive 6,550mAh battery, setting a new benchmark for mid-range devices. Impressively, POCO has achieved this without adding bulk to the phone. This could be attributed to the new Silicon-carbon batteries, which offer a higher energy density compared to the traditional lithium-ion batteries, allowing more charge to be stored in a similarly compact form factor.

It may not be apparent on the PCMark battery test where its 14 hours and 53 minutes run-time appears modest for the battery capacity, but its efficiency in real-world tasks such as video streaming and gaming is pretty impressive.

The handset demonstrated impressive battery efficiency during testing. Streaming a 30-minute high-resolution YouTube video consumed just 3 percent of the battery, while a rigorous gaming session—consisting of 30 minutes each on BGMI, Call of Duty, and Real Racing 3—resulted in a 17 percent battery drop. These results outperform most competitors in the market, including the POCO X7 Pro’s closest rivals, the OnePlus Nord 4 and Motorola Edge 50.

The charging speed is another standout feature of the X7 Pro. Equipped with a 90W fast charging solution, the smartphone comes with a compatible charger included in the box. This setup enables the device to achieve a full charge in under an hour. Additionally, the X7 Pro features a ‘Top Speed’ charging mode, which can be activated via the settings menu. When enabled, this mode allows the battery to charge from 20 percent to 100 percent in approximately 30 minutes during our usage. However, this may lead to an increase in the device’s thermal. Since it was the peak winter season in Delhi, we did not observe any significant increase in the phone’s temperature while using this feature.

Final verdict

The POCO X7 Pro further solidifies the company’s position in the sub-Rs 30K segment, with impressive performance and design. Its standout features include MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultra chipset, 6,550mAh silicon-carbon battery, and 90W fast charging, establishing it as a compelling option in this range. Furthermore, its vibrant AMOLED display with industry-leading brightness and gaming-focused optimisations make it an appealing choice for both regular users as well as hardcore gamers.

However, the X7 Pro isn’t without its flaws. While the camera setup performs admirably in certain conditions, it lags behind competitors in terms of natural colour reproduction and consistency, especially in portraits and selfies. Additionally, its thermal performance under heavy loads and slightly cluttered software with an array of pre-installed apps reveal areas for improvement.

That said, the custom OS is feature-rich, as the HyperOS 2.0 offers meaningful upgrades and AI-driven optimisations. Moreover, the inclusion of IP69 certification, a durable vegan leather back, and excellent battery life further elevate its appeal. The handset is priced in India starting at Rs 27,999 and totally worth considering.

Editor’s rating: 8/10

Reasons to buy

• Premium vegan leather back and compact, ergonomic build.
• MediaTek Dimensity 8400 Ultra chipset delivers smooth multitasking and gaming.
• 6,550mAh silicon-carbon battery provides impressive backup.
• 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with 3200 nits peak brightness and 120Hz refresh rate.

Reasons not to buy

• Colour accuracy, low-light performance, and selfies lag behind competitors.
• Drop in performance during sustained heavy loads in synthetic benchmarks.