TECNO POVA 5 Pro review: delivers the goods at an affordable price

Name: Tecno Pova 5 Pro
Item: Tecno Pova 5 Pro
Rating: 8
Author: Shekhar Thakran

Published On: August 27, 2023

Review Summary

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The sub-Rs 15,000 price bracket in India is currently one of the most competitive segments for smartphone brands, and the race to offer the best value-for-money handset is heating up. TECNO, which has been a busy brand this year with its Spark series, Phantom V Fold, and Camon 20 series, has now introduced its POVA 5 Pro into the mix and the new phone will be directly competing against the likes of the recently-launched POCO M6 Pro 5G, Realme 11x, and others. Does the POVA 5 Pro have what it takes to stand out from the crowd? Read my detailed review to find out!

Table of Contents

Verdict

TECNO POVA 5 Pro will grab your attention with its LED strip design but the most impressive aspects of the phone are its 68W fast-charging, 120Hz display, and reliable performance. This handset delivers on most fronts but low-light photography is one area where it needs a bit of improvement. Overall, the POVA 5 Pro is an easy recommendation for most people.

Design and display

While we usually start our reviews by talking about the smartphone’s design anyway, doing this makes even more sense than ever in the POVA 5 Pro’s case. The TECNO POVA 5 Pro has been designed to draw your attention and it successfully manages to do this with its LED strip design and camera module on the rear. First, let’s talk about the back panel, which has been termed as the ‘Arc Interface’ by the brand. The phone offers several backlight effect options such as Soft, Racing, Dreamy, Breath, and Party. These effects can be applied to incoming calls and bootup. Some other variations of this backlight effect, namely Sunrise, Starburst, Halo, Pure, and Lightning, can be applied for notifications. Does the Arc Interface enhance the phone’s visual appeal? In short, yes. However, I would like to point out that the benefit of this design element is limited to just aesthetics. Unlike the Nothing phones, customisation options with the LED strip are not available here.

The camera module at the back is trapezium-shaped and has two large circular elevations for the dual camera lenses. With its massive 6.78-inch IPS LCD display panel, the overall form factor of the phone is fairly large but with even weight distribution, the phone doesn’t feel too heavy in hand. However, if you have small hands, you might find it a bit unwieldy. Having said that, you should still be able to reach the power button, which doubles up as a fingerprint sensor, with your thumb.

Coming to the display panel, the 120Hz refresh rate and the FHD+ screen resolution ensure a great viewing experience, irrespective of whether you are navigating through the UI or watching videos on YouTube. The phone’s viewing angles are decent but outdoor visibility under direct sunlight isn’t particularly great as this isn’t a panel that offers high brightness levels.

Cameras

Let’s get through the nitty gritty first. The POVA 5 Pro features a 50MP primary wide-angle sensor with PDAF support and a 0.08MP depth sensor. In my testing, I found that the rear-facing shooters handled edge detection particularly well, which is often not the case with handsets in this price range. The primary sensor also captured a lot of detail in well-lit areas. Even in terms of colour accuracy, I would say that the cameras did a reasonably good job. However, the Achilles’ heel for POVA 5 Pro, as it is with most handsets in this price range, turned out to be low-light conditions. The drop in quality in the absence of proper lighting was noticeable, but thankfully, the use of ‘Super Night’ mode improves the image quality a bit.

In the default camera app, the handset offers you a plethora of options to click the pictures you prefer. While you can choose to keep things simple and make use of the ‘AI CAM’, which clicks pretty good pictures with decent dynamic range, youngsters would most likely be more interested in using the beauty filters that will ensure every picture of yours is social media ready. These options include smoothening skin, slimming the face, enlarging eyes, adjusting skin colour, slimming the nose, and even slimming the head. As you can adjust the level of these filters, you always have complete control over how you appear in your photos.

The front shooter on the TECNO POVA 5 Pro is capable of taking some detailed shots with good colour accuracy in the presence of ample light but if you’re at a night party, expect the photos to turn out a bit grainy, which is not uncommon in this price range.

Performance and software

TECNO POVA 5 Pro comes with the 6nm MediaTek Dimensity 6080 5G chipset that features two 2.4 GHz Cortex-A76 cores and six 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores. The processor is assisted by Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. In regular usage, I didn’t face any hiccups with the phone, and the animations while switching between the apps were mostly smooth too. I even tried gaming on the phone and despite playing for more than an hour at a stretch, the phone didn’t heat up too much, which should instil confidence in anyone who is planning to buy this phone for portable gaming. One of the things I realised while using this phone for the last few days was that I never felt like I was short on performance while using any app or playing any game. I won’t go as far as to say this is the best-performing handset in this price range but it can definitely tackle any task that you throw at it without a hint of a struggle.

Coming to the software, POVA 5 Pro loads up HIOS 13, which is based on Android 13. The phone comes with a set of pre-installed apps, which I frankly didn’t find myself using at any point during my review. Some of the useful features that are offered with this UI are Game Space (optimises games to offer better performance), MemFusion (allows RAM expansion by up to 5GB by utilising internal storage), and Video Assistant (prevents notifications from bothering you when you’re watching videos in select apps). There is also a Micro Intelligence section in the settings menu that gives you control over some quality-of-life features such as Lift to Wake, Flip Mute, and more.

In the AnTuTu benchmark, the phone scored 413805, which is pretty much in line with other phones that offer good performance in this price range. In the Geekbench testing, the phone gets a score of 747 in the single-core test and 2047 in the multi-core test, again in line with the other phones such as Realme 11x and POCO M6 Pro.

Check out the 5G speed test conducted on the handset below. This test was conducted in Gurugram, Haryana:

Battery life and charging speed

The handset ships with a 5,000mAh battery and in normal usage, it easily lasted beyond a day for me on a single charge. If you indulge in gaming, you can expect the phone to need charging by the end of the day. In the battery test that we conducted via PCMark, the handset lasted 12 hours and 12 minutes, which is decent for daily usage.

One of the standout features of the phone is its segment-leading 68W fast-charging support and in my testing, the phone was charged from 1 to 100 percent in less than 50 minutes, which is extremely impressive. As most phones in this price range don’t even offer more than 45W fast-charging support, in this price category, TECNO POVA 5 Pro is miles ahead of the competition.

Final verdict

The TECNO POVA 5 Pro has been priced sensibly by the brand and at Rs 14,999, the phone scores well in almost all departments. Its unique design, 120Hz display, and its segment-leading 68W fast-charging support make a strong case for the phone as well. However, the lack of an ultra-wide rear camera sensor and large form factor can prove to be an issue for some users. Overall, the phone offers a good all-around package that can definitely be considered if you’re hunting for your new daily driver under Rs 15,000, especially if you’re constantly on the move or just hate slow charging.