Poco F7 Pro Review: The new OnePlus?

The Poco F7 Pro is the trimmed-down version of the latest duo from the Xiaomi-owned brand. The company launched its first “Ultra” model, the Poco F7 Ultra, and you can check out our full review of that particular model, but today we’re going to be focusing on the Pro model.

It can be viewed as a direct successor to last year’s Poco F6 Pro, even though there are some changes. This device starts at €599 for the 12/256GB version, which is at the top end of midrange and the start of flagship territory.

For that amount of money you’re getting a strange amalgamation of a great display, amazing battery life, a pretty potent chipset (albeit last generation), and some questionable camera choices. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and proceed with the review.

Oh, and one more thing. Even though the Poco F7 Pro is technically available globally, the phone isn’t sold in the US. Even if you find a way to get one in the States, there’s no guarantee it will work as intended on popular carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

Poco F7 Pro Design and Display

Bright as a supernova

Unlike the Ultra model, which looks like an angry bee with its yellow and black livery, the Poco F7 Pro relies on a more understated design. The general look and feel of the phone is similar to the Ultra, but the back is flatter, and the phone looks and feels thicker and heavier.

This is a deception, though. The Poco F7 Pro is slightly thinner (0.3 mm) and also lighter than its Ultra brother. The deceptive feeling comes from the flatter frame and back, as the phone is not that comfortable in the hand as the curved Poco F7 Ultra.

The camera bump is almost identical, though, with a circular cutout at the top left part on the back. The glossy accents are also the same, as is the Poco branding, the buttons, ports, and grills.

The phone is available in three colors: black, silver, and blue. Our silver review unit looks pretty stylish and gives the impression of liquid metal.

The retail package is bountiful, as we dare say, by today’s standards. You’re getting a 90W charging brick, a USB-C cable, a pre-installed screen protector, and a silicon back cover to protect the Poco F7 Pro.

Speaking of protection, we failed to mention that the phone comes with an IP68 rating and the front and back glass is Corning Gorilla Glass 7i.

Moving to the screen of the Poco F7 Pro, we find the same gorgeous and bright 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with 1,440 x 3,200 pixel resolution as the one used on the Ultra model. It has a very high pixel density of around 526 PPI, and it can go up to 3200 nits peak brightness, according to the spec sheet.

This display can go up to a 120Hz refresh rate and also supports 12-bit color and Dolby Vision. Let’s put these claims to the test—we measure at 100% APL (full display lit) and also 20% APL (more realistic real-life figure), along with important metrics such as minimum brightness, color accuracy, and color temperature.

Poco F7 Pro Camera

Cost savings went there

The Poco F7 Pro comes with a dual camera system on its back, and the main camera is carried over from the Poco F6 Pro (and can also be found on the Poco F7 Ultra). It uses a 50MP Light Fusion 800, 1/1.55″ sensor with a pixel size of 1.0µm, sitting under a lens with an f/1.6 aperture and an equivalent focal length of 24mm.

The ultrawide camera, on the other hand, is a downgrade compared to the 50MP one on the Ultra. It features an 8MP sensor, which is also rather small, coming in at 1/4.0″, and it sits under a lens with an aperture of f/2.2. But these are just specs. Let’s check out the samples.

The main camera of the Poco F7 Pro takes pretty decent samples, even in less than ideal conditions. The detail is good, the dynamic range is pretty wide, and the phone deals with exposure also well. Even in the gloomy and rainy weather, colors looked a bit saturated, but nothing too drastic.

There’s no telephoto camera, so the phone relies on 2X crops from the main sensor, and they get the job done. They’re not as detailed and clear as the 2.5X optical zoom camera of the Ultra, but you can frame some decent portraits using this mode.

The ultrawide camera is, as expected, nothing to write home about. The 8MP sensor is quite small in size too, and there’s some lack of detail. There’s no autofocus on this snapper as well, so you can run into some issues if you try to take photos with a lot of depth and objects close to the camera.

Video Quality

Given the Pro model has the same camera as the Poco F7 Ultra, there’s no surprise in the fact that the phone can record pretty decent 4K videos. Even in appalling conditions, there’s enough detail and colors look sharp and poppy. There’s 8K recording option here as well but there’s little to no practical use of such high resolution videos. It’s a nice-to-have feature nevertheless.

Poco F7 Pro Performance & Benchmarks

Still fast, still snappy

Another major difference between the Poco F7 Ultra and the Pro model is the chipset inside. Here we have the previous generation of Qualcomm’s silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. But compared to the competition in this price range and even on its own, it’s a pretty potent processor.

The phone also packs 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but here the next tier that comes with 512GB of onboard memory still has 12GB of RAM (unlike the jump to 16GB you get on the Ultra model).

Performance Benchmarks:

The Poco F7 Pro tackles everyday tasks with ease, and the synthetic benchmarks show that the silicon has aged quite well. We know that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is all the rage right now, but you will be perfectly fine with the Gen 3.

In terms of software, the Poco F7 Pro comes with Android 15 out of the box, with HyperOS 2 on top. This is basically the same software configuration as the one found on its bigger brother, the Poco F7 Ultra, as well as the flagship from the parent company, the Xiaomi 15.

There is some bloatware on board, but you can simply delete it and modify the UI to your liking—dynamic wallpapers, drawer or no drawer, layout changes, and so on. The typical, extremely adjustable Android affair.

The AI situation is a copy-paste from the flagship Poco F7 Ultra, and this makes a lot of sense. The Xiaomi HyperAI is on board, with pretty much the same set of AI tools you would find on the ultra-premium Xiaomi 15 phone we keep on mentioning.

These include AI Interpreter, AI Editor inside the gallery, AI search, AI speech recognition, AI writing aids, and more. Don’t forget that you need a Xiaomi account to use all these, but there’s also another option regarding AI—Google.

You can use Gemini and its basic version and also Advanced if you’re paying for it in your Google account. 

In terms of software support, the Poco F7 Pro comes with four years of major Android updates and six years of security patches. Not on the same level as the seven years that Google and Samsung offer, but still a decent support cycle.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

We expected a good battery life, and the Poco F7 Pro didn’t disappoint. The phone ranks #15 in our composite battery rating, and that’s a pretty solid achievement, given the powerful processor inside and the bright screen.

Charging speeds are absolutely amazing, even though we “only” have 90W wired power on tap, compared to the 120W charging on the Poco F7 Ultra. The phone charges from zero to 100% in 36 minutes, which is just 4 minutes more than the Ultra. Bear in mind that the battery of the Pro is also 700 mAh bigger than the aforementioned F7 Ultra.

The drawback is the lack of wireless charging, another area where Poco has decided to cut some costs. It’s not a deal breaker, especially with such fast wired charging, but still, it’s a con.

Poco F7 Pro Audio Quality and Haptics

Another similarity with the bigger and more expensive Ultra model is the audio system. It’s your typical stereo affair with the earpiece doubling as a second speaker. The sound is almost identical to what we heard on the Ultra.

It’s loud enough, but there’s some harshness in the high-frequency range, and it gets a bit distorted at max volume. The haptics are also similar, snappy and precise but not the strongest ones we’ve tested.

Should you buy it?

Well, here we are. The final verdict. The Poco F7 Pro is a pretty decent phone. It carries over many good things from the Ultra model, such as the great screen and the decent main camera.

But it also makes some sacrifices, featuring a year-old chipset and a pretty mediocre ultrawide camera. Oh, and there’s no wireless charging on board. Then again, the phone comes with a 6,000 mAh battery and offers amazing battery life, and the overall aesthetics are also quite pleasing.

At the end of the day, the price tag is the main drawback of this model. At 599 euros (just 100 down from the Ultra model), the sacrifices are too many to justify the cost. You can get a OnePlus 13R or wait for the upcoming Pixel 9a and probably get a better bang for your bucks.