Poco F7 Ultra Review: Poco goes Ultra

Poco, the Xiaomi-owned brand that used to specialize in mid-range budget smartphones, has spawned its first “Ultra” device. This word is being used pretty generously when it comes to smartphones these days, and this little yellow flagship is the latest example.

The phone packs a lot of punch, especially considering its starting price of €699.90, but is it worthy of its “Ultra” name? And how does this model stack up against other offerings from the parent company, such as the vanilla Xiaomi 15 flagship and phones from the Redmi line?

Today, we’re going to try and answer all these questions. But first, a preface— Poco phones aren’t available in the US, at least not officially, even though the brand releases its models globally on its online store. So, you will have a hard time getting the F7 Ultra in the US, and even if you manage to get your hands on one, it might not work properly on US networks and carriers. With that out of the way, let’s proceed with the review.

Poco F7 Ultra Design and Display

Fresh as a lemon

Poco managed to accomplish something that’s kind of hard in the modern smartphone world. Create a recognizable design. The F7 Ultra uses the same bright yellow and black color scheme that has become something of a Poco staple.

The circular camera housing that is slightly offset to the left is a new design element compared to previous models from the F-series, and it looks quite fresh and original.

In terms of materials, the Poco F7 Ultra features the usual suspects—glass and metal. The back is made out of a proprietary Shield Glass material and has a matte finish to it with interesting glossy accents around the camera. It’s also gently curved and features the Poco branding in solid black letters. The Poco F7 series also boasts an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.

The front is completely flat with a uniform bezel around the screen and a hole-punch selfie camera in the center. The Poco F7 Ultra feels good in the hand and, in fact, leaves the impression of a rather compact device given its 6.7-inch screen diagonal.

The weight of the phone, on the other hand, is pretty substantial, coming in at 212 grams, but it’s well-balanced and not particularly camera-heavy. In terms of colors, there’s a pure black version, but who would want that when you can have a bright yellow phone, right?

Inside the bright yellow retail box we find a hefty charging brick with the number 120 written on it, followed by the letter “W.” It’s one of the fastest bundled chargers on the market, and we will put it to the test later on.

There’s also a USB-C cable and a silicon back for additional protection or if you, for some reason, want to hide the signal yellow color and be stealthy. So, a pretty robust and complete package. Thumbs up for that.

Moving to the screen of the Poco F7 Ultra, we find a 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with 1,440 x 3,200 pixel resolution for a pixel density of around 526 PPI. This display can go up to a 120Hz refresh rate and also supports 12-bit color and Dolby Vision.

Poco advertises 1800 nits of brightness in HBM (High Brightness Mode) and 3200 nits peak, but we know manufacturers sometimes measure these peak figures with just a small portion of the display lit. We measure at 100% APL (full display lit) and also 20% APL (more realistic real-life figure), so let’s see how the Poco F7 Ultra performed in our display tests.

Looking at the results above, it’s clear to see that the Poco F7 Ultra packs a great OLED panel. It’s almost as bright as the Xiaomi 15 and currently the third brightest phone we’ve ever tested (behind the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and the aforementioned Xiaomi 15).

Other figures, such as minimum brightness and color accuracy, are also impressive, with the color temperature being on the colder side, but you can adjust that in the settings. Overall, the Poco F7 Ultra features an impressive display that rivals much more expensive phones out there.

Another flagship feature can actually be found under the display, and it’s the ultrasonic fingerprint scanner. We wonder if it’s the same unit used on the Xiaomi 15, as it’s as quick and as accurate as the one used on the parent brand’s flagship phone.

Poco F7 Ultra Camera

A solid triple camera

The Poco F7 Ultra comes with three cameras on its back, and they form the most popular and used camera suite of one wide-angle main camera, one ultrawide snapper, and one telephoto. The main camera 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.

Then there’s the telephoto camera, which utilizes another 50MP sensor, the Samsung ISOCELL JN5, and it offers the focal length equivalent of 60mm or 2.5x optical zoom.

Finally, there’s a 32MP ultrawide with an f/2.2 aperture, 15mm focal length, and fixed focus. On paper, this sounds like a decent and capable camera system, so let’s see how the samples we took (mind you, in very bleak and rainy weather) look.

The samples taken with the main camera look great, despite the gloomy scenery. There’s a lot of detail, the dynamic range is quite good, and the exposure is also spot on. If we have to nitpick, the colors look a bit too saturated and poppy, but that’s how many flagship phones roll these days.

There’s a 2X crop zoom available from the main sensor. It’s nice to have the option, but images from the dedicated 2.5X telephoto camera are better. They’re clear and detailed, a great tool to frame portraits or close-ups.

You get a 5X mode that kind of combines a 2X crop from the 50MP telephoto sensor with the 2.5X of the telephoto, and the end result looks okay, clean, and sharp.

Finally, the ultrawide camera is also decent, maybe not on the level of the other two, but it still gets the job done, and when it comes to ultrawide cameras, this one is on par with the competition.

Video Quality

The Poco F7 Ultra can record videos with up to 8K resolution at 24 frames per second, but we doubt you’re going to use this mode much. In 4K@30fps, the main camera produces great video content with sharp and clear details, good dynamic range, and nice colors. You can use the 2X crop and the telephoto while recording, and the image stabilization is also excellent in this mode.

Poco F7 Ultra Performance & Benchmarks

Up there with the big boys

One of the key features of the Poco F7 Ultra is its chipset. The phone comes with the latest and (still) greatest Qualcomm silicon, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. There are two memory configurations globally; the base model comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while the upper-tier variant has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of onboard memory.As you would expect, the phone tackles everyday tasks with ease, but is it on par with other Snapdragon 8 Elite-equipped flagship phones? Let’s find out.

Performance Benchmarks:

Well, even though we’re talking about the same chipset, it seems that the Poco F7 Ultra has been tuned slightly more conservative in comparison to the Xiaomi 15. That said, the phone outperforms other similarly priced phones.

In terms of software, the Poco F7 Ultra comes with Android 15 out of the box, and on top of it you’ll find HyperOS 2. Some of you may spot that this is the same software configuration as the one found on the Xiaomi 15.

There’s a little bit of bloatware on board, but you can easily uninstall the unwanted apps and customize the interface to your liking—with dynamic wallpapers, drawer or no drawer, change the layout, etc. The usual, highly customizable Android stuff.

We shouldn’t forget the AI (how could we?) situation. There’s not one but two AI systems on board the Poco F7 Ultra. You can choose to use the Xiaomi HyperAI, which comes with a slew of AI features baked inside, such as AI Interpreter, AI Editor inside the gallery, AI search, AI speech recognition, AI writing aids, and more. The tricky bit here is that you need to be signed in to your Xiaomi account to use all of these.

The other option is to rely on Gemini. Google’s AI suite comes preinstalled on the Poco F7 Ultra, and you can also use your premium subscription to the Advanced version if you have one.

The software update situation is still far from the seven years of support Google, Samsung, and Honor (as of recent) are offering. You get four major Android updates and six years of security patches with the Poco F7 Ultra.

After Xiaomi equipped its flagship 15 series with silicon-carbon batteries, the technology has dripped down to the Poco brand as well. The Poco F7 Ultra comes with a 5,300 mAh Si-C cell inside, and while the capacity might not be as impressive as the 6,000 cell inside the OnePlus 13, the slim body of the phone more than makes up for the lost milliamp-hours.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

The overall score of 7 hours and 48 minutes places the Poco F7 Ultra #27 in battery life among all phones tested in the past two years, which is a pretty decent result.

With a solid 16 hours of browsing, 12 hours of video playback, and 11 hours of gaming, the Poco performs on par with the Xiaomi 15, but then again, both phones feature similar battery capacity and the same chipset.

Charging speeds are great as expected, and it takes just half an hour to fill the 5,300 mAh battery from zero to 100%. The Poco F7 Ultra also supports wireless charging with up to 50W of power and charges from zero to full wirelessly for an hour and 15 minutes. No complaints on that front.

Poco F7 Ultra Audio Quality and Haptics

The phone comes with the usual stereo setup where the earpiece doubles as a second speaker to create a stereo sound with the bottom-firing loudspeaker. The sound is okay, nothing to write home about either in loudness or quality.There’s some harshness to the high frequencies, especially at max volume, but overall the Poco F7 Ultra sounds decent. The haptics are good, snappy, and precise, albeit a bit on the weaker side. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack on board.

Should you buy it?

We’ve arrived at the tricky part. The verdict. The Poco F7 Ultra is no doubt a very capable phone and undeniably a proper flagship. It features one of the brightest screens in the industry, the latest and fastest Qualcomm processor, a flexible camera system, and blazing-fast charging. 

And even though the name Ultra might be a bit of a stretch, placed next to more expensive flagships, such as the Xiaomi 15 from the parent company, the Poco F7 Ultra holds its ground. The tricky part is that at 699 euros, there are a lot of choices out there, including popular and readily available models such as the Pixel 9 and the Galaxy S25.

Granted, these are slightly more expensive, but people would probably add a couple of bucks and grab those rather than take a leap of faith and reach for the Poco F7 Ultra.

On the other hand, if we look at the Poco as a more affordable alternative to the Xiaomi 15, then this model is a clear winner, scoring the same overall result (7.3) for 300 euros less.