Poco C75 5G hands-on review

Design

The Poco C75 5G has the same basic design as the Redmi A4 or the Redmi 14C, with the differences being in the choice of materials and colors.

The Poco C75 5G features a marbled pattern on the back, which is also available in three colors. Above that is the camera island, which has four cutouts but really just one usable unit. The difference compared to the A4 is that the A4 uses a glass back, whereas the Poco C75 5G has a plastic back. The 14C also has a plastic back but with a different pattern.

The side frame also uses plastic with a matte finish similar to the back. Along the phone's right edge are the volume buttons and a power button, which also has an integrated fingerprint scanner. On the top is a headphone jack, and on the bottom is the solo loudspeaker with a USB-C connector that supports USB 2.0 speeds.

On the front is the 6.88-inch display with chunky bezels all-round. It also features a teardrop notch at the top that houses the 5MP front camera. Above the camera is the earpiece but it does not function as a loudspeaker. The Poco C75 5G does not have a proximity sensor for calls and uses the touchscreen to detect skin contact instead.

The Poco C75 5G is largely made out of plastic and the overall fit and finish is good but it doesn't feel as premium as the glass-backed A4. The phone is also IP52-rated, which offers basic protection against dust and water ingress. It's worth noting that the phone is quite large, more so than some flagship devices, and thus can be a bit of a handful, especially if you have smaller hands.

Display

The Poco C75 5G has a 6.88-inch, 1640 x 720 resolution IPS LCD display with a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. The display has a claimed maximum brightness of 450 nits under standard lighting and 600 nits HBM brightness under strong lighting. The touchscreen has a touch sampling rate of 240Hz.

Out of the box, the white point of the screen is set a bit too cool but this can be changed through the display settings. Changing the color scheme to Standard sets the white point to a more standard D65 value, which does noticeably reduce the peak brightness of the display.

The Poco C75 5G only supports sRGB gamut so the colors are mostly accurate and not oversaturated even when switched to the Saturated preset. As you can imagine, there is no HDR support here. The videos on streaming apps are also limited to just 1080p.

Display settings

The display's overall peak brightness is passable outdoors. However, the screen dims considerably when viewed at an angle, even if the colors themselves don't shift.

The Poco C75 5G display does not come with a protective film out of the box, although the glass is scratch-resistant. The oleophobic coating isn't the best, and the glass gets easily covered in smudges, making it harder to see the display outdoors.

The advertised 120Hz refresh rate seems impressive on paper but doesn't always work. Even if you manually force it to 120Hz through the settings, it doesn't work in every app, with several apps refreshing at just 60Hz. There is no option to manually change this per app in the settings, so you are just stuck with 60 if that's what the phone decides.

Battery and charging

The Poco C75 5G has a 5160mAh Li-Ion battery. The company claims 18W PD fast charging, but the charger provided in the Indian unit's box is a standard 10W unit.

We tested using a 65W USB-PD charger, but despite that, the charging speeds were slow. It takes over two hours for the battery to charge completely from the flat, which should be fine if you charge overnight, but it would really test your patience if you are in a hurry. This would especially be true if you just use the supplied 10W charger.

On the upside, combining a relatively large battery and a frugal chip means you can easily get more than a day of use out of a single charge.

And here are some of the Battery Care options the software offers.

Battery settings