Poco F4 long-term review

Camera image quality

For the first time in the F series, there's OIS on the main camera, and yes that's important enough to warrant us starting this section with that bit of news. Obviously it's a good thing for camera use, and we're assuming Samsung's addition of OIS onto some of its mid-rangers might have convinced Poco to do the same. Whatever it was, it's good to see it here.

On the other hand, the main snapper still isn't anything to write home about, at least specs-wise, which is pretty much what we expected from the F series. These phones have never been about the best camera image quality - while also never being among the worse at the camera game. But one area where flagship killers and mid-rangers cost cut alike is exactly this, and we feel like, on paper, the F4 is no different. But let's jump into some samples and see if that holds true in real life.

The main sensor produces very nice images during daytime, with good detail levels, great dynamic range, good (if not entirely accurate) color reproduction, good contrast levels, and noise reduction that's more subdued than on other mid-rangers. Sharpness can be a bit lacking in some shots, especially in the corners.

Daytime samples from the main camera

The ultrawide doesn't seem like much when you look at its specs, but it still manages to produce decent results, perhaps among the best we've seen coming from an 8MP sensor. Obviously this is still a far cry from any of the very good ultrawide snappers out there, but it's a little bit more than we expected.

The shots are nicely detailed, they have good sharpness, duller colors than the main camera (although there's an argument to be made that these may be a tad more accurate), generally well contained noise, and good dynamic range. The automatic distortion correction seems to work rather well too.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

If you hit the 2x zoom option in the viewfinder, you're getting cropped shots from the center of the main sensor, and not much else. There's no 'Super Res Zoom' here or anything close to that. It's one of those 'nice to have' modes that you probably shouldn't use too much if you care about picture quality. That said, on the phone's screen most of these shots look okay, with traits very similar to those exhibited by images that are captured with the main sensor. When you start zooming in you notice the lack of sharpness and clarity, but if you don't pixel peep, these are probably fine for a social media share.

Daytime zoom samples

At night there's an Auto Night Mode option for the main camera and we recommend leaving this on, as the capture doesn't take so long that it's inconvenient. Yes it's a bit longer than it would be otherwise, but what you're getting are images that have good dynamic range and contrast, reasonably low noise levels, and pleasantly saturated colors (which are a bit more saturated than reality, but people seem to prefer that anyway). Detail levels are decent as well.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

The manual Night Mode basically does the same thing as Auto Night Mode, just more of it. Shot-to-shot times are longer, but still decent - we've definitely handled Night Modes that take a lot more time to process than this. We'd pick this over Auto for the scenes that allow for it, as you do get a slightly brighter image with it than without, as well as some further enhanced highlights. And there doesn't seem to be any loss in quality in other regards either.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

Switch to the ultrawide and there's no Auto Night Mode, so what you get are shots which are incredibly underexposed and noisy. Detail levels are bad, and the entire scene has this desaturated look that you may find a bit atmospheric in its own way. But accurate this definitely isn't.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

Night Mode helps somewhat, making the resulting photos brighter and cutting down the noise to a certain extent, but the desaturated look remains, and we wouldn't really call these usable in the traditional way - maybe for an overly arty presentation? But as photos, they still aren't great. This is where the physical limitations of the sensor probably come into play, and hey, it's not all bad, at least it performs better during daytime. When the lights go down, we'd recommend sticking with the main camera if you can.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide

The 2x zoom shots at night turn out to be similar looking to the 1x ones, but worse all-round, in a very similar fashion to what happens during daytime when you go from 1x to 2x. In a pinch, sure these are generally usable, but definitely nothing to write home about. Since they're crops from the main sensor, the processing is very similar.

Nighttime zoom samples

Applying Night Mode to 2x shots helps restore highlights to a certain degree, which is welcome, and you also get more detail in the shadows, at the cost of a very oversharpened look. You'll have to decide if that tradeoff is worth it for you. As a general rule, we'd avoid using the 2x mode unless absolutely necessary, and only for those cases where it's impossible to 'zoom with your feet' as they say.

Night Mode zoom samples

Selfies come out very good during the day, with accurate colors (if ever so lightly poppy-er than in real life), great contrast, good dynamic range, generally low noise levels, and decent sharpness. The camera has that weird setup we've seen a few times before, where the sensor is a pixel binning one but instead of saving 5 MP shots it upscales them back to 20 MP for whatever reason. This is done better than for some other handsets, as there doesn't seem to be a huge lack in detail levels, although more could still have been better. Alas, it is what it is.

Selfie samples

At night things understandably take a turn for the worse, even if you have a decent light source around, you'll probably end up getting a barely usable result. Of course there's the option to use the screen flash if you want to, but keep in mind that nothing will save you from the sheer darkness of shooting in a pitch black environment. Portrait mode for selfies creates decent looking blur, but subject separation isn't always very good, with a lot of hiccups. Then again, sometimes it does work as it should, so it's a matter of trying a few shots until you get a good one.

The Poco F4 thus comes with a competent main camera, even if it doesn't have the best specs on paper. It's aided by OIS to create good looking images both during the day and at night. On the other hand, the ultrawide is better than what we expected from an 8 MP sensor during the day, and about as bad as we thought it would be when the lights go down. The selfie snapper is, interestingly, a similar story to the ultrawide: it produces fine images during the day and much worse ones at night, when the screen flash pretty much becomes mandatory - otherwise, you get mushy messes.

As usual in our long-term reviews we went with the default options and settings in a bid to show an approximation of the experience an average user would get from this phone. For the same reason, we didn't test the 64 MP mode for the main camera, since that's not the default and most people will never engage it - not to mention that pixel binning sensors are not supposed to be used like that in the first place, as they don't deliver their best performance unless binning occurs.

Finally, note that we stopped testing macro shots for our long-term reviews since most dedicated macro cameras aren't very good, and the Poco F4's is no exception. If you want to see what it can do anyway, please jump to our normal review of the phone where you can judge for yourself. Prepare to be disappointed, however.