Poco F7 review

A fairly simple dual camera setup

Poco didn't invest too much in the camera setup of the Poco F7. It only gets a fairly simple setup on the rear with a 50MP main camera and a rather basic 8MP ultrawide. The selfie isn't anything special either, just a 20MP snapper. By the way, both it and the ultrawide only offer fixed focus.

On the surface, the cameras on the Poco F7 seem very similar to those of the F7 Pro. However, Poco did swap some things around, like the main camera sensor. Instead of the OmniVision OVX8000, which is likely the OV50E, found inside the Pro, the vanilla F7 uses a Sony IMX882. It sits behind a brighter f/1.5 lens, but is also smaller diagonally and with smaller pixels than the OmniVision unit. By the way, the F7 Ultra also uses the OmniVision OVX8000.

Both the Poco F7 and the F7 Pro use fixed-focus 8MP ultrawide sensors. Very similar ones at that - OmniVision OV08D inside the Pro and OmniVision OV08F inside the vanilla model. We are looking at essentially the same hardware. This is a notable downgrade compared to the 32MP Quad-Bayer ultrawide of the Poco F7 Ultra.

• Wide (main): 50MP Sony IMX882 (1/1.95", 0.8µm), f/1.5, 26mm, PDAF; 4K@60fps
• Ultrawide: 8MP OmniVision OV08F (1/4.0", 1.12µm), f/2.2, 15mm, fixed focus; FullHD@30fps
• Front camera: 20MP OmniVision OV20B (1/4.0", 0.7µm-1.4µm), f/2.2, 21mm, fixed focus; FullHD@60fps

The same is true of selfie cameras. Both the F7 Pro and the F7 use a 20MP selfie with fixed focus. In both cases, it is based on the OmniVision OV20B sensor.

There is nothing particularly interesting or noteworthy about the camera UI on the Poco F7. That said, it is all laid out pretty logically and conveniently. Nothing is out of place. There are plenty of options here to play with.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

In good lighting conditions, the main 50MP camera on the Poco F7 captures quite good stills. Yet, these are not particularly impressive in any singular way, merely good enough. The standard binned resolution, as expected, is around 12.5MP. The colors are good, and you get a decent amount of detail.

Poco F7: 12.5MP main camera samples

That said, plenty of oversharpening artifacts start showing when zooming in. The contrast isn't great and neither is the dynamic range - highlights are frequently clipped, and some shadows are crushed.

The 2x digital zoom shots are honestly surprisingly clean for what they are. It almost seems like there is less pixel-level sharpening going on, which is impressive and a little confusing, given it is a thing with 1x shots. The other quality characteristics are mostly the same.

Poco F7: 12.5MP main camera 2x zoom samples

The Poco F7 captures some very competent portraits at 1x and 2x zoom. Subject detection and separation are great and the background blur quality is pretty good, though it can sometimes appear a bit overexaggerated.

Poco F7: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

You can force the main camera to capture in its full 50MP, or so, resolution. The resulting photos are definitely softer and more natural in terms of processing, which some might prefer. That said, the 50MP mode doesn't bring any real benefits to detail, so we probably wouldn't go out of our way to use it.

Poco F7: 50MP main camera samples

Ultrawide camera

Stills from the 8MP fixed-focus ultrawide camera are about as decent as one can expect from such hardware. That is to say that they are quite soft and blurry, without too much detail. Dynamic range and contrast need work as well. At least the colors look good.

Poco F7: 8MP ultrawide camera samples

Selfie camera

The lighting is good, and the 20MP selfie camera does alright, but there is nothing to phone home about. The detail is good, but skin tones aren't exactly faithfully recreated. There is some noise in the frame. The dynamic range could definitely be better. On the plus side, despite being fixed focus, the focal plane is pretty wide and forgiving, which is nice.

Poco F7: 20MP selfie camera samples

Low-light camera quality

The main camera on the Poco F7 captures solid low-light photos. There is plenty of detail in the frame and very little noise. The dynamic range is nice and wide with well-developed shadows and highlights. Light sources are not blown out. The only mild deficiency we noticed is the slightly more aggressive pixel-level sharpening going on.

Poco F7: 12.5MP main camera low-light samples

The Poco F7 triggers Night mode processing automatically without much fuss or hesitation. There is seemingly no way to force Night mode on manually, but you can adjust the capture time and force it off.

2x zoom shots are not too bad either. Their quality is quite similar to the 1x shots overall.

Poco F7: 12.5MP main camera low-light 2x zoom samples

The ultrawide camera struggles quite a bit in low light. Surfaces come out looking soft and smudged without much detail, and light sources are blown out.

Poco F7: 8MP ultrawide camera low-light samples

Depending on the available lighting and how patient you are in taking multiple shots, the selfie camera oscillates between disappointing and kind of decent. It's certainly nothing to phone home about, but with enough work, you can get usable low-light shots out of it.

Poco F7: 20MP selfie camera low-light samples

Video capture quality

The Poco F7 can capture video at up to 4K@60fps resolution on its main camera. The ultrawide and selfie cameras can do FullHD. By default, video gets saved in H.264/AVC video stream of around 50 Mbps in 4K, plus an AAC audio stream, inside an MP4 container. There is the option to capture on H.265/HEVC instead and save some space at the same quality level.

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

4K videos from the main camera are solid. There is plenty of detail and practically no noise. The colors look good, and so does the contrast and dynamic range. The main camera also does a decent job in low-light conditions. Its 4K videos are pretty detailed, with practically no noise and with a good dynamic range.

At 2x zoom, however, things fall apart rather rapidly. There isn't enough detail, and what is there is both soft and aggressively sharpened. The same holds true for low-light video too.

FullHD video from the ultrawide isn't impressive in any way. We really wish there were a higher-res sensor to capture more detail. The ultrawide camera also struggles after dark. Its videos are dark, soft and muddy without much detail and with blown-out light sources.

The Poco F7 has a dedicated EIS mode called "ShootSteady". It takes its footage from the main camera, but lowers the resolution to 1080p. It generally does a good job of smoothing bumps and shakes, but unfortunately, it also introduces a lot of focus hunting, making it unusable in most cases.