Poco F8 Pro review

Brighter but smaller OLED display

The Poco F8 Pro features a smaller 6.59-inch display, compared to the F8 Ultra and its F7 Pro predecessor and interestingly enough, with a lower FHD+ resolution (1,156 x 2,510px). Not that it matters at this size, but it's worth noting.

Of course, the panel supports refresh rate at up to 120Hz and has 12-bit color depth. Additionally, it complies with the most popular HDR video standards - HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.

Xiaomi also says that it used a next-generation OLED panel that's more efficient and thus consumes less energy.

Poco F8 Pro

When it comes to actual performance, the display doesn't disappoint. In manual brightness mode, the screen reaches 821 nits, while in auto mode on a 75% fill, the display goes a little over 1,000 nits. On a 10% white patch, that number shoots up to the impressive 3,497 nits.

Even though the brightness with a 75% APL is lower than last year, it's enough for a comfortable outdoor use, and you will rarely see a white surface taking 75% of the display.

Refresh rate

The software offers Default and Custom refresh rate. The default one means automatic switching, but since this isn't an LTPO display, the system cycles between 60 and 120Hz only. The Custom setting allows you to force 120Hz in certain apps.

We observed standard refresh rate behavior as pretty much all third-party apps and system menus run at 120Hz, while video streaming apps like YouTube and Netflix dial down to 60Hz.

Battery life

The Poco F8 Pro comes with an upgraded 6,210 mAh battery, a slight bump over the previous generation's 6,000 mAh cell. And even though the jump in battery capacity is rather modest, the nominal battery life increase is substantial. The device earned an excellent 17:35h Active Use Score.

Perhaps the combination of a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and the smaller display with a new panel type is indeed more power-efficient. Either way, the Poco F8 Pro outperforms phones with similar batteries and comes close to handsets with or close to 7,000 mAh batteries.

The F8 Pro has a particularly strong showing in the screen-on tests, but posts a bit lower-than-expected 4G call runtime.

Charging speed

The Poco F8 Pro supports 100W charging over the proprietary HyperCharge standard. The 100W HyperCharge charger can be bought separately in some regions, like Europe, as it's not included in the retail box.

Despite the small bump in the charging wattage, coming from the Poco F7 Pro, the actual charging speed has dropped a little. Now, the Poco F8 Pro replenishes 80% of its battery charge in 30 minutes, and if you leave it for 9 more minutes, you will get a full charge.

Notably, Xiaomi doesn't mislead with its battery readings. When the battery indicator hits 100%, it's done charging. That's not the case with most manufacturers.

We also tested the phone's charging speed using a 100W Power Delivery charger and found it to be almost as fast as the proprietary charger at the 15 and 30-minute marks. However, a full cycle took almost 20 more minutes.

Interestingly, the F8 Pro peaked at 84W using the USB-PD charger, while the 100W HyperCharge peak was 76W. However, the HyperCharge charger sustained a charging rate above 40W, while the USB-PD delivered a little over 30W sustained charging rate.

In case you are not a fan of the speedy charging or you don't really need one, you can use the Standard charging mode, which limits the charging speed, or you can limit the battery's charging to 80%.

Speakers

The Poco F8 series comes with Bose-tuned loudspeakers, but in contrast to the more expensive F8 Ultra, the F8 Pro omits the subwoofer and instead relies on its standard hybrid stereo system. The top speaker acts as an earpiece, while the bottom one is a full-fledged loudspeaker, which is notably louder, too. Even though Xiaomi says the device holds two symmetrical 1115F speakers.

The end result is a mixed bag. While the F8 Pro posts a "Very Good" loudness score of -23.3 LUFS, overall sound quality is a bit unimpressive. Or maybe we expected more in the context of the F8 Ultra and the Bose-tuned speakers? Either way, the F8 Pro's loudspeakers aren't bad, but they heavily bias the mids and highs. The vocals are prominent and loud, which is great for podcasts and videos, for example, but the bass is lacking. Most music tracks are flat and lack depth.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.