Poco F8 Ultra review

The 6.9-inch OLED display isn't LTPO; it's super-bright though

The Poco F8 Ultra has a 6.9-inch OLED display, which Poco calls HyperRGB - their 'full RGB subpixel structure' does appear to have an equal number of subpixels for the three primary colors, for what that's worth, though they're not entirely conventional in their arrangement. Regardless, the resolution is 1,200x2,608px in a 19.56:9 aspect ratio with a pixel density of 416ppi.

The panel supports a refresh rate up to 120Hz and a touch sampling rate up to 480Hz. DC dimming is also supported. It's a 12-bit screen too, promising 68 billion colors for smooth gradients. HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are covered too.

Poco's marketing materials claim 2,000nits of maximum brightness in high brightness mode (presumably fullscreen), and 3,500nits for a 25% area. Well, in our testing, we got 1,077nits for a 75% patch of white with the auto enabled and the phone under bright ambient light - not exactly impressive and actually lower than on the F7 Ultra, but not bad anyway. We also measured a 10% swatch, and there we got almost precisely 3,500nits - now that's pretty impressive.

When operating the slider manually, you get a little over 800nits with the Sunlight mode toggle enabled and 200nits less if you switch it off. Minimum brightness was 1.0nit - as promised, and most welcome if you often use your phone in complete darkness.

Refresh rate

The F8 Ultra adopts the classic Xiaomi refresh rate implementation with a 'Default' (full auto) mode and two Custom modes (120Hz and 60Hz ceilings). Just like the previous generation, the F8 Ultra's panel isn't LTPO, and its refresh rate behavior isn't particularly adaptive - it does the standard switch to 60Hz if you're in the Default and Custom 120Hz modes and you're idling, but that's about it. We never saw a 90Hz mode in action and we didn't get anything below 60Hz.

There's a small but potentially significant difference between the auto and 120Hz modes in that the 120Hz mode allows you to set per-app refresh rate values. You can, hence, try to force some apps and games to use high refresh rates or alternatively limit others at 60Hz to save power. When it comes to games, we had a relatively hiccup-free run with our usual selection of titles - the phone maintained a 120Hz refresh rate and the in-house gaming utility reported fps numbers well above the 60fps mark.

Streaming and HDR

The Poco F8 Ultra supports HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. We checked and the Netflix app reported support for all three HDR Video standards, plus the Widevine L1 compliance ensures FullHD playback of DRM-protected content. YouTube also gave us HDR playback, including in PiP windowed mode.

The Android Ultra HDR standard is also fully supported - in the in-house Gallery app and Google Photos alike, as well as in Chrome. You'll get the characteristic highlight boost for the Poco's own images, as well as for the photos taken by other devices that support it.

The F8 Ultra features a VisionBoost D8 chip - like the F7 Ultra before it, but now incremented by 1. It's a dedicated piece of hardware that's meant to improve visuals in gaming and video playback, but you can't point your finger at it - it does its magic under the hood.

Poco F8 Ultra battery life

The Poco F8 Ultra's battery is listed at 6,500mAh - at least our EU-bound version is. The specsheet of its Redmi counterpart, the K90 Pro Max, reads 7,560mAh and we can't help but wonder if the Poco has a differently tuned variant of that same actual physical powerpack. Or if Poco F8 Ultras for other regions might have the higher capacity too. The Redmi says it's using a silicon carbon anode battery, but we saw no mention of chemistry in the Poco specs.

While we're still somewhat salty about how some makers go about the EU's hazardous goods regulations, we have zero complaints about how our Poco F8 Ultra utilizes what capacity it does have.

In our testing, the F8 Ultra posted excellent results across the board. While the latest batch of high-end smartphones with big batteries did set the endurance bar pretty high and the Poco isn't necessarily a standout performer in this context, it's still putting out great numbers, summed up by an 18:52h Active Use Score.

Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.

Charging speed

The Poco F8 Ultra is rated for 100W charging, whether you're using a proprietary Xiaomi brick or a USB Power Delivery adapter. We had a 120W Xiaomi HyperCharge unit left over from the times when those came in the box so we tested with that one. We also threw a handful of 'standard' adapters into the mix - a 120W USB Power Delivery unit (with 3.6-20V/6A PPS capability), a 100W Anker brick (3.3-16V/5A PPS), and a seemingly more modest 67W Baseus unit (5.0-21V/3.2A or 5.0-11V/5A flavors of PPS).

Testing with the aftermarket 120W adapter, we had essentially the same results at 15 minutes and at 30 minutes as those from the Xiaomi charger. Things did get needlessly slow after about 95% state of charge, and the full charge time was one full hour (though, again, 100% meant true 100%). The 67W USB PD adapter did mean slower charging than the 120W one, but around 70% in half an hour isn't too bad after all. That one went to 100% in just over an hour.

It's worth pointing out that you'd be better off with a charger that supports PPS up to 20-ish volts. Those adapters that max out at 11V, for example, or 16V as in the case of our Anker one, can't supply the nominal 18V that the phone likes, so you'd be looking at slower charging, even if the adapter says something like 80W. With the Anker, the phone reached 55% in half an hour and took 72 minutes to get to full.

Again, we're testing a version of the phone with a battery capacity specified at 6,500mAh - we're not entirely sure just how quickly the Redmi K90 Pro Max for China will charge its 7,560mAh battery (and, consequently, a non-EU Poco F8 Ultra, if it happens to be a different one).

The F8 Ultra is only the third Poco phone to offer wireless charging (it's more or less the same with the corresponding China-specific Redmis). Like the F7 Ultra, this one is rated for 50W when using an in-house charging pad. We tried a 25W-rated Qi2-compliant pad and our power meter didn't go above 8W on its input end with the Poco on top, so it's safe to say that non-proprietary wireless chargers will be best left to overnight scenarios.

Reverse wired charging is supported at up to 22.5W, and reverse wireless charging is also possible (with unspecified power cap).

Smart charging 1 • Smart charging 2

There's a good set of provisions for extending the lifespan of the battery available in the HyperOS settings. You can choose between 'Standard' and 'Top speed' modes for the wired charging, you can enable Smart charging (the phone charges up to 80% and then waits for the final top-off just before you typically use it, based on your usage patterns), or you can just set a hard cap on things at 80% in all situations by enabling the Battery protection toggle. There's also a different breed of 'Smart charging' (same name, different submenu and description) that's less open about its mechanics - it 'makes charging faster at low battery and keeps performance smooth at high battery'?

Speaker test

The Poco F8 Ultra is outfitted with a 2.1 speaker setup that comes as a collab with Bose - the marketing is clear on that, and the audio equipment company's badge is there on the back of the phone. It's placed in the middle of what is dubbed a subwoofer - a 'tablet-level' 1620 speaker, so pretty large indeed (that's 16x20mm in physical size).

The subwoofer of the Bose-tuned three-speaker system

The two other speakers are 1115F (that's 11x15mm if it's already not clear how these things work), which is the same size as those found in the Realme GT 8 Pro, but seemingly not the same-same ones.

The top speaker of the Poco outputs simultaneously upwards through an opening in the frame and forward through a slit above the display (so it can serve as an earpiece too), while the bottom one fires just towards the bottom. The 'subwoofer' fires out the back and it gets some of both tracks, but then each speaker also plays back the other channels' track at a lower volume anyway. The channels are assigned dynamically depending on the handset's orientation in space, with the top speaker getting the left channel when the phone is held vertically.

Bottom speaker • Top speaker • Earpiece slit

In terms of sheer loudness, The F8 Ultra just barely made it into the 'Very Good' category, with an integrated loudness value of -26.0 LUFS in our seven-track music test (-26.1 and it would have been just 'Good'). It's easily excellent when it comes to sound quality, though. The three speakers work together nicely, the 'subwoofer' bringing in plenty of low-end impact as phones go, while the other two deliver clean and lively vocals and treble. It's a well-balanced and overall impressively 'large'-sounding configuration, and it can end up being a key selling point for the Poco F8 Ultra.

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.