Poco M6 5G hands-on review

Design

The Poco M6 has a fairly straightforward design with just a hint of flair on the back. On the front is a large 6.74-inch display with sizable bezels and a teardrop cutout for the camera. The display is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass.

The frame along the sides is made out of plastic with a matte finish. On the right is the power button, which doubles as the fingerprint scanner, along with the volume buttons. On the left is a tray that can hold two SIMs as well as a microSD card. On the top is a headphone jack, and on the bottom is a loudspeaker, microphone, and USB-C connector.

The back of the phone features a glossy plastic panel. The panel itself is plain but underneath it there is an interesting ridged pattern with a sparkling finish. Moreover, the pattern reflects light in cool arching patterns that almost look like velvet. Poco calls this the Sky Dance Design.

The phone is available in two colors, Orion Blue and the Galactic Black pictured here.

The Poco M6 is a relatively large phone but not too thick or heavy. This makes it reasonably easy to handle for those with large hands but some may find it a bit too large, especially with a case on. The build quality feels good in hand with no undue flex or creaks. The phone also has splash and dust protection without any explicit rating.

Display

The Poco M6 has a 6.74-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 1600 x 720. The display has a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz and a touch sampling rate of 180Hz. Poco claims a peak brightness of 600 nits.

The phone offers a basic level of color settings. The default is Vivid, which isn't as saturated as you'd expect. It had roughly the same level of saturation as the Standard preset, which targets the sRGB color gamut. The only difference is that Vivid has a cool white point, which would allow it to hit a higher peak brightness level.

There is also a Saturated preset, which runs the display in its unclamped color mode, making all colors extremely saturated while having the same cool white point as the Vivid profile.

When set to the Standard profile, color accuracy is pretty good on the Poco M6. The default white balance isn't accurate, as our unit had a minor magenta bias. However, a color wheel is provided to adjust the color temperature to your liking, and this can be used to set a closer-to-neutral white point.

Display settings

The display in the Standard mode isn't especially bright but remains visible outdoors. The Auto brightness can make the display easier to see by adjusting the colors under bright light. The phone does not support HDR.

The inclusion of 90Hz on this phone is perfunctory. There are very few places in the UI where the display is refreshing at 90Hz, and this mostly includes the homescreen and select system apps. In almost every other app, the phone falls back to 60Hz.

Being an LCD panel, there are some limitations compared to more expensive devices with OLED. The contrast is lackluster and the blacks appear dark gray. The panel response times are also subpar and you see some amount of trailing while scrolling, especially when using night mode. The display also dims considerably when viewed off-angle.

Overall, the display on the Poco M6 is serviceable. Despite the relatively low resolution and LCD panel, the experience of viewing the display was quite pleasant due to the good color accuracy and ample size. Watching videos was especially nice as Poco hasn't included any of the unsightly image processing and sharpening found on several other MIUI devices. However, the 90Hz claim feels like false advertising as you rarely ever get to experience it.

Battery and Charging

The Poco M6 has a 5000mAh battery, which Poco calls the 'weekend battery', implying it can last you the entire weekend. The phone supports 18W charging but the charger in the box is only 10W.

We did not do a full battery test for this hands-on but the phone did exhibit fairly long battery life in our testing and the two-day claim seems defensible, especially if you are a light user.

When it comes to charging, the Poco M6 is rather slow by modern standards but perhaps not so much for its price range. The bundled 10W charger takes almost two and a half hours to show 100% and then another half an hour or so for the battery to actually reach 100% charge. Using an aftermarket charger to test the 18W charging you shave about half an hour, which may not be worth the investment if you don't have a faster charger already, especially since there is barely any improvement in the 15-minute and 30-minute charge figures.

Audio

The Poco M6 has a single loudspeaker at the bottom. Audio quality is mediocre but the more pressing issue is that it simply isn't loud enough. On YouTube, for example, some videos can end up sounding fairly quiet even at maximum volume in a quiet room.

Thankfully, the phone supports both wireless as well as wired headphone output. The wired jack sounds just fine and was able to power headphones like the Sennheiser HD 560s quite well. Bluetooth audio also works fine and the phone has support for all modern codecs, including LDAC and aptX HD.