Poco X4 GT review

Standard triple-camera setup with 64MP main sensor

The Poco X4 GT features a familiar and commonly used triple-camera combo. It's widely used even in upper mid-range devices. More importantly, though, the X4 GT offers a modest upgrade over the X3 GT - the main 64MP sensor is now larger. The new shooter uses a 64MP, f/1.9, 1/1.72", 0.8µm main camera.

The said snapper is joined by a well-known 8MP, f/2.2, 1/4.0", 1.12µm ultrawide camera offering 120-degree field of view. The third camera is used solely for macro - 2MP f/2.4.

For selfies, the X4 GT relies on a 16MP, f/2.5, 1/3.06", 1.0µm camera.

Camera menus

The camera app is a rather straightforward implementation, though it does have its quirks. First, changing modes works with side swipes (on the black bezel!), and you can also tap on the modes you can see to switch to those directly. Up and down swipes don't work for switching between the front and rear cameras; only the toggle next to the shutter release does that.

You can add, remove, and rearrange modes in the main rolodex by going to the More tab and navigating to the edit button, and you can access that from the settings menu as well. The unused modes will still be in that More tab, but you can switch to a (less intuitive) pull-out pane that's summoned from a line next to the shutter release.

The hamburger menu at the far end is where you'll find additional options, including the Super Macro mode (why here and not a mode in the rolodex?), plus the icon to access the settings. Next to that hamburger menu, you have a flash mode switch, an HDR switch, an AI toggle, a shortcut to Google Lens, and a magic wand with beauty effects and filters.

Camera modes

On the near end, you have the camera zoom switch that operates in one of two fashions. The first one is simply tapping on one of the three dots that represent the ultra-wide, primary, and 2x digital options. Or you can tap on the active magnification and slide sideways to reveal even more zoom levels - 2x and 10x, plus a slider for intermediate magnifications.

There's a nicely capable Pro mode, where you can tweak the shooting parameters yourself. You can use the primary, the ultrawide and even the macro cameras here. You get to pick one of 4 white balance presets or dial in the light temperature with a slider, there's a manual focusing slider (with peaking as an option, particularly useful for the macro), and shutter speed and ISO control with the range depending on which camera you're using. A tiny live histogram is available, and a toggle for zebras can be found in the hamburger menu.

Additional modes

As expected, there's a host of extra modes, including Long Exposure with its own set of different presets - moving crowd, neon trails, oil painting, light painting, starry sky, and star trails. The extra modes in the "More" sub-menu can be displayed with bigger thumbnails for easier navigation.

It's worth noting that once you switch over to the ultrawide camera for video recording, switching back to the main camera will default to 1080p. This is a bit annoying, and you should keep an eye on the resolution toggle since you might mistakenly record in 1080p instead of 2160p using the main sensor.

Daylight samples

Main camera

The phone's main camera produces some nice-looking daylight images with little to complain about, especially when compared to some of the X4 GT's direct competitors. Colors are punchy, although not over the top, contrast is great (like most Xiaomi's), dynamic range is okay, and the amount of resolved detail is somewhat impressive.

16MP daylight photos

If we do have to be more critical about the X4 GT's camera performance, we could say that sharpness needs a little nudge in the right direction. Under more close inspection, the foliage seems a bit on the fuzzy side too. Then again, this would most likely go unnoticed by the untrained eye.

16MP daylight photos

Quality drops significantly as you get the phone inside, even if there's enough artificial lighting around. Shadows may often be crushed, but sharpness suffers the most.

Shooting in 64MP mode won't bring much to the table. A tad more detail is resolved, but you get a narrower dynamic range, increased amount of noise and a significant drop in sharpness.

64MP daylight photos

2x zoom

We weren't expecting great results from the 2x zoom mode since it's a simple crop from the main sensor, but we were surprised to see the samples being of unacceptable quality. There's too much deterioration in overall quality - sharpness, dynamic range, and noise seem to suffer the most. Perhaps, a manual crop from the 64MP photos would be a better option than using the 2x zoom preset.

Daylight 2x zoom photos

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide images, although coming from an overused in the industry, tiny 8MP sensor, are looking pretty decent. Dynamic range is limited, and sharpness needs improvement, particularly closer to the edges. Still, the lively colors and good contrast bring out the best from the ultrawide shooter, and there's a good amount of detail in subjects closer to the camera.

Daylight ultrawide photos

Macro camera

As usual, the 2MP macro camera delivers lackluster images with washed-out colors, insufficient contrast and a limited amount of detail. It's a 2MP sensor, after all. The lack of autofocus makes close-up shots particularly challenging as well, so remember to take at least a couple of shots at varying distances.

Macro samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

The low-light samples taken with the standard Photo mode are not what we expected. General softness and visible noise, which is sometimes taken care of by the noise suppression algorithm at the expense of fine detail, ruin the overall quality of the photos.

However, there's clearly some competent HDR algorithm running in the background, judging by the well-balanced highlights and light sources. There's plenty of detail in the shadows as well. Color reproduction, contrast, dynamic range and exposure are on point, even without resorting to the dedicated Night mode.

Low-light main camera photos

Still, we highly recommend using the Night mode at all times as it doesn't take more than a fraction of a second to snap and stack all frames and improves overall image quality by adding a little bit of sharpness and clearing out the annoying grain. The difference isn't striking, though, but shadows do look cleaner, so it's a bonus we would gladly take.

Night mode main camera photos

Otherwise, the standard Photo mode appears to deliver just about the same dynamic range, color reproduction and overall appearance as the Night mode.

2x zoom

It's really hard to recommend the 2x zoom mode at night as it was pretty unsatisfactory during the day as well. Images are visibly soft, grainy and lack fine detail. The Night mode does little to improve quality, although it balances out the highlights and shadows.

Low-light 2x zoom: Normal • Night mode

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera struggles to deliver usable images at night with the standard Photo mode. The samples below are way too soft, have a narrow dynamic range and colors are washed out, although noise is hard to spot. Luckily, the Night mode helps with all that and delivers decent enough images for social media purposes. Sharpness is restored, highlights look better, shadows have much more detail in them, and colors are more lively.

Low-light ultrawide: Normal • Night mode

Once you are done with the real-life examples, take a look at our Photo compare tool for some pixel-peeping and see how the Poco X4 GT fares against the competition.

Poco X4 GT vs. Samsung Galaxy A53 5G and the Realme 9 Pro+ in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Portraits are surprisingly good. It's been a while since we've seen such good portrait shots from a phone in this price range. Despite the fine grain in some of the scenes with sub-optimal lighting, the phone resolves quite a bit of detail, sharpness is good, dynamic range is excellent, and color reproduction is on point. As it's usually the case with edge detection, the software can sometimes fail to produce a convincing bokeh effect, even if the background isn't particularly challenging and complex. Case in point - the fourth sample below.

Portraits

Selfies

Unfortunately, the selfies are a bit of a letdown, even for a phone in this price range. No matter how good the lighting conditions are, selfies look too soft for our taste, the dynamic range isn't great either, and the colors are a bit dull.

Interestingly enough, the Portrait selfie mode produces somewhat sharper-looking images with a tad more detail. We suspect this is because the HDR is inactive in portrait mode, and some HDR algorithm implementations are known to cause sharpness issues.

Selfies: Normal • Portrait

Video recording

The handset is capable of recording 2160p@30fps videos using the main camera and 1080p@30fps videos with the ultrawide camera. There are no other fancy video modes except that you can add black bars on the top and bottom to achieve a movie-like aspect ratio.

Starting with the main camera's 4K footage. The video below seems sharp enough with accurate color reproduction, no noise and high enough contrast. However, the dynamic range might need some improvement, judging by the crushed shadows and clipped highlights of the building in the distance as well as the passing white cars.

As expected, the ultrawide camera's 1080p video is considerably softer and has an even narrower dynamic range. Even with the lively colors on display, it's hard to recommend the ultrawide video due to its general fuzziness.

2160p stabilization isn't present, though, so videos will appear shaky.

However, there's an action camera-like video stabilization called Steady video. You can activate it using the toggle at the top of the viewfinder. The stabilization is pretty solid and in some situations makes up for the loss of sharpness (it's a 1080p video, after all).

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the Poco X4 GT stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

2160p: Poco X4 GT vs. Samsung Galaxy A53 5G and the Realme 9 Pro+ in our Video compare tool