Poco X5 Pro review

A total of four cameras

The Poco X5 Pro has three cameras on its back and one at the front - all seem to be identical to the imagers on the previous Poco X4 Pro 5G model. There is a high-res primary, an ultrawide and a macro cameras on the back, and a regular selfie eye inside the small screen perforation at the opposite end.

The main camera is the same as on the Poco X4 Pro - it uses a 108MP Samsung ISOCELL HM2 1/1.52" sensor with 0.7µm pixels and 24mm f/1.9 lens. The color filter is Nona-Bayer, meaning 9 sensor pixels are combined into one 2.1µm pixel, and the output resolution is 12MP. PDAF is available. Night Mode is available.

The ultrawide camera relies on an 8MP Samsung S5K4H7 ISOCELL Slim sensor with 1.12µm pixels behind a 14mm (11mm per exif) f/2.2 lens. The focus is fixed at infinity. There is Night Mode here as well.

The macro camera packs a 2MP OmniVision 02B10 sensor behind an f/2.4 lens. The focus is fixed at about 4cm away.

Finally, the selfie camera uses a 16MP OmniVision OV16A1Q 1/3.06" sensor with 1.0µm pixels and a Quad-Bayer filter. It sits behind an f/2.45 lens (supposedly 19mm per exif), and the focus is fixed. While this camera should be saving 4MP images, it instead outputs upscaled 16MP selfies.

Camera app

The camera app is a rather straightforward implementation, though it does have its quirks. First, basic operation for 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 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, and a shortcut to Google Lens.

At 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. Also around is a magic wand with beauty effects and filters.

Camera app

There's a nicely capable Pro mode, where you can tweak the shooting parameters yourself. You can use the primary and the ultrawide 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, and shutter speed (1/4000s to 30s/0.8s for main/ultrawide) 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 next the hamburger menu.

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.

Night mode is available on the main and ultrawide cameras. There is also Auto Night mode enabled by default in settings.

Daylight photo quality

There is an HDR toggle on the viewfinder, which has two positions - off and auto on. If left at auto, the HDR will become yellow when the camera app decides to use HDR. This happens incredibly rare and the difference is a minor dynamic boost in the skies.

The main camera saves 12MP photos by default and those turned out good, though not great. But let's not forget this is a mid-range phone.

The images offer excellent contrast, realistic and lively colors, likable dynamic range, and they are clean of noise. The resolved detail is slightly above the average, but it's far from ideal. Complex details (like foliage) are often smeared (background) or over-sharpened (foreground).

We'd considered those photos pretty good for this class - they look excellent when zoomed out, but in 100% zoom you may find them rather average as they are rather over-processed and look a bit artificial.

Main camera, 12MP

There is a 2x zoom toggle on the viewfinder, which offers slightly better output than if you crop and upscale from the 12MP image by yourself. We guess the cropping and upscaling is done from the 108MP image (it even takes a bit of time) and that's why we are seeing a bit more detail. The detail is poor, but the rest - contrast, colors, dynamic - are a match to the default photos.

2x zoom man cam, 12MP

The portraits coming from the main camera are solid - the subject separation is okay, the background blur is good, and the subjects are well-exposed and sharp, over-sharpened even at times. As for the photo quality - it is a match to samples we saw from the main camera at 1x zoom - good, but not great as far as detail is concerned.

Portraits, 12MP

And speaking of detail, if you really need flagship-grade one, you can achieve it by resizing the 108MP photos down to 12MP. The images are a bit noisy, but much more detailed.

108MP-to-12MP

And here are the original 108MP samples. They are below average when it comes to detail, but otherwise good for colors, dynamic range and contrast. And because they are not over-processed like the default ones, you can squeeze more detail from them.

Main camera, 108MP

The 8MP ultrawide photos are good, too. They show enough detail, the corners are proficiently corrected, and the noise is low. The colors are realistic, the contrast is a bit average at times, and so is the dynamic range.

The Auto HDR often fires on the ultrawide camera (50% in those samples), but it makes little to no difference, unfortunately.

Still, these ultrawide photos are quite usable even at their full 8MP resolution, which is a win.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

The 2MP macro photos, on the other hand, are rather horrible. Their detail is incredibly poor and they are noisy and over-sharpened. The colors are good, though.

Macro camera, 2MP

The 16MP selfies (and portrait selfies) are excellent. They come from a Quad-Bayer camera, so the average detail was to be expected. But they do excel in everything else - noise reduction, color presentation and white balance, dynamic range, contrast.

Selfies, 16MP

Low-light photo quality

The Poco X5 Pro 5G supports Auto Night Mode - it is enabled by default inside the advanced Settings. It should work on both the main and ultra-wide cameras in theory, and the camera app should decide when and where to use Night Mode and its exposure time.

That's not exactly the case, just like on other MIUI phones. The main camera did use Night Mode for most scenes we shot, though it seems that sometimes it had opted for a lower exposure time than what the manual Night Mode typically used afterwards. Unfortunately, it did nothing for the ultrawide camera.

The photos with the default auto night mode option are easily likable - they are all well exposed with excellent contrast and great dynamic, the color saturation also deserves praise. The resolved detail is a lot, and the noise, even if visible, doesn't get in the way.

Sometimes the Auto Night Mode gave wrong indications when it was done or the exposure time was not enough - and that messed up the photos and we got slightly blurred ones. That's why we'd advise standing stiller than usual one second after the photo seems done, and maybe take more than one photo, just in case.

Main camera, Auto Night Mode

Sometimes the manual Night Mode uses slightly longer exposure times, which rarely may yield slightly brighter photos, not blurred, too. Other than that, the manual mode offers the same photo quality as the Auto Night Mode.

Main camera, Night Mode ON

The photos taken without Night Mode are also good and look more realistic. Yes, those are a bit softer, with lower exposure and dynamic range, but they represent the actual reality. And their color saturation is still good, and the noise pretty tolerable.

Main camera, Night Mode OFF

The 2x zoom use Night Mode only when forced. And naturally, it offers a simple digital zoom (crop and upscale) from the default output.

2x • 2x Night Mode • 2x • 2x Night Mode

As we've established, the Auto Night Mode does nothing on the ultrawide camera. The photos are usable - there is more resolved detail than we expected, the color saturation is good, and the noise, while in high amounts, doesn't ruin the photo. The contrast is alright and so is the dynamic range.

Ultrawide camera

The Night Mode is the way to go for the ultrawide camera, of course. It cleans all noise, improves the exposure, color saturation, contrast, and dynamic range. These bright ultrawide photos are not just usable, they are perfectly fine to be shown to your friends.

Ultrawide camera, Night Mode

And here are photos of our usual posters taken with the Poco X5 Pro. You can see how it stacks up against the competition. Feel free to browse around and pit it against other phones from our extensive database.

Poco X5 Pro against the Galaxy A53 and the Realme 10 Pro+ in our Photo compare tool

Video capturing

The Poco X5 Pro, unlike the Poco X4 Pro, supports 4K@30fps video capturing with its main camera, as well as 1080p at both 30fps and 60fps. The ultrawide camera maxes out at 1080p@30fps, while the selfie one can do both 1080p@30fps and 1080p@60fps.

There is an always-on electronic stabilization working across all shooting modes on all cameras but the selfie's 1080p@60fps mode.

The video bitrate is about 50Mbps for 4K and 19Mbps for 1080p clips. Audio is recorded in stereo at 96kbps bitrate and the sound is okay.

The 4K videos we shot on the main camera are great. The resolved detail is a lot, while the sharpening is balanced. The noise is low in the daylight footage, and everything else is great - smoothness, colors, dynamic, and even contrast. Of course, the high video bitrate that is north of 50Mbps surely helped.

We can see some color artefacts in the foliage, but we can't be that picky for a mid-range phone.

The 4K low-light video we took is good, too, even if it's a bit noisy. The footage provides good colors and exposure, and it's of higher overall quality than the average in this class.

Finally, the 1080p videos from the ultrawide camera are also good. The detail is enough for the 1080p resolution and the colors are accurate. The dynamic range and the contrast are enough even if not great.

Finally, the Poco X5 Pro in our video comparison database.

2160p: Poco X5 Pro against the Galaxy A53 and the Realme 10 Pro+ in our Video compare tool