Poco M4 5G review

Competition

The Poco M4 5G occupies a very competitive budget price niche of the smartphone market. One will set you back about $240. While that's definitely a tight budget, there are plenty of devices you can still pick up within that budget.

Starting with Xiaomi's own ranks, there is the popular Redmi Note 11. Some of its highlight features compared to the Poco M4 5G include a 90Hz AMOLED display, stereo speakers, IP53 ingress protection, 33W fast charging for its 5,000 mAh battery and a higher camera count, including an 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro camera and a higher resolution 13MP selfie. If higher resolution cameras are what you are after, then the Redmi Note 11s might be worth a few bucks extra.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 • Samsung Galaxy A23 • Samsung Galaxy A32

Samsung has more than a few interesting and viable budget offers. The Galaxy A13 has been particularly popular recently, but out of the Korean giant's current lineup, the Galaxy A23 looks a bit better with a 90Hz IPS display, OIS on its main camera, faster 25W charging and better battery life in our tests and an arguably more efficient Snapdragon 680 chipset.

If picking up a slightly older device and one that consequently won't be supported for quite as long, the Galaxy A32 is a great choice. It packs a 90Hz Super AMOLED display, Gorilla Glass 5 protection on its display, a potent camera setup and a large 5,000 mAh battery that did well in our tests. And if 5G connectivity is high up on your priorities list, then the Galaxy A32 5G is potentially worth looking into. It does sacrifice a lot of hardware to accommodate 5G at a budget price point, though.

Our verdict

The global Poco M4 5G is a bit hard to recommend. Just to clarify once again, in an increasingly confusing turn of events, Xiaomi decided to put out a version of the M4 5G for global markets that is different from the regular Poco M4 5G already available primarily in India. This new variant is a downgrade compared to its namesake, which is already quite the downgrade compared to the closely priced Poco M4 Pro 5G.

Putting that aside for a bit, the Poco M4 5G looks decent on paper for its budget price tag. It packs features like a 90Hz display, a MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset, splash resistance and Gorilla Glass 3 front, a 3.5mm jack, IR blaster, plenty of sensors and a big 5,000 mAh battery with an excellent endurance rating in our testing.

Speaking of tests, however, we just have to bring up the sub-par performance of the display on our unit. It is not bright enough to use comfortably across varied use case scenarios. That's probably its single biggest downside.

Even on a shoestring budget, you can get a better phone with features like an AMOLED display and stereo speakers. Unless you score an awesome deal on the Poco M4 5G, we would definitely shop around before settling on this one.

Pros

• Attractive splash-resistant design, cool color options.
• Pretty good speaker audio quality
• Excellent battery life, and decent fast charging.
• Dependable performance, smooth MIUI 13 experience.
• Good daylight photo and video quality for a budget phone.
• Surprisingly full set of sensors and I/O: 3.5mm jack, microSD slot, NFC, IR blaster, FM radio.
• Cheap.

Cons

• The max screen brightness is inadequate for outdoor use.
• No stereo speakers.
• No ultrawide or macro camera, video capture capped at 1080p. Bad selfie videos and unimpressive selfie photos.