Let's be honest, the arrival of POCO X5 Pro 5G on the technological scene has not turned on any bells of attention, even if the brand with its first device, the glorious POCOPHONE F1, had literally rocked the smartphone market. Thanks to a bad reputation created by small and big problems in the category of cheap smartphones, but also a non-first-hand technical sheet, the POCO X5 Pro 5G results on paper “poco” attractive. I've tried it for a long time and I'm ready to give you my opinion on this device, which at times even pleasantly surprised me.
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On offer on Amazon
unboxing
One thing that cannot be discussed is that relating to the unboxing of products POCO, which always offers complete and well-finished packages for its products. In fact, inside the black and yellow sales box, in addition to the smartphone, we also have a transparent silicone protective case, a pin for removing the SIM tray, multilingual manuals, a charging and data transfer cable and a powerful 67W but also a plastic film to protect the display, already installed by the manufacturer, in short, you won't have to drop a euro to start using your new POCO X5 Pro 5G.
DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION QUALITY
The new mid-range of the Asian brand does not stand out for its innovation in terms of design, but overall it is well built and above all with a premium appearance, even if the materials used are not of the luxury type. What stands out is the front of the device, due to a display set within ultra-optimized and thin frames. There are different colors of the rear body, but in my opinion yellow is the one that gives charm to this POCO X5 Pro 5G, which in contrast to the black of the profiles and the appeal of the yellow color for the power button, is a pleasure for the eyes, provided you accept the showy black horizontal band where the camera bumper has been inserted and an eye-catching inscription POCO.
The ergonomics are also surprising, considering the 5000 mAh of integrated battery and the 6,7-inch screen, but the "brick" shape but with curved corners and a weight of only 181 grams make this smartphone one of the lightest around , in relation to the rest of the dimensions which appear to be 162.91 x 76.03 x 7.9 mm. As I said, despite the use of cheap and plastic materials, the final result is of high quality and the opaque finish used is pleasant and above all it does not retain fingerprints or dirt in general.
Nothing is missing, in fact on the upper profile we have the indispensable 3,5 mm jack, secondary microphone for noise reduction in calls, IR transmitter and the grid for the secondary speaker, as POCO X5 Pro 5G is equipped with stereo sound which is expressed with the additional speaker positioned on the lower profile, accompanied by the main microphone, Type-C input for charging with OTG support (no video output) and the SIM tray capable of accommodating 2 SIMs in nano format but unfortunately the memory expansion is absent. The left profile of the terminal is clean while specularly we have the volume rocker and the power button which also incorporates the biometric sensor for unlocking the phone by means of a fingerprint. The unlock speed is very good but the sensor could be uncomfortable for left-handed people, if the silicone cover is used to protect the phone.
DISPLAY
Although we are not talking about a top of the range, POCO X5 Pro 5G boasts one of the most beautiful screens around. It is a 6,67-inch diagonal FLOW AMOLED panel with Full HD + 2400 x 1080 pixel resolution, protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 glass, equipped with a 120 Hz refresh rate and a 240 Hz touch sampling rate .
Very bright and visible in all light conditions with a peak of 900 nits and a DCI-P3 color Camut color profile, while as further confirmation of the goodness of the display we also find support for HDR10 and Widevine L1 content. In practice, all this translates into a truly pleasant viewing of multimedia content even outdoors, with colors that are quite faithful to reality, always bright and above all without ever tiring the eyes. Among other things, within the MIUI 14 software, there are many options for managing colors and calibrating them even for individual applications.
The display is only interrupted by a central hole at the top, where the selfie camera is housed, while the ear capsule and the brightness and proximity sensors are located in the upper frame, the latter of a physical type, so no problems with calls, vocals, messaging programs, capsule listening, etc.
SOFTWARE
Like it or not, it is MIUI in version 14 that animates the POCO X5 Pro 5G. The MUI 14 is confirmed as pleasant and well made, but one thing that made me turn up my nose is the total absence of the graphic innovations presented for the China version: they are missing on MIUI 14, for example ANIMATED WIDGETS, INTERACTIVE WIDGETS, FOLDERS GIANTS, ICON CHANGE (the possibility remains through third-party icon packs), POSSIBILITY TO UNINSTALL ALMOST ALL SYSTEM APPS (less bloatware), INCOGNITO MODE (function that deactivates GPS, microphone and camera), SELECT TEXT FROM PHOTO ( with copy and translate function), NOTIFICATION HISTORY and much more. But what will surely make everyone turn up their noses is that the phone was presented with Android 12 and the December 2022 patch on board. In practice, we missed the release of a major update in addition to the fact that POCO was poco clear on the policy of updating its devices, so if we want to be optimistic, the phone will see Android 14 at the most. Overall, I haven't noticed any particular bugs, even if I would have expected a greater fluidity of the system, which slows down in some areas, such as when we change the theme. Having said that, there are all the typical features of the moment including wireless screen sharing and some goodies that allow you to have the maximum possible privacy.
It should also be noted that on first launch, the general interface is full of useless applications (bloatware), please you can uninstall them but you have to waste tens of minutes unnecessarily removing apps that you would never have downloaded, as well as customizing at least the system apps for remove annoying ads. The icing on the cake, but indigestible, is the presence of duplicate applications, even that of SMS messages, which in this case we cannot remove except through geek operations.
PERFORMANCE AND CONNECTIVITY
POCO X5 Pro 5G actually left a bad taste in my mouth in terms of performance. For heaven's sake, it's not a problematic smartphone, indeed you can do everything but having tried another smartphone, with the same hardware, or the Realme GT Master Edition, I would have expected at least the same performance.
instead POCO X5 Pro 5G was less fluid, less responsive. In any case, under the hood we find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7778G processor, octa-core solution clocked at 2.4 GHz and 6nm production process, accompanied by the Adreno 642L GPU and a quantity of 6/8 GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128/256 GB UFS 2.2 non-expandable storage. My personal experience lived with the rival Realme, this one POCO X5 Pro 5G is pleasant to use, with satisfaction also in gaming, either for the large 120 Hz screen and the stereo sound, the fact is that you take home a good user experience even for the most complex operations. There is also the possibility of exploiting the RAM boost up to 5GB and therefore making the use of different applications at the same time even wider.
The whole connectivity part is good, boasting a Bluetooth 5.2, extremely fast WiFi, headphone jack if you don't want to take advantage of the excellent stereo audio (even in speakerphone), IR transmitter, NFC sensor and Dual SIM Dual 5G module, with reception always at top.
AUTONOMY
Something that I have never had to criticize since time immemorial is the autonomy chapter, which is why POCO X5 Pro 5G is a plus. Equipped with a 5000 mAh battery, combined with an optimized interface and an equally performing processor, energy consumption is the least of the problems, moreover in combination with always low temperatures even after intense stressful activities. Overall, you are also guaranteed two full days of use, but if you are among that group of users who manage to download this device before a day, you can count on a 67W super fast charge which will give you full charge in about 40 minutes. 'power.
PHOTO AND VIDEO
The smartphone under examination tries to amaze with a photographic technical data sheet that does not go unnoticed, where a 108 MP f / 1.89 primary sensor is used which is flanked by an 8 MP, f / 2.2 FOV 120 ° ultrawide sensor and a dedicated to 2 MP f/2.45 macros while the selfie camera uses a 16 MP f/2.4 lens.
Numbers aside, the focal apertures for the secondary optics are poco bright and you can see the result in the photos and videos. Overall photos and videos are more than fair in good lighting conditions and I appreciated that the chromatic fidelity is homogeneous between the cameras used. In the evening the quality is scarce enough but does not disappoint expectations while the microphones for capturing audio in videos and the EIS stabilization are good, rather clean. I also appreciated the fact that even in 4K 30 fps resolution (the maximum usable) the focus is perfect. In short POCO X5 Pro 5G is not a camera phone, but it defends itself very well against the competition.
PROJECTED IMPACT
POCO X5 Pro 5G is a smartphone that overall does not disappoint, it does everything for which it was designed but overall it does not stand out in any area. The hardware equipment and the rest of the specifications are definitely more than satisfactory to deal with every situation while the only drawback is the software, not for obvious bugs or anything else but for a guarantee of updates poco clear and already crippled, considering the lack of Android 13 in February 2023.
Price in line with competitors and perhaps represents the tip of the balance on a possible purchase. In short, if it had cost 50/100 euros less, I would not have hesitated to tell you to buy it immediately but for the first time I would advise you to raise the price bar and turn to a higher-end medium-range such as the Motorola Edge 30 Fusion or to always look at Xiaomi / Redmi at home, perhaps at the top of the past generation. If you find it in super offer, in that case don't hesitate to buy POCO X5 Pro 5G.
