Friends+Design
- Fresh, bright and vibrant design, with a gleaming, reflective rear panel - you'll see light play across the surface when using this phone, giving the feeling of depth - identical to the Redmi Note 9 Pro
- The front of the phone looks modern and defies expectations for its price category with an edge to edge display and just a small camera cutout at the top centre
- Fingerprint sensor is integrated into the power key, and it is swift at unlocking the phone
- Infrared emitter is on the top and can be used to control several home appliances
- There's also a notification and charging LED hidden in the earpiece, a rarity to find in modern smartphones
- At 8.8mm thick and 209g in weight, the Poco M2 Pro is bulky and unwieldy
Display
- Bright, crisp and large 6.67-inch IPS display with a tall 20:9 aspect ratio - the panel delivers punchy and vibrant colours and the large screen work nicely for consuming videos and games
- It is a standard 60Hz panel and doesn't have a high refresh rate - this is a missed opportunity that puts the Poco M2 Pro on the back foot compared to its peers
Software
- MIUI is one of the more refined and smooth Android skins around, and has a lot of customisation/theming options - there are ample features for power users - from gestures to the ability to switch around button layouts as well as a robust home screen customisation experience, you can make the phone your own
- It continues to pack a lot of bloat though - you get many pre-installed applications with wide-ranging requirements for user permissions
Performance
- Class-leading performance for the price backed by the snappy Snapdragon 720G - the Poco M2 Pro is more than powerful enough to handle anything from basic calls and messaging up to heavy 3D gaming, with no trouble whatsoever, multitasking is also smooth and trouble-free
Camera
- Decent quad cameras for the price - a 48MP primary shooter, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens, a 5MP macro camera and a 2MP depth sensor
- In daylight, the primary camera takes reasonably good shots - Poco has opted for a very natural-looking colour science, the colour temperature and white balance are spot-on which is very good to see, and the dynamic range isn't too bad either
- The ultra-wide-angle mode works well to capture a wide frame without much effort, and the quality is decent
- Poco has done a particularly good job at optimising the portrait mode, and the phone does a fantastic job at edge-detection, creating a natural-looking blur
- The macro camera delivers much higher quality shots than from most other 2MP macro cameras
- The 16MP front camera is fairly good in the daytime as well as at night - details are good, and portrait shots have nicely blurred backgrounds
- Low light photography is average, images are grainy with digital artefacts and splotches creating a nearly unusable shot
- Overall, this is not the best camera setup at this price and this time Realme has done a better job which with its Realme 6 which offer better cameras at this price
Battery
- Very good battery life with the 5020 mAh battery - with ordinary use, the Poco M2 Pro easily lasts through a full day and nearly half of the second day before needing a recharge
- Superb fast charging with the 33W fast charger in the box takes just an hour to fill the phone
Verdict
- The Poco M2 Pro succeeds at delivering value, a decent camera, class-leading internals and beautiful design for the low price is certainly tempting - if class-leading fast charging is what you want, the Poco M2 Pro delivers the best bang-for-the-buck
- However, the Realme 6 out-specs the Poco M2 Pro with its high refresh-rate 90Hz display panel, as well as the inclusion of a 64MP camera that genuinely takes better images
