Poco F7 review: our honest verdict after one week with the superbly-priced mid-ranger

Stuff.tv

3 days ago

Stuff Verdict
If you prioritise core hardware over camera specs this could be an absolute steal. It's just a shame the huge battery doesn't quite get the results it should.
Pros Excellent core hardware
Huge battery capacity
Price point-defying display
Interesting design
Cons Battery life underwhelms compared to its promise
Ultrawide camera is fairly poor
Digital zoom produces mixed results
Think Xiaomi and you'll almost certainly think of excellent phones at an appealing price point. Poco is a Xiaomi offshoot that takes this same logic and takes it even further, offering even more mid-range phone bang for your buck.
I was at the launch of Poco's F7 Ultra earlier this year in Singapore. It's a cracking sub-flagship phone for $649/£650 that performs really well. You can get better, but it'll cost you. Step forward to today and we have the Poco F7, a more vanilla mid-ranger, which sits at the bottom of the range under the inbetweener F7 Pro.
However, it's set to give potential users more than a little to think about, with the starting price clocking in at $399/£389 and early bird pricing available for an incredible $339/£319. That's scarcely believable and will surely undercut other upcoming budget mid-rangers such the Nothing Phone 3 which seems set to launch with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor.
Indeed, this F7 might be the entry-level phone for the range, but there's a lot about it that screams 'quality' as well as the Snapdragon chip including the display, high-capacity battery and 12GB of RAM.
Here's the full Poco F7 pricing for the two capacities available.
256GB: $399/£389 | Early Bird $339/£319
512GB: $449/£429 | Early Bird $399/£359
For comparison, the Poco F7 Pro is slated from $500, while the F7 Ultra will set you back $650. That's a nice spread between the three models.
That's scarcely believable and undercuts most mid-rangers. We already know the Nothing Phone 3 will launch with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor as the Poco F7.
The more comparable Nothing Phone 3a and 3a Pro feature the previous Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip. The Samsung Galaxy A56 and Motorola Edge 60 Fusion are also natural competitors. And that's before you get to Poco's own F7 Pro and F7 Ultra, which are very viable upgrade paths to get a better specification.
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Design and build: belies the price
Once more Poco has outdone itself, with a smart, flagship-level design. The aluminum metal frame is a little on the weighty side at 216g but it's fine compared to many rivals. It's not a large phone by today's standards, but seems like it has a significant footprint.
There are three colours, white, black and grey. As you may have seen, the grey is a Cyber Silver Edition complete with Snapdragon logo and other design flourishes made to look like phone internals. You won't be surprised to hear this one is my favourite given how much better it looks than its brethren.
The design of all three is quite distinctive though, with the rear panel split by a diagonal line like the rather striking camera module. In an age of phones looking the same, the F7 makes an effort.
The F7 boasts an IP68 dust and water resistant rating, still a little too rare at this price point and there's a pre-fitted screen protector. The phone even comes with a. basic silicone cover.
Display: 120Hz on a budget
The 6.83in AMOLED display is punchy and bright. It has a 1.5K 1280 x 2772 resolution (around 447ppi) with up to 120Hz refresh rate but it's not dynamic – not surprising for this price point. The phone can switch back to 60Hz or you can do it manually.
It can go very bright though, with 3200nits of peak brightness on offer and 1700nits as a more standard figure. The display is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 7i. It even has Dolby Vision (as well as HDR10+ and HDR10) support. Colours are really punchy and while the pixel count isn't the best it doesn't distract or detract from the experience. The display is undoubtedly a highlight of this package.
Specs and performance: impressive bang for buck
The phone runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 platform. Since the Gen 4 is new the F7 also boasts quite a lot of ticked boxed, with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, NFC and all the key 5G standards supported.
Performance clearly isn't going to be as good as the Poco F7 Ultra's flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite platform, but in our tests it gets close to the but it does get close to the Poco F7 Pro's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, first revealed in late 2023. In everyday performance, you won't find any issues with the 8s Gen 4 and only serious mobile gamers may find reason to grumble. Quite how Poco is using this chipset at this price point is anyone's guess but one can only assume that its margins are razer thin.
One thing that is anything but budget is the 6500mAh battery capacity with support for 90W HyperCharge fast wired charging (a 90W Xiaomi charger is inside the box) and 22.5W reverse wired charging.
Interestingly, the India model of this phone has an even bigger 7,550 mAh battery. It's a shame that isn't rolling out more widely.
So does the 6500mAh capacity translate to a wildly improved battery life? The short answer is not really. It's decent, but it's not quite as good as we'd hoped. It is possible to get the phone through two days of use at a push but it remains unlikely. We charged the phone one morning, did most of our camera tests and then the next morning it was in the red.
If you're an active user you're almost certainly going to need to juice it up during the latter half of the second day. The 5300mAh F7 Ultra seemed almost as good, probably due to more optimization from the higher end chipset.
The F7 has an under display fingerprint scanner which works generally very well and there's also face unlock, but as it is only reliant on the selfie camera it's not going to be the most secure. Yet it does unlock the phone well.
Cameras: very much a mixed bag
The camera is clearly one of those key areas where compromises have been made, but that is of course not unusual for such a low price point. The dual lens unit does still have a 50MP 1/1.95in f/1.5, 26mm main camera of reasonable quality in the form of Sony's IMX882 also in the Poco X7 Pro, Nothing's CMF Phone 1 and Oppo's Reno 14 series and the lower-end Samsung Galaxy A36. It has optical image stabilization which works noticeably well.
This is teamed with an 8MP OmniVision ultrawide and 20MP OmniVision selfie punch hole snappers, both of which are similar to those on the F7 Pro. The ultrawide is a serious downgrade from the 32MP unit on the F7 Ultra, however, and it delivers unremarkable images which often seem rather undefined and a little blurry.
At 1x and 2x the images produced by the main camera in normal light are absolutely fine with good colors and dynamic range. Video – even in 4K – is also perfectly respectable though don't expect miracles.
The results are clearly not flagship-level in terms of quality but for many they're perfectly good enough. However, if you start to zoom in further anywhere towards 10x, things rapidly go downhill and there is a huge amount of sharpening being applied. They just don't look that great.
Low light photos from the main camera aren't too bad. Night mode pops up automatically without delay. And they're not too noisy. Light sources are also respected and don't look blown out. You do need some light to be present though – don't expect very dark scenes to come out at all. And don't expect much action from the ultrawide at night, it's just not up to the task.
Software: Xiaomi time
The phone runs Xiaomi's HyperOS 2 which is based on Android 15 with full access to Google Play and Google apps.
There's a bit of bloatware in terms of the apps but it's nothing you can't remove. Otherwise the interface is fairly clean and you can opt to have an app drawer or not as well as choose from various dynamic wallpapers. HyperOS is a perfectly usable system.
HyperAI is on board and you can do various assisted image edits and also use AI speech recognition or AI writing for text generation.
Four years of software updates are promised which is fine, though with Google and Samsung now offering seven years, it's only a matter of time before others have to follow on.
Poco F7 verdict
The F7 launches into a hugely crowded market with lots of contenders under that all-important $400/£400 segment that classifies something as a budget phone rather than a mid-ranger. There are several reasons the Poco F7 is an absolute cracker.
Battery capacity has to be chief among them (even if the real-world results currently underwhelm), alongside the 90W fast charge and supplied charger. Then there's the excellent display that pushes the boundary of what you can expect from a phone at this price point. Finally, there's the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 platform itself, which provides you with reliable everyday performance.
On the negative side, the camera can't offer the quality that a bit more cash can get you and others do better for not much more. The camera compromises are not necessarily a huge negative at this price though. After all, you can't expect flagship-level imagery from a phone that costs half what a 'sub-flagship' might.
The Motorola Edge 60 Fusion remains a better option for imaging though, while the Poco X7 Pro also remains a real value champ. The F7 feels like a quality yet budget Android for those who aren't too fussed about taking loads of images but who want long battery life and a great display. It's yet another incredible budget phone from the Xiaomi stable.
Stuff Says…
Score: 4/5
If you prioritise core hardware over camera specs this could be an absolute steal. It's just a shame the huge battery doesn't quite get the results it should.
Pros
Excellent core hardware
Huge battery capacity
Price point-defying display
Interesting design
Cons
Battery life underwhelms compared to its promise
Ultrawide camera is fairly poor
Digital zoom produces mixed results
Poco F7 tech specs
Screen 6.83in, 1280 x 2772 120Hz AMOLED CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 Memory 12GB RAM Cameras 50MP w/ OIS + 8MP ultrawide rear
20MP front Storage 256/512GB Operating system Android 15 w/ HyperOS 2.0 Battery 6500mAh w/ 90W wired charging Dimensions 163 x 78 x 8.2mm, 215.7g