Hello, Guys welcome back with the Budget phone with 5G Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G review. There’s no doubt that the Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G is a superb value Android phone at the lower end of the market – but it may cut one too many corners to fully stand out in what is an increasingly competitive segment of the market.
The Poco M4 Pro 5G, like the Poco M3 Pro 5G before it, is a budget device from Xiaomi that seeks to obtain the most value for the least amount of money: £219 / AU$450 (about $300) and upwards.
When it comes to smartphones, money is often the first and most significant issue for many people, and the Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G undoubtedly delivers on that front.
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In exchange for your money, you will receive a decent-looking smartphone with a large, brilliant screen. While performance isn’t fantastic (and isn’t substantially better than its immediate predecessor), the phone will do what you need it to do with the least amount of fuss (and with plenty of time between battery charges as well). For some, that may be all they require to know. You do at least get the bonus of 5G with this phone, so you’re all set for the next-gen connectivity revolution.
However, if you look a little closer, you can see where Xiaomi has saved money. The Poco M4 Pro 5G’s camera arrangement isn’t great, and you’re also missing out on features like Wi-Fi 6, waterproofing, and wireless charging. It all comes down to your priorities and how much money you’re willing to spend on your future smartphone.
Xiaomi’s MIUI isn’t one of our favourite Android skins, but that’s more of a personal preference than an objective judgement – there’s just a little too much bloat and needless flotsam for our tastes, though the software is highly customisable.
On the off chance that you’re looking for the best spending plan telephone, the Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G must be in the discussion eventually. Notwithstanding, with mediocre execution and just good camera quality, it’s actually the low cost of the telephone, the presentation, and the battery duration that sells it the most.
As far as immediate contenders, the £170/$200/AU$299 Moto G31, the £229/$279 (around AU$365) Samsung Galaxy A32 5G and the £199/$299.99/AU$449 Nokia G50 are likewise worth weighing up, and the Poco M4 Pro 5G absolutely stands up well against them.
Notwithstanding, you don’t need to burn through all that amount more money to get enhancements like an OLED screen and an unrivaled camera arrangement.
Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G price and availability
- Prices start at £219 / AU$450 (around $300)
- Available via Amazon
- Not on sale in the US
The Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G is now available in the UK, albeit it is not widely available. The best place to buy it is probably Amazon, where you can get the 64GB version for £219 and the 128GB edition for £239, both SIM-free and unlocked.
It’s a similar storey in Australia, where it’s not widely available but can be found for roughly AU$450.
As is customary with Xiaomi phones, the gadget is not widely available in the United States – some places carry an international variant, but it will not function on all carriers. The handset is known as the Redmi Note 11 in China.
Design
- Stylish plastic chassis
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- Not fully waterproof
The Poco M4 Pro 5G delivers more flamboyance in terms of design than a lot of other devices at the same price, with its slick, two-tone back and huge camera bump – though we can understand the rather large Poco logo putting some people off. Of course, it’s just plastic, but it’s wonderfully done plastic that fits comfortably in the hand.
The dimensions you need to know are 163.6 x 75.8 x 8.8mm (6.44 x 2.98 x 0.35 inches) — dimensions set mostly by the 6.6-inch screen – and the phone weighs 195g (that’s 6.88 ounces). It’s pleasingly light and won’t add much weight to your pocket or backpack.
We had the dark form shipped off us for our audit, yet you can likewise get this telephone in yellow or blue too, choices which are a touch more attractive. This is maybe not the handset to go for assuming you need something downplayed and negligible, yet it’s invigorating to see a cell phone that isn’t simply following the normal, worn-out layout again and again.
Every one of the actual buttons are on the right as you take a gander at the telephone: a volume rocker and a power button. As is normal with less expensive handsets, the finger impression sensor is incorporated into the power button rather than the presentation – we incline toward it the alternate way round, however you may think in an unexpected way (and it’s anything but a colossal issue regardless).
Charging and information move is taken care of by means of USB-C, and Xiaomi has even observed space for a 3.5mm earphone jack on the base edge of the Poco M4 Pro 5G. You wouldn’t anticipate full waterproofing on a telephone costing this much, and without a doubt you don’t get it, with the telephone having an IP53 rating for residue and sprinkle insurance.
Display
- 6.6-inch IPS LCD
- 1080 x 2400 resolution
- Three color modes
The Poco M4 Pro 5G comes with a very serviceable 6.6-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1080 x 2400. (making for a 20:9 aspect ratio). The 90Hz refresh rate has become the new standard for smartphones, even those at the low end of the market, and the scrolling and motion is pleasingly fluid.
While the display can’t compete with the rich contrast and intense brightness of an OLED panel, it’s adequate for the price, especially with the brightness turned up. Colours pop and details are vivid and crisp — and if you don’t like the default appearance, you can switch to one of two different styles.
(Also included is a colour wheel that allows you to manually adjust the colour temperature from warm to chilly as desired.)
The bezels around the display are thin and narrow, with the exception of the bottom chin, which is slightly larger than the rest. The only thing that detracts from the screen is a circular cut-out at the top that houses the selfie camera.
Camera
- Dual-lens 50MP+8MP rear camera
- Ultra-wide option
- Built-in night mode does okay
The double focal point 50MP+8MP back camera fitted to the Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G won’t win any top tier grants, and keeping in mind that it’s not horrendous, it’s unquestionably one of the more vulnerable pieces of the bundle in general. Saying this doesn’t imply that the telephone can’t take a few great pictures, since it can, however they don’t stand up all of the time to examination (particularly in low light).
You get a super-wide focal point, which can prove to be useful for stupendous scene shots, however, there’s no optical zoom here, and the computerized zoom is typically unpleasant around the edges. On the front, there’s a genuinely standard 16MP snapper, which gets OK pictures yet very little more than that.
Right away peruse an exhibition of snaps taken on the Poco M4 Pro 5G and you’ll in all probability be intrigued: shading proliferation and difference is great, splendour is even (much more so with HDR empowered), and pictures are snapped in a moment. Assuming that you’re needing a few eye-getting pictures for online media, this telephone can do the business – particularly outside in good light.
Notwithstanding, begin to investigate photographs taken by the telephone all the more intently, and better subtleties become fluffy, with colours once in a while cleaned out. At lower light levels, there’s a considerable measure of commotion, albeit the underlying night mode can have an effect. You can in any case get a few usable snaps, yet cell phone cameras a little higher up the value range can improve work in obscurity.
We would rather not be too down on the camera capacities of the Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G, on the grounds that you can catch excellent pictures (and 1080p, 30fps video) in the right conditions. In the same way as other different elements here, it’s regarding what you would anticipate from the cost.
Specs and performance
- MediaTek Dimensity 810 processor
- Up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage
- 5G support
The MediaTek Dimensity 810 chipset found inside the Poco M4 Pro 5G doesn’t provide much of a performance boost over the MediaTek MT6833 Dimensity 700 found in the Poco M3 Pro 5G last year, but it’ll still accomplish all you need it to do on Android – including running demanding games.
In addition to the processor, you’ll get 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, or 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (a microSD card slot is available for adding more storage space if you need it).
We’d absolutely recommend the latter of those two options, albeit it does raise the price significantly.
This is one of the areas where you can see where Xiaomi has cut costs, as the Geekbench scores of 572 (single-core), 1,567 (multi-core) and 1,593 (OpenCL) testify.
There is a slight slack now and again with regards to exchanging among applications and bouncing around menus, yet not such a lot that it ruins the client experience to an extraordinary degree. Assuming you’re hoping to follow through on a small amount of the cost of the top-level leader cell phones available, then, at that point, you need to anticipate a few trade-offs.
The telephone accompanies Android 11 ready, with Xiaomi’s MIUI interface folded over it. It’s not our cherished Android skin, and there’s a tad an excessive amount of swell here for our preferred, similar to the embedded advert that springs up at whatever point you introduce something from the Google Play Store. Xiaomi telephones have their assets, however, programming isn’t one of them.
5G isn’t yet standard on each cell phone, yet we’re very near that point. In the event that the cutting edge association innovation has been carried out in your space, the Poco M4 Pro 5G will actually want to get associated with it, as the gadget’s name proposes. To put it plainly, you get a lot for your cash with this telephone.
Battery life
- Up to two days of life
- Large 5,000mAh battery
- 33W wired charging
The 5,000mAh battery in the Xiaomi Poco M4 Pro 5G easily achieves the normal one day of use, and if you’re not continuously streaming videos, playing games, and using GPS navigation, it’s feasible to get a couple of days of use.
For the majority of the days we tested, the battery level was still above 50% in the evening after a full charge in the morning.
Of course, one of the benefits of a budget phone with a less demanding screen and more pedestrian components is that it doesn’t consume as much power. An hour of video streaming depletes the battery by roughly 9% (at maximum brightness and low volume), so you can expect about 11-12 hours in total.
There is no wireless charging here – and you wouldn’t expect it at this price – but the 33W wired charging speed is adequate, and means you won’t have to wait too long to charge the handset (about an hour or so from zero).