Poco M4 5G Review: Your best 5G companion under Rs 13,000?

Poco M4 5G smartphone recently debuted in budget categories in the Indian market. It is only a 5G phone which is available for less than Rs. 13,000 in the country. The smartphone claims to deliver good performance, that too at a very affordable price. It comes with MediaTek 700 processor, 5000mAh battery, dual-camera setup at the back, and more. The device looks too good to be true on paper, but will it stand strong in comparison to others in the market? Let us find out.

Poco M4 5G Review: Design

Poco is one such brand that is known for its quirky design language and Poco M4 5G is no different. It comes in 3 colors- Poco Yellow, Cool Blue, and Power Black. I received the Poco Yellow variant for review and the smartphone is attractive at first sight. The smartphone is made of polycarbonate at the back and doesn’t look cheap. It has a good build quality and feels good in the hand. The device weighs 200 grams which feels a little bulky sometimes. Having said that, I didn’t find it uncomfortable while using it with one hand.

At the back, it has a black camera module that houses two lenses and POCO branding. It also has 5G written on the bottom side indicating it is a 5G smartphone. The rear panel has a textured finish and feels smooth to touch. The camera module has a glossy finish and does catch many smudges easily. The rest of the body is not prone to smudges which is a positive.

The side frame is made of plastic and the bottom edge houses the speaker grille, USB Type-C port, and a microphone. The left edge has a SIM tray whereas the right side features a power button and volume rockers. At the top is the 3.5mm headphone jack for those who still like to listen to music the old-fashioned way. The power button acts as a fingerprint scanner as well. The overall look of the smartphone is trendy and youthful.

Poco M4 5G Review: Display & Sound

The Poco M4 5G display is a standard one with nothing extraordinary. However, it has all the necessary aspects. It is a 6.58-inch Full HD+ LCD panel with 2400×1080 pixel resolution. It has a 90Hz refresh rate which makes the scrolling experience smoother. There is a feature of intelligent refresh rate that adjusts the refresh rate as per one’s use between 30Hz, 60Hz, and 90Hz.

It has a 240Hz touch sampling rate which underperforms due to CPU limitation which means you will see occasional lags while swiping.

The brightness level is good for both indoor and sub-par for outdoor usage. The video viewing quality is good as the display supports Full HD. All in all, the display is decent with a small flaw. It also gets Gorilla Glass 3 protection on top for protection against external damage.

The device comes with a speaker at the bottom which gives strictly average sound output.

Poco M4 5G Review: Battery

The Poco M4 5G packs a 5000mAh battery. The battery life is decent as the smartphone will work the entire day for you on a single charge if you have moderate usage. However, if you have heavy usage including OTT video streaming and gaming, then you will need to charge the device before the day ends.

It comes with support for 18W fast charging which is not the fastest but still better than some higher-priced premium phones. I would have preferred at least 25W fast charging but then that would have increased the cost of the device. Poco itself gives a 22.5W charger inside the box but since the smartphone supports only 18W fast charging, it takes a little above 2 hours to charge the phone from 0 to 100%. So, the charging speed is slow.

Poco M4 5G Review: Camera

The Poco M4 5G has a dual-camera setup at the back with a 50MP main and a 2MP depth camera. The 50MP sensor is ok but there is nothing much that can be said about its picture quality. There is no ultrawide lens and the depth sensor looks like it’s more for namesake than for use. The main camera clicks average images in daylight as it handles exposure and colors well. The shots are too grainy sometimes which is a major turn-off. The portrait shots have good edge detection and a decent bokeh effect so they are fine.

Night Mode can be avoided as the images clicked using it lack details and have very less clarity. They are grainy and their edges are distorted. There is an 8MP selfie camera as well which can click decent selfies in daylight but doesn’t come with Night mode support. So, selfies taken in low-light are passable. The camera department is the one where Poco has cut corners the most and honestly speaking you can’t really expect more than this at such a low price point.

Poco M4 5G Review: Performance

The Poco M4 5G is powered by MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset which is paired with up 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS 2.2 storage. Considering its price the Poco M4 5G performs as expected. It will get your work done but if you are hoping for blazing-fast speeds, well have set hopes too high.

The smartphone is suitable for tasks like social media browsing, and other casual use but not for gaming. The phone is not meant for gaming and thus heavy games are not supported by Poco M4. If you try playing them, then they can run at low frame rates and graphics but sometimes, they do crash in the middle. Moreover, the device starts heating up if a game is played for a long while. Otherwise even 2-4 apps run smoothly in the background without any stutter or lags.

The Poco M4 device supports 5G connectivity as its name suggests. It supports seven 5G bands price. These 5g bands are- SA: N1/N3/N5/N28/N40/N78, 5G NSA: N1/N3/N40/N77/N78.

In the software department, the Poco M4 5G runs Android 12-based MIUI 13 with Poco launcher on top. It’s user experience is similar to other Xiaomi and Poco phones.

Poco M4 5G Review Verdict: Should you buy it?

Poco M4 is the only 5G smartphone that comes for under Rs. 13,000. So if you are someone who wishes to own a 5G phone but has a limited budget you can buy Poco M4 5G. It’s a decent phone if you keep expectations in line with its price. Otherwise, you should go for higher-end devices which fall in the 15 to 20k category.