POCO X6 Pro Review: A mid-range performance king

The POCO X6 Pro is a premium mid-range smartphone from POCO, a Xiaomi sub-brand. The phone is powered by MediaTek’s high-end Dimensity 8300-Ultra processor. It is a 4nm solution that debuted with a Xiaomi phone in China a few months back. The new POCO handset also boasts the latest RAM and storage standards, a big and bright flagship display, a big battery, fast charging, stereo speakers, and an under-display fingerprint scanner.

The device features a solid build with a vegan leather back option, which feels premium in hand. The handset’s shape and size feel perfect—not too big, not too compact. But does the POCO X6 Pro back up its excellent design and powerful specs with a reliable, sustained performance? There’s only one way to find out, by putting it through its paces. Over the past couple of weeks, we used the phone as a daily driver to determine how it holds up during real-world usage. Read on for an in-depth review of the POCO X6 Pro.

Table of contents

POCO X6 Pro Review: Hardware & Design

POCO sent us the Yellow color variant of the POCO X6 Pro. It features a textured vegan leather back. The Black and Gray color variants of the phone have a plastic back. The vegan leather one is marginally thicker (8.35mm) than the plastic one (8.25mm). It is also a little heavier (190 grams vs. 186 grams). However, these differences won’t be noticeable to users, so we aren’t complaining. The vegan leather finish not only feels premium in hand but looks stunning too. POCO gave a matching yellow accent to the power button, adding to the handset’s aesthetics.

The power and volume keys are on the right side and at a perfect height, making them easily reachable during one-hand usage. The buttons aren’t the most clicky and premium ones we have seen. They are made of plastic and you can feel that. The POCO X6 Pro’s frame is also made of plastic, while you get Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the front. The frame is mostly flat but has chamfered edges. The back plate also has chamfered edges, making it comfortable to hold the handset for a long time.

The rear camera housing has a stylish, reflective design

The POCO X6 Pro has a big, slab-like camera bump at the back, housing three sensors and a dual-tone LED flash unit. Each of them gets a separate circular lens protruding further away from the body. The housing features the “POCO” branding and has “64MP OIS” imprinted below it. The company has given a stylish, reflective design to the camera bump, complimenting the vegan leather finish. The big camera housing makes the device wobble a little when kept on the table, but not much.

The bottom edge of the POCO X6 Pro has a speaker grille, a USB Type-C port, a microphone hole, and a SIM tray. On the top, we can see the second speaker, a secondary microphone hole, and an IR blaster, which allows you to use the phone as a remote control for compatible electronic devices in your house, including the TV, Air Conditioner, and Music Player. For the speaker, POCO has used tiny holes instead of a single slit on the frame, making for a more tidy finish. The left side of the POCO X6 Pro is completely blank.

Slim but asymmetric bezels

Adding to the POCO X6 Pro’s aesthetics are the slim bezels around the display. While these aren’t the slimmest bezels we have seen, there isn’t much to complain about here. The chin is slightly thicker, though. We would have liked symmetric bezels more. The punch hole cutout is relatively small, smaller than the iQOO 12, which is a flagship offering. The earpiece is tucked right under the frame, making it almost unnoticeable. All of this makes the POCO X6 Pro a good-looking phone from the front too.

The unboxing experience is nothing special. Along with the phone, the POCO X6 Pro’s black and yellow-themed retail box includes a 67W charger, a USB-A-to-C cable, a SIM ejector PIN, a back cover, and some paperwork. It is a silicone case with a bumper around the camera housing. While it gives solid protection to the device, you lose the premiumness of the vegan leather finish. If you are getting the Black and Gray, which have a plastic back, putting a cover will prevent the rear panel from catching fingerprints and smudges.

POCO has also applied a plastic coating on top of the display. However, it gets scratched too easily, so you might want to replace it with tempered glass or something. The overall build quality is solid and punches above its price segment, particularly when holding the vegan leather variant without a protective cover. However, when you plan to use a phone for a long, it is always a good idea to put a cover and display protection.

Not the best protection against dust and water

While the handset looks and feels premium, the POCO X6 Pro doesn’t boast the strongest protection against dust and water. It has an IP54 rating, which means the device isn’t completely dustproof and can only block non-pressurized splashes of water. Submerging the phone in a pool or taking it out in the rain won’t be a good idea. Overall, you might want to keep it out of water. You will find phones with better IP ratings in this price range but you will have to cut corners in other areas. Speaking of which, let’s look into the POCO X6 Pro’s display.

POCO X6 Pro Review: Display

The POCO X6 Pro features a 6.67-inch CrystalRes Flow AMOLED DotDisplay with a 1.5K resolution (1,220×2,712 pixels) and a 120Hz refresh rate. This gives you an aspect ratio of 20:9 and a pixel density of 446ppi. Thanks to the slim bezels, you get a 94% screen-to-body ratio, making for an immersive visual experience while watching videos or gaming. With an instant touch sampling rate of 2160Hz, the display feels extremely smooth and responsive. There was no touch lag during graphic-intense gaming.

The screen brightness is adequate too. POCO officially rates the display at 500 nits of typical brightness, 1200 nits of HBM (high brightness mode) brightness, and 1800 nits of peak brightness. The contrast ratio is rated at 5,000,000:1. The display is perfectly legible under direct sunlight with good color accuracy and vibrancy. The images don’t appear washed out. With a 1920Hz PWM (pulse-width modulation) dimming, the POCO X6 Pro’s display can get dim enough in dark areas to make for comfortable viewing while still retaining colors well.

Vibrant screen colors with extreme customization options

Speaking of colors, the screen boasts a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut. So, you get vibrant pictures with high color accuracy. On top of this, POCO lets you customize the colors to an extreme level. While most phones limit you to three color modes with temperature sliders, the POCO X6 Pro offers advanced controls over the screen colors. You can switch to the P3 and sRGB color gamuts with manual control over the three standard colors (Red, Green, and Blue), HSB (Hue, Saturation, and Value) color space, contrast, and gamma.

Additionally, there is a Reading mode that automatically adjusts colors based on the app you are using and sunset/sunrise times in your region. This helps achieve optimal colors for the best viewing experience while being easy on the eyes. You can also manually control the color gamut, temperature, and texture for Reading mode. While it works automatically when enabled, you have the option to schedule it. The POCO X6 Pro offers one of the most customizable screen color settings in the Android world.

The POCO X6 Pro’s Always On Display (AOD) is highly customizable too. You can create a custom theme for AOD with options to select the text color, clock position, battery icon, and notifications. Additionally, the phone offers a wide range of built-in clock designs, AOD patterns, backgrounds, and more. AOD is activated when you tap on the screen when the device is locked. It disappears automatically after ten seconds, so the power consumption doesn’t go up when the phone is in your pocket.

Widevine L1 certification for Full HD streaming

The new POCO phone has a Widevine L1 DRM certification, so you get Full HD streaming across all major streaming apps such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. With HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support, the POCO X6 Pro’s display enhances the viewing experience. The dual stereo speakers are quite loud too, louder than some more expensive phones, further making for more enjoyable and immersive video streaming. The speakers elevate your gaming experience as well. Thanks to Wet Touch technology, sweaty fingers won’t affect your gaming.

POCO X6 Pro Review: Performance

The POCO X6 Pro is an excellent performer in its segment. The phone is powered by MediaTek Dimensity 8300-Ultra chipset, which is a flagship-grade solution customized for Xiaomi. The 4nm octa-core SoC has four Cortex-A715 performance cores operating at a maximum frequency of 3.35GHz and four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores at a maximum frequency of 2.2GHz. The CPU is supported by ARM’s 6-core Mali-G615 GPU and an integrated APU 780 AI processor.

On top of this, you get up to 12GB of the latest LPDDR5X RAM (plus 6GB of virtual RAM) and 512GB of the latest UFS 4.0 storage standard. The POCO X6 Pro also boasts LiquidCool Technology and has a huge vapor chamber of 5,000 mm² in area. Additionally, it features a massive graphite coating covering over 10,000 mm². All of this ensures reliable and efficient performance with optimal system temperature whether you are gaming, making a video call, or just browsing the internet.

Superb gaming performance, brilliant at multitasking

This phone can handle graphic-intense games with ease. We didn’t feel any hint of lag or stutter while playing games like COD (Call of Duty: Mobile) and BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India), the Indian version of PUBG Mobile, with the highest supported graphics. The POCO X6 Pro ran BGMI at HDR graphics and Ultra frame rate without any issues. In our three weeks of testing, we played BGMI for about an hour almost every other day. There were no frame drops or performance issues even once.

Of course, if you continuously play graphic-intense games for over an hour, the handset will get a little hot. But the POCO X6 Pro’s cooling system works amazingly well to keep the temperature in check. The vegan leather back probably helped too, but you get the list. POCO’s latest mid-range phone delivers excellent gaming performance. You won’t find many better performers in this segment. Gameturbo helps enhance your gaming experience with some pro-grade controls.

Not just gaming, the POCO X6 Pro is excellent at multitasking and other everyday usage too. The phone is fast at loading apps, switching between apps in the background, taking pictures, and other routine tasks. Its background app retention is good too, capable of retaining apps in the split-screen mode so you can quickly jump back in. To check its speed, we copied an 8GB file within the internal storage and it did the job in just 28 seconds, which is remarkable in this segment.

Reliable haptic feedback and fingerprint recognition

The POCO X6 Pro features an X-axis linear vibration motor that offers excellent haptic feedback. You get effective vibration feedback while gaming, controlling the volume, unlocking the device, and various other gestures and system controls. The phone lets you customize the feedback level or entirely disable haptic feedback if it is not your thing. As far as the under-display optical fingerprint scanner is concerned, it is as fast as they get these days. We initially felt it was placed too low but got used to it quickly.

Benchmarks

Every phone that comes to our desk for review goes through a series of benchmark tests. We ran multiple benchmarks on the devices to see how they perform when pushed to their limits. This gives us a fair idea of a phone’s performance levels compared to competing devices. To start with, we put the POCO X6 Pro through a CPU and GPU test on Geekbench v6. It scored 1,285 points in single-core CPU tests and 4,356 points in multi-core CPU tests. The GPU score came in at 4,673.

Since this is the first phone with the Dimensity 8300-Ultra processor we have tested, we don’t have any direct comparison to make. However, the POCO X6 Pro punched above its weight, scoring better than some higher-priced devices. It performed better than the HONOR Magic 6 Lite and Tecno Phantom V Flip and gave tough competition to the Google Pixel 8 Pro. Below is a chart for a quick comparison of Geekbench 6 scores of some recent phones.

Next up, we did a Capcut video export test on the POCO X6 Pro. This is a test we have put together here at Android Headlines to compare the performance and speed of phones. It involves measuring the time it takes for a device to export a one-minute video in Capcut. We perform this test with the same video on every phone we review. The less time a phone takes to do the job, the better its performance. The POCO X6 Pro took 13.72 seconds to complete the export, which is better than most competing phones. Below is a chart for quick comparison.

We also usually run the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test on devices we review. It is a demanding 20-minute test that evaluates the device’s performance stability during prolonged heavy use. However, the benchmarking app appears to be blocked on the POCO X6 Pro. While we could download the app from the Google Play Store, it didn’t connect to servers. Nonetheless, the phone’s performances across Geekbench and Capcut tests give us a solid idea of its capabilities.

POCO X6 Pro Review: Battery life and charging

The POCO X6 Pro features a 5,000mAh battery and supports 67W wired charging—there is no wireless charging here, which isn’t surprising at this price range. We used the phone in the balanced mode at a 120Hz refresh rate and Wi-Fi connected all the time. Even with the heaviest usage, which involved a lot of camera use, over an hour of graphic-intense gaming, a few benchmark runs, two hours of YouTube, some web browsing, and a few minutes of video calling, the device took us through the day.

On normal usage, the POCO X6 Pro lasted for almost 40 hours before the battery ran out. To give you a better idea of its battery life, we did a YouTube test on the phone. We charged it to 100% and played a specific YouTube video till it discharged completely. We do the same test on every phone we review, playing the video in 1080p resolution with full sound and brightness. The iQOO 12 is the current leader with a runtime of a whopping 21 hours and 52 minutes. The new POCO phone lasted for 17 hours.

No complaints about the charging speed

We don’t have any complaints about the POCO X6 Pro’s charging speed either. The bundled 67W charger refilled the battery from 0 to 100% in 46 minutes, which is brilliant. We got 13% charge in 5 minutes and 31% in ten minutes. It took just over 17 minutes to charge the battery to 50%. In half an hour, we got an 80% charge. Overall, this phone offers one of the best charging speeds in its segment.

POCO has included a Nighttime charging protection feature here. It automatically adjusts the charging speed if you put the device on charge overnight. This helps protect the battery’s health over time. The POCO X6 Pro also offers suggestions to prolong the battery life. Additional battery-saving features include automatically turning off mobile data and clearing the cache when the device is locked.

POCO X6 Pro Review: Camera

The POCO X6 Pro has three cameras at the back. There’s the 64MP primary shooter flanked by an 8MP ultrawide lens and a 2MP macro camera. On the front, we have a 16MP selfie camera. The main rear camera has OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and uses pixel binning to capture 16MP images by default.

In daylight conditions, the phone gives you good pictures with enough detail, color accuracy, and dynamic range. Not the best we have seen, but certainly up to the expectations in this price range. Switching to the 64MP resolution doesn’t bring notable changes to the image quality, at least not when you see them on the phone itself. Speaking of which, you get HDR for images in the built-in Gallery app.

The stock camera app on the POCO X6 Pro has a shortcut button to 2x zoom, which digitally zooms into the scene as the phone lacks a dedicated telephoto camera. We found 2x shots almost comparable to the default 1x images in terms of quality. You don’t lose much detail or dynamic range. Zooming in further degrades the quality fast, though you can get usable photos up to 5x zoom.

POCO X6 Pro 2x zoom camera samples

POCO X6 Pro 5x zoom camera samples

The ultrawide and macro cameras are mostly there to just make up the numbers, though. Considering the output of the main camera, the other two sensors are a massive drop in quality. We won’t call them outright bad, but when capturing group photos, it might be a better idea to step back a little and use the main camera rather than the ultrawide lens. The macro camera won’t give you outstanding close-up photos either.

An average selfie camera

The POCO X6 Pro’s 16MP selfie camera is just about average. While there is a decent amount of detail, the white balance isn’t the most accurate, making selfies look bland sometimes. We expected better from POCO. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time we have said so for a phone’s selfie camera. It’s just baffling how companies fail to match the quality of the main rear camera so consistently.

Video stabilization is average too

This phone can capture up to 4K videos with its 64MP main camera. The videos come out decent in quality with good detail and exposure. You get comparable results with 2x zoom as well. However, the stabilization leaves a little to be desired. It appears POCO somehow couldn’t put the main camera’s OIS to the best use in videos. Weirdly, the stabilization is better in ultrawide videos.

Low-light shots are usable

The POCO X6 Pro gives you usable photos and videos in low-light conditions. You lose some detail compared to daylight photos but that is expected. The phone does well to limit noise while preserving colors effectively. Even at 2x zoom, the photos don’t drop quality much. Ultrawide photos in low-light conditions are also decent when you consider what you get during the daytime. The same can be said for selfies and videos.

POCO X6 Pro Review: Software

The POCO X6 Pro is the first phone we tested with Xiaomi’s rebranded Android skin, HyperOS. The device runs Android 14-based HyperOS 1.0, which has a few similarities with the old MIUI but brings a few notable changes too. The biggest change we see is the Quick Settings panel. Like MIUI, HyperOS also separates Quick Settings from the notification panel. The former can be pulled down from the right side of the top of the screen, while the latter from the left side.

However, by default, POCO doesn’t show text labels for icons/buttons in Quick Settings. While most of the icons have a familiar design, we felt having labels would have helped in some situations. You can see labels when customizing the layout of the buttons, but we wanted to enable labels all the time. Thankfully, upon some digging in Settings, we found that option. It is available under the “Notifications & status bar menu” in the Settings app. But if you like the label-less design, there is also an option to remove icon labels from the homescreen and app drawer.

HyperOS builds on MIUI’s customization features but still has a lot of bloatware

Another complaint with HyperOS is the amount of pre-installed bloatware. There are loads of them. Thankfully, you can uninstall most of them. Bloatware aside, HyperOS impressed us with its customizability. When customizing the app layout on the homescreen, you can shake the phone to fill empty spaces. You can also remove the app drawer and switch to a classic design with all apps on the home screens. This can be done when setting up the device too.

If you are using an app drawer you will get suggestions at the top, though you can disable suggestions. You can also control the transparency of the wallpaper in the app drawer. HyperOS also offers many styles for the lockscreen, each with a unique clock design and background. You have the option to use a Glance-powered lockscreen too. Lockscreen gestures include double-pressing the volume down button to open the camera.

There is also a Pocket mode that disables touch gestures when the device is in your pocket, reducing accidental touches. The Recent Apps menu doesn’t see any change with POCO still giving you a vertically-scrollable dual-column layout with no horizontal option. Long pressing on an app preview in the Recent Apps menu brings up a multitasking menu that lets you open the app in split-screen mode or pop-up window.

When in split-screen mode, you can quickly switch the bottom app to a pop-up window by long pressing on the three dots at the center and dragging it up. The HyperOS-powered POCO X6 Pro also has a built-in graphic equalizer to customize audio. If multiple apps are playing audio simultaneously, you can adjust the sound level for each app separately. All of this is on top of the display customization options we discussed above.

Three major Android OS updates are a plus

POCO has promised three major Android OS updates for the POCO X6 Pro. Debuted with Android 14, the device will get updates up to Android 17. This isn’t the best support you get in this price segment—some of Samsung’s mid-range phones get four major updates—but it’s still decent update support from the company. Additionally, the phone will get security patches for four years, i.e. until early 2028. So, the POCO X6 Pro is well-equipped to prevail for the next four years or so.

POCO X6 Pro Review: Should you buy it?

The POCO X6 Pro is an excellent performer in its segment. While performance may have been POCO’s priority, the device strikes a good balance of the display and cameras too, particularly the primary rear camera. But there are some areas where it lags the competition. Most notably, an IP54 rating isn’t the best you get at a sub-$400 price. The phone doesn’t give you the best ultrawide, macro, and selfie cameras either. Additionally, the Black and Gray variants with a glossy plastic back catch fingerprints and smudges too easily. If you plan to get this phone, picking up the vegan leather variant (Yellow color) might be the best idea.

You should buy the POCO X6 if you:

…want great all-round performance at an affordable price
…want an excellent display
…value the main rear camera more than the selfie camera
…want a bundled fast charger in the box
…like a vegan leather finish (only on the yellow variant)

You should not buy the POCO X6 if you:

…want an excellent selfie camera
…want the best dust and water protection
…don’t want a fingerprint magnet at the back (not an issue on the yellow/vegan leather variant)