POCO M4 5G Review – Real Budget King

POCO is launching a new smartphone every few weeks. These new smartphones are ultimately benefiting the end users like us. The latest addition to this is the POCO M4 5G.

The POCO M4 5G comes in two storage variants in India. The base model starts at Rs 12,999 and packs 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The other model is priced at Rs 14,999 and offers 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

The phone is available in three different colour options: Cool Blue, Power Black, and Yellow. It will be available for purchase on Flipkart starting on May 5th.

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The POCO M4 5G brings the following items inside the bright yellow box:

• 22.5 W Power Adapter
• USB Type A-C Cable
• Sim Ejector Tool
• Transparent Case
• Pre-Applied Screen Protector
• User Guide
• Warranty Card

Before we talk in detail about the POCO M4 5G, let’s see what the on-paper specs look like:

• Display: 6.58 inches IPS LCD
• Chipset: MediaTek Dimensity 700
• RAM & ROM: 4GB 64GB, 6GB 128GB
• Software: Android v12
• Rear camera: 50MP + 2MP
• Selfie camera: 8 MP
• Battery: 5000 mAh
• Weight: 200 grams
• Dimensions: 163.9 x 76 x 8.9 mm

The first thing you’ll notice when you see the phone is its colourful stylish design. I was wow struck looking at the phone and imagining that POCO delivered this at such a good price. The phone looks way above its price segment and anyone would easily think it’s a premium mid-ranger.

POCO M4 5G comes in three colour options: Cool Blue, Power Black, and Yellow. I have the Yellow variant with me, which is no doubt the best one among all. The phone weighs around 200 grams which might feel a little heavy in the hands.

There is a big glossy camera island on the back that goes from right to left and curves at the edges. The camera island has a subtle POCO branding on the right side which looks great. The bottom left of the back prints a small 5G branding.

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The back of the phone has a matte finish which feels great in the hands. The back panel is made of plastic but feels more durable than its competitors. The frame is also constructed of plastic.

The matte finish does not collect any fingerprints which is great. POCO M4 5G has a transparent case included in the box as a bonus. It also has an IP52 rating for water and dust resistance.

Coming to the buttons and ports, the phone has volume buttons and a power button which doubles as a fingerprint scanner on the right side. The left side has the SIM tray slot which supports two SIM and a microSD card.

The top has an IR blaster and a 3.5mm headphone jack while the bottom offers a single speaker, USB Type-C port, and primary mic.

The POCO M4 5G has a dual-camera layout that includes a main 50MP sensor and a 2MP depth camera. At the front, there is an 8-megapixel camera for taking selfies and doing video calls.

The 50MP primary camera captures some fantastic images in ideal lighting conditions, but it struggles while shooting in low light or at nighttime. Aside from that, there is a lack of dynamic range. The 50Mp mode adds more details to images but also brings some obvious noise.

When it comes to the 2MP macro sensor, you won’t be getting any good shots from it. It’s just added there to increase the camera lens. I feel like POCO should have opted for an 8MP ultrawide lens.

The portrait mode works fine and does a decent job of separating the subject from the background. There is a dedicated Night Mode which adds extra light to the image and a small amount of details but even then the shots are not so good.

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The 8MP front-facing camera does not take any impressive photos; rather, it is just average. Because it only has an 8MP sensor, it misses out on details and suffers from similar dynamic range issues as the primary camera.

Both the front and back cameras can record videos up to 1080p at 30fps. Overall, the phone’s cameras are decent, but they aren’t the best in its price segment.

POCO M4 5G packs a big 5000 mAh battery inside the punchy yellow body. The phone includes a 22.5W fast charger inside the box although the phone only supports upto 18W of fast charging.

Talking about the battery performance, the phone easily lasts for a whole day of casual use and still leaves behind some juice for the next day. My usage included some Instagram scrolling, taking photos, sending out emails and of course, playing games.

Heavy users might have to charge the phone twice a day for their long gaming sessions but that shouldn’t be a problem with the 18W fast charging.

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There are three battery modes that you can set from the battery settings: Save battery, Balanced and Performance. On top of that, the phone also has an Ultra Battery saver mode which further extends the battery life.

The 22.5W adaptor charges the battery fully from 0 to 100 per cent in about 1.5 hours which is not amazingly fast but good enough for me.

The POCO M4 5G features a beautiful 6.58 inches FHD IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 pixels. The phone has a refresh rate of 90 Hz and a peak brightness of 600 nits. In addition, it has a 240Hz Touch Sampling Rate and an aspect ratio of 20:9.

The screen is also bright enough for outdoor use. The display quality is good and the images and videos appear to be crisp and clear. I found the colour accuracy to be on point. POCO M4 5G also has Widevine L1 support which means you can watch content on OTT platforms in high resolution.

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You also get Dark Mode but since this is an LCD display, you won’t save any battery using the dark mode. The refresh rate can be set to either 90Hz or standard 60Hz. There is no option for a variable refresh rate.

The front of the phone is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, while the rear panel and frame of the phone are made of plastic. POCO should have provided an AMOLED display with at least a 60Hz refresh rate, but they did not; rather, they chose a 90Hz IPS LCD panel.

Since the device has an IPS LCD screen, it can’t have an in-display fingerprint sensor. That’s why POCO has put a side-mounted fingerprint scanner in the power button. All in all, the quality of the display is good for the price.

In terms of performance, the POCO M4 5G comes with Octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 700 chipset which is based on 7nm technology. It is paired with 4GB or 6GB of LPDDR4x RAM and up to 64GB or 128GB of UFS 2.2 Storage respectively.

For those that need even more storage space, there is a microSD card slot that can expand the storage up to 512GB. The POCO M4 5G also has a feature called “Virtual RAM”. This means that you can add more RAM (upto 2GB) by using the internal storage of your phone.

The phone does not break a sweat in day-to-day tasks. The app opening time is also good. Multitasking was also not an issue on this phone as the RAM management is quite good and apps do not close in the background. The refresh rate and touch sampling rate help to provide a smooth gaming experience.

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Coming to gaming, I played BGMI, Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9. All the games ran pretty smooth on low to medium settings. As this is a budget device, do not expect it to run games at high settings and expect excellent performance.

It can go upto Smooth + Ultra settings in BGMI. The gameplay was very smooth and I did not face any lags or jitters. COD: Mobile could go up to Medium graphic settings and High frame rates.

You also get a dedicated game mode where users can monitor the CPU usage and frame rates and can also choose to set the CPU to Balanced or Performance mode.

The phone surely gets a little warm during long gaming sessions but not to the point where it feels uncomfortable to hold the phone.

The POCO M4 5G comes pre-installed with Android 12, which is based on the MIUI 13 skin. This makes it the first phone in the POCO family and one of the cheapest phones in the market to come with Android 12 out of the box.

The MIUI 13 is better than ever and more refined than all the previous versions. The UI is very smooth and simple to operate. There are various features to customize the interface according to your liking. You can change the theme, app icons and their size also.

You also see the Digital Wellbeing feature here which lets you monitor the total time you spent on various apps. There is a very minimalist app drawer that arranges all your apps.

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I noticed less bloatware on this device compared to other phones. There were only a handful of third-party apps like Moj, Spotify, Netflix etc which you can uninstall easily. However, there were constant notifications from these apps so it’s better to just remove them as soon as you get the phone.

POCO M4 5G offers a single bottom-firing speaker with average audio quality which comes as no surprise. The output is loud enough to watch videos on Youtube or play games. It would have been great if POCO could include a stereo speaker setup at this price but no worries, the single speaker will do the job for now.

You also get a 3.5mm audio jack for those users who prefer to use wired earphones for gaming or listening to music.

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Talking about connectivity, the POCO M4 5G features Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v5.10, GPS and of course 5G support. The device supports a total of 7 5G bands: n1, n3, n5, n28, n40, n77, and n78.

The fingerprint scanner is quick and accurate; there are no issues with it; it operates in the same way as a standard side-mounted fingerprint sensor. You can also set up face unlock which works fine as well.