Poco F2 Pro review: Cutting the right corners

The quad-camera circle is positioned around back close to the top edge. It looks rather like the circular module of last year’s OnePlus 7T. The flash sits just below it, and the Poco logo is right at the bottom.

The optical in-display fingerprint scanner was finicky, sluggish, and unresponsive at times. The original F1’s traditional scanner was rapid, so this is a shame. Xiaomi did not make the phone to be water-resistant, but you wouldn’t expect that in a device at this price. The healthy array of colors means there’s an option to suit most people’s tastes.

The Poco F2 Pro’s build quality is far superior to its predecessor’s.

The phone as a whole feels well put together. I was impressed with just how much better the F2 Pro felt to use than the F1.

Display

The Pocophone F1’s display was pretty good, and so you’d expect the F2 Pro’s to be just as good. It is. In fact, thanks to its larger size, uninterrupted panel, and higher screen-to-body ratio, it’s far more immersive than the previous model. It’s even been upgraded from an IPS LCD to a Super AMOLED for better contrast, deeper blacks, and punchier colors.

The Poco F2 Pro’s refresh rate is just 60Hz. Many flagships are running 90Hz and even 120Hz panels. That said, I’m not sure Xiaomi would have been able to pack a 120Hz panel into the F2 at this price point. I think the omission is justified.

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Performance

Processor

Was there ever a question that the Poco F2 Pro was going to be quick? It’s got top-shelf hardware inside and good software. It doesn’t matter whether you scroll through the same three social media apps every day or play heaps of high-end 3D titles, the Poco F2 Pro has you covered. It’s pretty hard to mess up performance when you have the 865 purring under the hood.

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During my time with the device, I experienced very few hiccups. The user experience was smooth, even when switching between power-hungry apps like the camera app and Real Racing 3. Image processing seemed to complete quickly, and opening multiple apps in quick succession was no problem.

Gaming itself proved to be no issue for the device. I played Fortnite, Real Racing 3, and a host of other 3D titles and my gaming experience was almost flawless. I say almost because loading in certain maps there was the odd short stutter, but nothing that would really affect your ability or performance in-game.

It’s pretty hard to mess up performance when you have the Snapdragon 865.

Software

MIUI 11, based on Android 10, looks and feels rather different from stock Android. Some will love it, and some will hate it. I personally love MIUI’s aesthetic, with its bubbly, minimal approach to the design language. There’s a healthy use of background blur for screens like the notification dropdown and recents. The default app-drawer layout with tabs for automatically-sorted application types is clean and helpful.

By default, there are a fair number of bloat applications installed. It’s annoying to have these automatically come loaded on the phone, but at least you can remove them without much hassle.

As far as software updates go, the original F1 came with Android 8.1 and has received Android 10 this year. This should indicate that the Poco F2 is likely to get at least two platform upgrades in its lifetime. That said, Xiaomi hasn’t made a public statement on its commitment to software updates for the F2.

Camera

The main camera on this phone has a big sensor with a high pixel-count. Flanking it are ultra-wide, depth, and macro cameras. The omission of a telephoto camera is one that I find reasonable. Most 2x telephoto cameras don’t add much value for the user and most of the time it’s better to just crop-in on a high-quality main sensor. Overall, the hardware is pretty good — it doesn’t stand out in either a positive or negative way.

Image quality is rather inconsistent. The main sensor does manage to pick up a fair amount of detail, and the colors are well-balanced in my opinion. There’s no over-saturation here, which is nice considering similarly-priced Realme phones tend to over-process the colors. However, there is a bit too much contrast for my liking and it can make scenes look overly moody. HDR isn’t enabled by default, so you have to toggle it on to lift the shadows to a reasonable level.

Portrait mode produces some good photos thanks in part to the depth sensor. Edge detection seems to be decent, even with my lockdown hair. There is some minor haloing around the subject where the focus rolls off, though that’s more of a processing artifact than a styling thing.

There is a significant drop in quality when switching to the ultra-wide camera, which isn’t surprising. The colors don’t change massively, but there is a drop in dynamic range with deep shadows becoming gloomier than real life.

I noticed some noise-reduction artifacts. As you can see in these images, the dark portions where the vegetation sits on the cliff has a weird smoothing effect. It’s as if the camera is picking it up as noise and trying to smooth it over while the rest of the image is processed normally. Hopefully, Xiaomi fixes this in a software update.

The macro mode was fun to play with. It’s a gimmick if anything, and I’d have preferred a telephoto lens, but the quality isn’t bad as far as cheap macro cameras go.

Flipping around to the front, the F2 Pro’s selfies are a bit soft, but have some solid dynamic range and accurate colors. I’m glad that there’s less noise reduction here because it could have potentially led to artifacts in selfies. There is a fair amount of noise in the selfie images, but it’s not overpowering.

Night mode is pretty disappointing. It’s exclusive to the main sensor and the processing isn’t great. It doesn’t seem to take as long to snap the photo as other devices, some of which take upwards of 10-second captures, so there’s naturally less data there for the phone to work with. The resulting images are too smooth and have too little detail. Moreover, weird blue/purple artifacts surround the images like a vignette.

Moving onto video, the UHD 4K 60fps is exclusive to the main shooter with the ultra-wide recording at 30fps. The footage is shaky and there’s a lot of contrast, which results in videos that look a bit cheap.

The Steady video mode uses electronic stabilization. It drops the frame rate from 60 to 30fps and the resolution from Ultra HD to Full HD. It does the job, but the crop and quality loss are significant trade-offs.

As for the 8K 30fps video, it records at 100Mbps and shares the 4K’s shaky and contrasty properties. It’s cool to have, but I don’t see anyone using this mode a lot. It takes up double the amount of storage space, isn’t as smooth as the 4K60, and can’t be played at native resolution anywhere but on 8K TVs, which are few and far between.

Xiaomi’s camera app is pretty good in my opinion. There are plenty of modes and features, and everything you need is there, but there is a strange layout. Whoever made the decision to put the macro mode button in the photo mode instead of on the carousel with the rest of the modes needs a stern talking to, and the default beauty modes are annoying and shouldn’t be on by default.