Poco X8 Pro Review – Trusted Reviews

Introduction

As top-tier specs continue to trickle down into budget blowers, some of the long-standing bargain brands of the last ten years are still finding ways to stay firmly in the middle. For Xiaomi’s Poco brand, that’s the Poco X8 Pro line. It’s easy to see where the inspiration lies with this one.

With the Poco X8 Pro, we’re specifically looking at the Iron Man variant. It isn’t the first time a Poco handset has been adorned with Marvel graphics. But don’t let Tony Stark’s billion-dollar projects fool you: this isn’t a cutting-edge device.

Instead, it’s a solid performer for the cost, just with a frankly hideous interface that’s closer in appeal to the sort you’ll find in an after-market theme shop app than anything you’ll have seen in a Marvel movie. The best-looking part of this phone is its themed packaging. So it’s a good thing everything else functions well enough.

Design

• Easy to handle
• Quality feel
• Mint Green, White, Black, and Iron Man variants

The Poco X8 Pro Iron Man sits well in the hand. It’s a comfortable device with just enough material-lending heft to feel premium without being uncomfortable. Generously rounded along each corner and with a stainless steel frame, it reminded me a lot of the first phone I decided to pony up a pretty penny for – a Nokia Lumia I lost on a press trip in Stockholm too long ago.

Along the suitably smooth outer edges are a single-piece volume rocker, a separate power button, a down-firing speaker, a super-speedy USB-C port, and plenty of microphones to make calls feel as clear as they reasonably need to be. Given the choice of materials here, the Poco X8 Pro is a solid device, with IP68 dust and water resistance, and a cool, smooth feel.

Unless you opt for the Iron Man look, you’ll be getting a flagship-style appearance in some appealing colours. Whether that’s what you want in a £349 device is up to you. I’m partial to how Motorola helps its budget blowers stand out with unique vegan leather looks, but the Iron Man version of the Poco X8 Pro sadly looks like a cheap sticker on a printed plastic back.

Screen

• 6.59in 1.5K 120Hz AMOLED display
• 480Hz touch sampling rate
• HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support with 2000 nits HBM brightness

A tight screen-to-body ratio means the Poco X8 Pro’s curves create a display that’s pleasing to the eye – a full-screen look that would have cost a premium a few years back. The 120Hz AMOLED display clocks in at a sharp-enough 1.5k resolution, getting more than bright enough to stand against piercing outdoor glare and helping the AMOLED display show off its glossy colours.

Poco’s standing with streaming giants means you’ll struggle to put that high brightness to use with HDR content outside of your own photos and some games. Still, if you can find supported content, there’s HDR10+ capabilities and Dolby Vision certification to make use of.

Auto-HDR wizardry can offer a sample of bright, bold colours and tight contrast in games, too, but you’ll be banking on the nature of AMOLED to work its own magic on streamed content for the most part.

For gamers – of which Poco tends to attract many – there are some solid features here, too. The 480Hz touch sampling should already ensure your slides and taps register at rocket speed, but you can crank this all the way to 2560Hz through Game Turbo Mode just to be sure.

Similarly, the Wet Touch display 2.0 claim works well to stop a little splash or a drop of rain from making general use difficult, so it should work to offset any misplays in tense, sweaty conditions, too.

What is a shame, though, is its lack of adaptive refresh rates. Though you can set 120Hz to kick in only on specific apps, it can’t slow to 24Hz for an optimal movie-viewing experience, and it certainly can’t drop to 1Hz for comfortable, battery-efficient reading. It’s all go all the time.

Performance

• Dimensity 8500 Ultra SoC
• 12GB RAM
• Smooth everyday performance

With the Poco line initially gaining traction as one good for gaming at half the price of competing products, it isn’t surprising to see the Poco spec sheet rife with chatter about ‘revolutionary performance,’ various ‘boost’ features, and cooling tech with embellished titles.

In practice, the Poco X8 Pro is a powerful device for just £349, sporting a high-end (if not proper flagship) MediaTek Dimensity 8500 Ultra chipset and ample 12GB of RAM that leaves most phones at the price point in the dust.

Given its dominance in regions like India, where the go-to games are far from bleeding-edge gacha titles and console ports, the Poco X8 Pro maintains rock-solid frame rates, imperceivable input lag, and crams just enough passive cooling tech in there to keep gamers snagging chicken dinners in low-fidelity esports titles in the heat.

In fast-paced, graphically intense combat titles that push the boundaries of mobile chipsets, a solid 60fps is easily attainable at the highest settings. Zenless Zone Zero, we’re looking at you. In general use, the situation is much the same – solid, stable, and snappy. Flicking between apps and drawers is like butter. Your Chrome tab hoarding won’t phase this one.

To put things into numbers, our typical Geekbench 6 benchmark came back with a single-core result of 1724, with multicore clocking in at 6614. The Mali-G720 GPU returned an impressive score of 12,549 there, too, translating to a 24fps average in 3DMark Wildlife Extreme and around 26fps in the lighting-heavy Solar Bay test, all of which align with the premium, but not quite top-end, chipset on offer.

The stress test showed barely any change in performance as the temperature slowly rose before plateauing at 38°C in 20°C ambient room temperatures. Now, that’s obviously not a good enough test for a cooler designed to keep you gaming in arid conditions, but proof enough that it can hold its own.

Overall, it’s a decent improvement over last year’s Poco X7 Pro, but probably not enough to justify an upgrade.

Software and AI

• HyperOS/Android 16
• Google suite
• Security support up to early 2032

Running Xiaomi HyperOS fork of Android 16, what you’re getting here is a fairly up-to-date handset. It’s worth noting that if you get the Iron Man Edition, you’ll also get a custom theme to enjoy.

You’ll find a few iconic bits of app bloat here, but they’re largely the big names: TikTok, Spotify, Facebook, Amazon Music, and the rest, which is honestly fascinating. But that doesn’t mean it’s bereft of the usual slew of basic waiting room games. Oh, and Mi/Poco-branded apps with infuriating full-screen startup ads.

You’ll have to dig through the search bar to uninstall them, but removing them from the dashboard sends things off in a nice little pop of a bubble – at least on our Iron Man-inspired review device. Is it an annoyance? Always. But at least Poco made cleaning things up a relatively satisfying experience.

You also get the admittedly handy Gemini AI assistant. Camera and Circle to Search features are all intact, and getting Google to voice what it sees through the camera is always a fun little party trick – a way for an older person to quickly read their mail without their glasses, or a great way to identify pretty foliage on a morning walk.

Dig through the settings, and you’ll find Poco’s own AI App Boost options. Beyond smart uses of sometimes scary technological buzzwords like auto-translate/transcribe and image sharpening, you’ll find options to turn photos into dynamic wallpapers and expand them with additional details.

Camera

• 50MP rear Sony sensor
• 8MP Ultrawide
• 20MP selfie snapper

Packing a 50MP Sony lens on the rear, the Poco X8 isn’t out of its depth when it comes to photography, either. As long as you keep your expectations in check.

Today’s chips and AI enhancements mean there’s enough computational gubbins here to grab some great shots with little effort. In the bright Spring sunshine around the Greek Isles, I had a great time capturing the rare snow-covered caps of Crete from Chania and photographing traffic jams.

The lack of a telephoto means you won’t be zooming in to shoot distant details in a hurry, but there’s enough detail here to pinch in to reframe shots. Again, within reason. The depth sensor pairs well with today’s processors to make portrait shots look particularly pleasing, too, with frankly fantastic edge detection in perfect conditions. The 8MP ultrawide helps to cram more detail into cramped scenes, too.

Where once a budget gaming blower meant sacrificing a half-decent snapper in your pocket, the sensor of the Poco X8 Pro could genuinely be a solid upgrade for some. Paired with speedy UFS 4.1 storage, another previously premium option, there’s enough general performance here to please most amateur shutterbugs, but low-light isn’t a strong suit. Unsurprising, given the price point.

Battery

• 6500mAh battery
• 100W wired charging
• 27W reverse wired charging

A massive 6500mAh cell keeps the Poco X8 Pro going for days at a time. Paired with increasingly scary 100W charging with a compatible plug, it doesn’t take long at all to get back in the game.

With such a focus on playing hours of matches before needing to recharge, it would have been nice to see Poco lean on the teachings of the now-absent Asus ROG Phone with a side-mounted USB-C plug for comfortable charging while gaming. That would really put the cooling tech to the test.

Interestingly, the reverse wired charging came in clutch while away from home, enabling it to be used akin to a power bank for other devices, saving me from needing to buy yet another travel adapter to litter a drawer back home.

Bewildering background battery drain was a concern, though. It’s difficult to chalk up the reason why, but it often lost far more power overnight than my ageing iPhone 13 Pro Max. Hopefully it’s something an update will fix, but it’s worth keeping in mind if you’re often away from a charger.

Should you buy it?