The Poco M4 Pro 4G launched on February 28 in India. It is a budget smartphone meant for users looking for something powerful without burning a hole in their pocket. With the Poco M4 Pro 4G, Poco has attempted to stand out by delivering a powerful AMOLED display with support for 90Hz refresh rate. I have used the device for a very short period, and here’s my overall experience with it.
Poco M4 Pro 4G Review: Body and Design
The Poco M4 Pro 4G has a plastic build at the rear with a huge camera bump. The camera bump also has Poco branding in bold, along with a triple-camera setup. I got the Cool Blue colour variant from Poco, but it is also available in two other colours — Poco Yellow and Power Black. It is quite light in weight but might be a little too hard for many people to use from a single hand. But there’s a solution for that in MIUI 13, which allows users to switch to a single-hand mode.
At the front, you will see a punch-hole cutout at the top centre with a slightly thick chin but very thin side bezels. The rear part of the body isn’t something I like a lot because while it has a cool colour, the plastic back just takes away from the feel of the smartphone.
The power button and the volume rockers are on the right side of the smartphone. Note that the power button acts as the fingerprint sensor as well. The SIM tray is located on the left side of the body.
You get dual speakers with the smartphone — one at the top and the other at the bottom. The Poco M4 Pro 4G is pretty stylish, but I would prefer it to keep in inside a case at all times because of the plastic back. There's also a 3.5mm audio-jack at the top.
The Type-C port is at the bottom and can support 33W fast charging. Overall, for being a budget phone, the Poco M4 Pro 4G comes with a decent body and design. There’s nothing too bad or too good about it.
Poco M4 Pro 4G Review: Display and Sound
The sound output is decent because of the dual-speakers. At the maximum sound level, some users might not find the speakers to be satisfactory, but for me, at this price range, I don’t think I can ask for anything more than this.
There’s a 6.43-inch FHD+ AMOLED display that can support up to 90Hz refresh rate and 180Hz touch-sampling rate. To be very honest, I think Poco has done a good job to differentiate the M4 Pro 4G from other budget smartphones by packing an FHD+ AMOLED display that can support 90Hz refresh rate.
The colours are really good and vibrant on display. Even under sunlight, with maximum brightness level, I could comfortably read text on the screen and view anything I wanted to. Poco said that the maximum brightness level that Poco M4 Pro 4G can support is 1000nits, which is very bright for a smartphone in the budget category. I am seriously satisfied with the display experience of this device.
Poco M4 Pro 4G Review: Performance and Battery
The Poco M4 Pro 4G is powered by the MediaTek Helio G96 SoC. It is a decent chip for budget devices. Poco is offering this smartphone with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Using the 8GB RAM variant, I opened multiple applications at the same time to check whether the device overheats or not, and the result was; it didn’t. There were no lags either. Everything was smooth and satisfying.
I didn’t do much heavy gaming on this device. However, it isn’t hard for me to guess that the device will overheat if I load heavy games and play for an hour or so. The light games were a decent experience, and even they slightly heated the smartphone.
The Poco M4 Pro 4G packs a 5000mAh battery with support for 33W fast-charting with MMT technology. You should not get battery drainage issues if you are using the device at 60Hz refresh rate. However, running the device with 90Hz refresh rate and using multiple apps at the same time will contribute to the battery running out a little faster than you would like.
I want to specifically talk about the MIUI 13 right now.
Poco M4 Pro 4G Review: MIUI 13
The Poco M4 Pro 4G comes running on MIUI 13 based on Android 11 out of the box. The MIUI 13 is something I can wrap my head around. It offers a very stock Android feel while retaining all of the best qualities of the MIUI skin from Xiaomi.
There were a lot of applications that came pre-loaded on the device, such as Facebook, Netflix, and more. The good thing is, you can uninstall almost all of them except for the ones that are owned by Xiaomi. But that’s not an issue for me. With MIUI 13, Xiaomi has focused on making the experience of the smartphone cleaner and faster for the users.
MIUI 13 is the first time I have slightly liked the custom Android skin from Xiaomi. I can’t wait to personally experience what Xiaomi has done with the Android 12 skin.
Poco M4 Pro 4G Review: Camera
The camera experience of the Poco M4 Pro 4G was again satisfactory for me. It isn’t the best camera in the world, but it is a camera that might be the best in the budget segment. The Poco M4 Pro comes with a 64MP triple AI sensor setup at the back and a 16MP sensor at the front for selfies.
The Poco M4 Pro 4G’s portrait selfie mode and the normal portrait mode impressed me a lot. Even the pictures on the normal photo mode came out to be decent. I would, in fact, say that the Xiaomi 11i 5G didn’t impress me in the camera department as much as the Poco M4 Pro 4G did.
I am attaching the camera samples for you to see below (note because of compressions, the image quality that you see here drops a little).
Poco M4 Pro 4G Price and Overall Verdict
The Poco M4 Pro 4G is available in India starting at Rs 14,999 (6GB+64GB). There are two more variants available for Rs 16,499 (6GB+128GB) and Rs 17,999 (8GB+128GB). The company is also offering cashback of up to Rs 1,000 to HDFC Bank customers.
If you are wondering whether you should buy this device or not, my recommendation would be that you can. Under Rs 15,000, the Poco M4 Pro 4G is arguably the best smartphone available in India. Its display is excellent, the camera is decent, and the overall performance is also satisfactory.
The only thing that I didn’t like about the smartphone is its plastic back, but that’s understandable as Poco wanted to reduce cost. If you want this smartphone but with 5G support, there’s also the Poco M4 Pro 5G available in India. It can also make for a good option in the budget 5G segment.
