Poco M2 Pro Has been launched in India at a starting price of Rs 13,999 and looking at its specifications, it seems that it Redmi Note 9 Pro And Realme 6 Which can be a strong rival for the Samsung Galaxy S Plus, which are two great products coming with a similar price tag. However, just writing down the specifications on paper doesn’t really reveal what a smartphone is capable of. We have reviewed Poco M2 Pro to see how it performs in real life. Let’s see if the Poco M2 Pro really is as good as it’s made out to be.
Poco M2 Pro design
Poco wants to assure people in India that the M2 Pro is an indigenous phone. For this, the company has given special labels on the front and back of the box. What’s strange though is that the charger that comes with the phone has a Mi logo on it and when you turn on the phone, you are welcomed with the MIUI logo.
The Poco M2 Pro has an attractive design and is well built, but it looks similar to the Redmi Note 9 Pro (Review). Everything is completely identical including the display, buttons, ports, hole-punch and rear camera bump. Poco has used a new pattern at the bottom of the phone. Some minor changes have also been made in the camera module. The M2 Pro has a P2i water-repellent coating that is said to be splash proof. Poco M2 Pro feels a bit heavy and big in the hand. It has a fingerprint sensor set into the power button and it also unlocks the phone with a simple tap.
Poco M2 Pro performance
MIUI and app performance remained excellent during our review. This is largely due to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G chipset. This is the same processor which has been used in Redmi Note 9 Pro and Realme 6 Pro. I’m testing the mid-variant of the Poco M2 Pro, which comes with 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 64GB UFS 2.1 storage and is priced at Rs 14,999. Apart from this, the phone comes in a 4 GB RAM + 64 GB storage variant and 6 GB RAM + 128 GB storage variant, which are priced at Rs 13,999 and Rs 16,999 respectively.
Navigating the MIUI interface was fast and multitasking worked well. App loading in general was fast. Gaming performance was also very good. I played some heavy-graphics games and all ran smoothly with good graphics. I didn’t notice any heating issues, even after playing for long periods at a time. Game Turbo is a useful feature that gives you shortcuts for screen recording etc. while playing games.
The video experience on the display of Poco M2 Pro also looks good. However, the single speaker is not very impressive. If you use wired headphones, you can enable software enhancements for audio, but there’s no feature available to increase speaker volume.
Poco M2 Pro cameras
Poco M2 Pro has four rear cameras, in which the primary sensor is 48-megapixel. It includes an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 5-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. You get a 16-megapixel hole-punch selfie camera. The Poco M2 Pro has the same version of the MIUI camera app that comes on the Redmi Note 9 Pro. The only real difference in functionality between the two is that you can use night mode for the selfie camera on the M2 Pro.
There are some interesting features too, like the ability to record full-HD video with the macro camera and its output was surprisingly good. Video recording can also be done in Pro mode, which lets you set the exposure yourself and it also gives the ability to record in LOG format.
In daylight, the primary camera on the Poco M2 Pro takes good-looking photos. Details were sharp and colors were vivid in landscape shots. The included Pro Color toggle gives you better colors when you need them. Close-ups also look good, although the camera app tends to show brighter colors a bit more than the actual scene. The wide-angle camera produced very weak colors and detail compared to the primary sensor. Portrait mode worked well and set the background blur level well.
The primary and wide-angle cameras struggle in low-light situations. The camera app did a good job of suppressing noise (small grain), but photos generally looked underexposed. Apart from this, lack of detail is also visible when zoomed. Night mode was also not effective, with barely a few photos showing any improvement.
Selfies shot in good lighting looked good. Detail and skin tones were generally good. The shots were decent as long as there was enough light all around.
The M2 Pro supports video recording up to 4K 30fps. Videos shot at this resolution appear to have warm color tones and colors that appear sharper than they should be. There is no stabilization at this resolution. Talking about 1080p, video stabilization is better here and colors were also more natural. In low light the video quality is not good and the videos come out a bit grainy.
Overall, the cameras on the Poco M2 Pro performed well in good lighting, but struggled to deliver good results in low light.
Poco M2 Pro battery
I really liked the battery life of the Poco M2 Pro. The 5,000mAh battery lasted a full day comfortably, even with gaming and camera usage. With light use, I was able to get a good second day through it. The phone lasted a little over 17 hours in our HD video loop test, which was good. The charger that comes with it charges the battery with 33W output. With this charger, the phone’s battery gets charged approximately 95 percent in an hour.
Verdict
i think that Poco M2 Pro It’s a nice addition to the sub-Rs 15,000 smartphone segment and I have no hesitation in recommending it. You can see it from almost every angle Redmi Note 9 Pro (Review), of course with higher charging output. Plus, it should be much easier to purchase than Xiaomi’s flash sale system. Poco M2 Pro offers good build quality, sharp display, solid battery life, and good performance. The cameras aren’t too bad, provided you’re shooting during the day.
However, I wouldn’t say that the Poco M2 Pro is the only option in this price segment, as it is similar to the Redmi Note 9 Pro, which has been selling in the country for some time now. Realme 6 (Review) also remains a solid option, as it is still the only phone under sub-Rs 15,000 that comes with a 90Hz display.