After releasing their Poco F7 Pro and Ultra models earlier in the year, Xiaomi has finally introduced the value pick in the F7 lineup — the plain old Poco F7. But, with a fun new design and strong specs, this phone is anything but plain. Thanks to a powerful chipset and a large battery, the Poco F7 delivers some flagship features for less, making it a strong potential value pick. But, like with any mid-range phone, some cuts had to be made. We’ll go into those in our Poco F7 review, because some of the downsides of this phone might be a little too much to bear, depending on what you value most in a smartphone.
Design and build
Like the more expensive Pro and Ultra models, the Poco F7 has an aluminum frame with a glass back, giving the phone a more premium feel than we usually get with mid-range Android phones. Possibly as a result of that metal frame and a large battery, the phone is a little heavier than we’re used to at 215g, but I didn’t find the extra weight distracting during daily use. Interestingly enough, the Poco F7 is a 6.83″ phone, making it a little bigger than the 6.67″ Poco F7 Pro and F7 Ultra.
The back of the phone isn’t radically different from anything else, but some extra metal details on the camera array and an offset matte/glossy look (matte on the top half, glossy on the bottom half) give the phone a little personality, which was missing in previous iterations of the phone.
The front of the phone is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which we find on most mid-range Android phones and some flagships. It’s not perfect, so if you are worried about frequently dropping your phone, it’s worth it to track down something that uses Corning’s Victus glass. Better news for durability: the phone is rated IP68/69, making it fully protected from dust, water, and water pressure.
Performance
Buying a mid-range smartphone is all about deciding which features are most important to you. For folks who value processing power over everything, the Poco F7 should be on your list of potential options. It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset, a last-gen flagship-level option eclipsed only by the Snapdragon Elite chipset we’re seeing on most flagships this year. That’s actually better than the Gen 3 chipset on the F7 Pro. That chipset is joined by 12GB of RAM, allowing the phone to handle gaming and other power-intensive tasks.
However, all’s not perfect. I tested the phone by playing Genshin Impact for one hour at 60fps, max settings, and max brightness, and found that while the phone handled cutscenes fine, gameplay eventually settled into the 40-50fps range. I think one big reason for this might be thermal management — after about a half hour of gaming, the phone got noticeably hot, far more so than other mid-range phones I’ve put through the same test. I would probably stick to high settings for longer gaming sessions.
Other than high heat during longer gaming sessions, the phone ran smoothly — no hitches that I noticed. Connectivity is solid, with the phone supporting Wi-Fi 7, NFC, and many 5G bands. If you do need to make data transfers using a cable, the phone only has a USB 2.0 Type-C port, so that will be a little slower. The one bummer here is a lack of eSIM support, so if you’re traveling, you’ll still need to go through the process of acquiring a physical SIM card to use with the phone.
Display and audio
The 6.83″ AMOLED display on the Poco F7 is larger than what you’ll find on the F7 Pro and Ultra, but the resolution is lower at 1280p, so while you’re getting a larger display, you’re giving up a little in clarity and sharpness. However, at the smartphone level, I don’t find that to be a huge deal — it’s one of those things I notice the first couple of days, then forget about once I start using the phone regularly.
Dolby Vision and HDR 10+ support ensure that images are as clear and crisp as they can be, and with 1,700 nits of brightness (3,200 nits for localized brightness), HDR-supported videos look terrific. The phone also works great in direct sunlight, as it can temporarily boost screen-wide brightness past the usual 1,700-nit limit to keep the screen readable.
The on-device speakers were a bit of a letdown. Usually with Dolby Atmos audio processing, sound comes out clear and distinct, but it seems like maybe the hardware wasn’t quite up to the task. The speakers sound muddy at higher volumes, with very weak bass performance even by smartphone standards. There have been some phones we’ve reviewed recently with surprisingly good on-device audio, but for the Poco F7, you’ll probably want a good pair of headphones on hand.
Battery
Once again, the Poco F7 ends up better on paper than the Pro and Ultra models here, with a 6,500mAh battery (or a giant 7,550mAh battery in India). Perhaps that’s not too surprising, given that the F7 is a larger phone than the other models, but it’s one more reason why the F7 represents a pretty compelling value buy.
However, in testing, the Poco F7 didn’t have significantly better battery life than other mid-range or flagship phones. An hour of Genshin Impact at max settings, max brightness, and set to 60fps used up 21% of battery capacity, while an hour of video at max brightness used up 6% of capacity. That’s pretty good for video, but nothing special for gaming. That tracks with the thermal management issues mentioned above, and is just another reason to not push for max settings while gaming with the Poco F7.
The Poco F7 is compatible with up to a 90W charging brick, which will get the phone to full in less than an hour. If you don’t already have a 90W brick, you’re covered — the Poco F7 comes with one inside the box. It’s a good thing you’re fully set up for quick wired charging, because Poco phones still don’t have wireless charging, which, while slower, can be a handy feature to have in a pinch.
Camera
So far, everything on the Poco F7 has been strong for the price, despite some bumps in the road. Not so much with the camera array, which is where we can see cuts were made to get the Poco F7 to its mid-range price point. There are two cameras on the rear — a 50MP wide angle camera with phase-detect autofocus and optical image stabilization, and an 8MP ultrawide camera with neither autofocus nor stabilization. On the front, you’ll find a 20MP camera, again with neither autofocus nor stabilization. There’s no dedicated zoom camera on the phone, and the main camera does 2x optical zoom before reverting to digital.
The main camera performed well enough in well-lit environments — the colors are a little muted compared to other phones’ cameras, but there’s enough clarity and detail to make for good posts on social media.
The main camera is capable of 2x optical zoom, which also performs well. It also reveals a loss of clarity that can be more easily missed at 1x zoom, so if you’re a little picky about your pictures, this is where you might start looking for a phone with a stronger camera array.
The ultrawide camera suffers even more when it comes to color saturation — the color of the ocean in particularly is noticeably more muted than the shots taken with the main camera. There’s also a lack of clarity if you start to zoom in, but I didn’t find it to be much worse than similar ultrawide cameras on other Android phones.
Photos taken in portrait mode were OK, but I felt like the camera struggled to focus on subjects, and edges around the subject were significantly blurry.
There’s no dedicated low-light or night photography mode, so it’s no surprise that taking low-light photos with either rear camera doesn’t end well. The cameras don’t take in enough light, and the photos come out very blurry — using the flash will help, but if you don’t care for the artificial light of a camera flash, you’re better off avoiding low-light photography altogether.
There is a pro mode, if you really want to try to wring the best out of these cameras, but if you’re into photography enough to fiddle with camera settings on your own, you probably want a phone with better hardware than this. Cameras simply weren’t a priority with the Poco F7 — if you just need a basic camera, you’re covered, but if you expect a little more, there are lots of other phones in the mid-range milieu that produce far better results.
Software
The Poco F7 ships with Android 15 and Xiaomi’s HyperOS 2.0 overlay. HyperOS isn’t too much of a departure from stock Android — I didn’t feel like I needed to make any adjustments coming from using stock Android on a Pixel 9a. As far as bloatware goes, the Poco F7 is neither the best nor the worst — there are a handful of pre-installed apps and games, and Xiaomi’s own system apps. The former can all be uninstalled, and the system apps can be hidden.
You’ll also get the usual spate of AI and AI-adjacent features, like circle to search (tracing a circle around something on screen to initiate a Google search), AI-generated live translation and interpretation, and photo editing features like object removal with background fill. There’s nothing in that department that you can’t find on any other Android phone these days. As it always is with AI, sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t. Larger edits to photos rarely go well, and with translations, there’s always the risk of a mistake you won’t be aware of.
In short, the Poco F7 doesn’t make any mistakes in the software department that detract from the overall experience of using the phone, which is the best praise we can give when it comes to software on smartphones.
Sustainability
While the overheating right out of the gate is a bit of a red flag, the Poco F7 mostly looks to be a phone you’l be able to hang onto for at least four years. While you might get some scratches with Corning Gorilla Glass 7i down the road, it’ll be good enough to prevent the screen from cracking in most cases. The move to IP68/69 is great news for folks who spend a lot of time outdoors (or who have frequent water-related mishaps with their phones), and the aluminum case makes me feel like this phone will survive more accidental drops than most mid-range devices.
Xiaomi has also improved their update guarantees, promising four OS updates and six years of security upgrades. Thanks to the hardy build, we feel pretty good about the phone lasting four to six years, although time will tell if thermal management problems end up wearing the hardware out sooner than anticipated.
Pricing and availability
The Poco F7 can be purchased with 256GB or 512GB of storage, in both cases with 12GB of RAM. The phone comes in black, white, and cyber silver, the latter of which has a little industrial design flair that sets it apart. The Poco F7 can be found on Amazon in most western markets, including in the United States. In the States, the 256GB model is going for $525, with the 512GB model going for $570.
Bottom line
If you’re looking for a great price-to-performance phone, the Poco F7 is worth considering — a phone running on last year’s flagship hardware for $525-$570 is pretty compelling. But, how compelling it is depends on a lot of conditions. You need to have a pair of headphones you really like, not particularly care about camera quality, and be OK with playing games on less than max settings (or accept the phone getting a little toasty). That’s probably one more but than we’d like to see at this price, but we don’t doubt that there’s a target market that does exist for this phone.
We were also surprised to see that in more than a few ways, the Poco F7 actually outshone the F7 Pro and F7 Ultra, which came out earlier in the year. If you’re fan of Poco phones and sat out those two phones, we think you’ll be rewarded for your patience — the slightly better resolution displays on the Pro and Ultra models don’t make up for a bigger battery and larger screen on the F7. However, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite chipset on the F7 Ultra might be better for folks who don’t want to compromise at all on gaming performance.
The Poco F7 is, in the end, a pretty good phone at $525-$570. It’s not definitively the best or the worst, but it’s worthy of consideration, especially if you spot a particularly good deal on this phone in the next few months.