Not everyone needs a flagship phone. For many, it’s about buying a phone with a good design, decent screen and camera performance. POCO X6 Neo 5G is a phone that tries to hit a few boundaries and comes away mostly successful.
In 2024, all phones like to win buyers over with design. This one is no exception. The Martian Orange variant which has come for review looks stunning for its price point, especially when one looks at the bezels on the front. It’s almost equal on all sides and the screen-to-body ratio takes on many mid-segment devices. The existence of a 3.5mm headphone jack may also pleasantly surprise many. But mere looks shouldn’t sway your buying decision.
Let’s talk about performance
First, what works for me on the phone. Being inexpensive doesn’t mean it needs to perform like a bargain-basement phone. The X6 Neo comes with MediaTek Dimensity 6080 processor, which is based on 6nm technology. As a chip, it does well when you play games in low-to-medium settings. What POCO has done well is make the base variant 8GB+128GB; having more than 6GB RAM makes this phone slightly faster than others. Also, there is virtual RAM to kick things up a bit. For day-to-day activities, the phone works well and you can keep quite a few apps open in the background. The processor is also kind to battery life and it doesn’t heat up. Be it browsing the web, sending messages and playing simple phones, this is fine.
In terms of connectivity, there is support for both 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and 5GHz Wi-Fi, offering dual-band Wi-Fi connectivity for enhanced wireless networking capabilities. Also present, Bluetooth 5.3.
What doesn’t work for me is the OS update cycle. The phone comes with MIUI 14 based on Android 13 and there is the promise of two major Android updates. The phone is coming when Android 15 is around the corner. I would have liked the phone to come with Android 14 to ensure the device remains relevant for a few years. But POCO makes up for it with four years of security updates.
The phone has a good display but quite a bit of bloatware
The 6.67-inch 120Hz AMOLED FHD+ display wins the phone some brownie points. It’s a big, vibrant display with Gorilla Glass 5 protection and offers 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour gamut, so good colour accuracy. And there is 1920Hz PWM dimming, which will help if you use your phone in the dark.
Main camera dazzles
Obviously, the next thing you will look at is camera performance. The main camera here is 108MP with f/1.75 and there is 3x lossless in-sensor zoom. Good points first. The main camera does a good job in daylight, turning in photos that are crisp and contrast-y. I have no complaints given the pricing. Having a low f-stop means more light is made available to the sensor at night and so pictures come out on the brighter side. You can even shoot at full 108MP and then crop out parts of the photo. The 16MP selfie camera turns in a good amount of detail and tackles skin tones well.
But the depth camera is useless and there is no ultra-wide option. Further, videos are restricted to 1080p on both the front and back cameras, which is the case on most phones that come in this price category.
Should you buy it?
Working in favour of the phone is its IP54 certification which can handle a bit of water and dust. Further, the 5,000mAh battery easily lasts a day and there is 33W wired fast-charging. In case you are looking for alternatives, there are plenty from Samsung and also the OnePlus Nord. What about POCO X6 Neo 5G? It doesn’t feel like a budget phone and it’s light with excellent in-hand feel. It certainly does almost everything so well for so little, which makes me wonder how far smartphones have come.
At a glance
Device: POCO X6 Neo 5G
Price: Upwards of Rs 15,999
High notes
Excellent design
Main camera performance is good
3.5mm headphone jack port is there
Good battery performance
Muffled notes
No ultra-wide camera
The Android update cycle could have been better
Bloatware
