Hi Guys, this is detailed review of POCO X2 after long term use. Bear with me, this is going to be bit long. But believe me by the end of this article, you will be able to take informed decision on buying this budget beast.

Before getting started, let us 1^st

understand, this is not the successor of the POCO F1. It did come out almost 1.5 years after the POCO F1, but it doesn’t come with flagship specs. If we are being honest, it not even a POCO phone to begin with. It is in fact a re-branded Redmi K30. But being re-branded doesn’t take away what it actually offers. So, what does the POCO X2 offer?

Specs & Price

A 6.67inch display with 120Hz refresh rate, Snapdragon 730G processor, 64-megapixel Sony IMX686 sensor as its primary camera, a 4500mAhbattery, and Glass sandwich design, at a starting price of Rs.17,499. This is the new price after the recent hike in GST rates by the Indian Government. But even at its new price of Rs.17,499, POCO X2 offers you a lot of value for your money.

Built Quality & Display, Design and Camera Placement

Let us start with the design and build quality. To begin with, it is a huge smartphone with a 6.67-inch display and it has gorilla glass 5 at the front and back. So, design wise, it is already a huge leap over the plastic back of the POCO F1. I was never too fond of the plastic back on the F1, so big thumbs up to POCO for putting a glass back on the X2. It makes it feel so much more premium for its price. While this size means we do get a large display and more room inside the device for a bigger battery. But I still think phones with 6- or 6.2-inch displays are the right size for most people’s hands. It does get a slight curve to the back, which makes it a bit easier to hold. Now the frame where you actually hold the phone looks like anodised aluminium, but it is in fact made of polycarbonate or plastic. The chassis inside the phone is aluminium, but this frame is Plastic. We get Gorilla Glass 5 protection at the front and back, and in my experience, it is surprisingly resilient against scratches.

On some of the other phones with gorilla glass5, I have seen a few micro scratches show up with time, but not on the POCO X2. At the back, camera module is surrounded by this circular optical illusion, which looks like a dome or a carved sphere from certain angles. It is a nice design choice to separate the POCO X2 from all other glass back phones. These Cameras stick out quite a bit, and the phone does rattle a bit if you place it on the table, but only if you tap on top left or right corner. But when a phone is placed on a table, you are more likely to tap on the bottom part, and while doing so, it doesn’t rattle. If you want it to stay flat, just put the case that comes in the box. It protects the camera hump, and has a lip at the front to keep the display raised and protected. This case also helps the back from gathering fingerprints, so most of the time, I used my phone with it. At 208 grams, it is not exactly on the lighter side, but the weight is distributed very well throughout the phone, so it doesn’t feel top or bottom heavy. It sports a P2i nano coating, which means it is splash resistant and can withstand some light drizzle, but don’t use it in heavy rain or don’t take it for a swim, because it is not completely waterproof, and any kind of water damage is not covered under warranty.

The most marketed feature of the POCO X2 is the Reality Flow 120Hz high refresh rate display. It is an IPS LCD panel, and it supports HDR10 playback. Although it is an LCD panel and not an OLED one, it does manage to reproduce very accurate colour and wide viewing angles. While it is not brightest LCD display, it gets bright enough to be easily viewable in outdoor lighting conditions. The highlighting feature here is the higher120Hz refresh rate. This makes the phone feel so much smoother and faster. I for one am able to tell the difference between60 and 120Hz, and I am glad that companies are pushing this tech out to sub Rs.20,000 smartphones. If you don’t like this mode or if you want to prolong the battery life, you can switch back to 60Hz. It’s a huge display, so it is great for playing games and consuming media.

There are dual punch hole style cut outs because there are 2 front facing cameras on this phone. The notch is still smaller than what we had on the POCO F1. It is definitely noticeable, because we are used to looking at the top right to check the battery %, but as I said, it is not too intrusive.

Now since its an LCD panel we don’t get an in-display fingerprint sensor. Frankly I am glad for this, because the in-display fingerprint sensors on budget smartphones are not that good to begin with. So the fingerprint sensor on the POCO X2 is placed on its side, under the volume up and down buttons, and it also doubles as a power button. From within the settings menu, you can either set it to read your fingerprint when you press the button, or you can even make it read your fingerprint just as you tap on it, which is a bit faster. This fingerprint sensor is very fast and accurate. Although it is more accurate than the in-display fingerprint sensor, and is easier to reach then the rear on, I still think it is placed a bit high for my hands to comfortably reach it. Since its a tall phone, I would have liked it to be placed a cm or so lower.

Anyways, I still like this placement. We already saw that the volume buttons are above this fingerprint sensor / power button. At the top, there is a noise cancelling microphone and an IR blaster, which lets you use this phone as a remote controller for your home appliances. On the left side there is the SIM card tray. It is a hybrid SIM tray, which means you can either use 2 nano sim cards or a nano SIM card and a microSD card at a time. And at the bottom, we have the Speaker grill on the left, a microphone, USB type C port for charging and data transfer and everyone’s beloved 3.5mm headphone jack on the right. I am more of a wireless audio person, but if you like listening to your music via wired earphones, output via this audio jack is of very high quality. The speaker on this phone can also get pretty loud, but just like with most budget smartphones, it lacks the depth at higher volumes, and might sound a bit tinny.

Camera

Coming to the cameras. Primary one gets the 64-megapixel SONY IMX686 sensor with F/1.8 aperture and a 26mm lens. Then there is a 8 megapixel sensor with a13mm ultra-wide angle lens and F/2.2 aperture. Followed by a 2-megapixel sensor with F/2.4aperture and a macro lens. And finally, there is another 2-megapixel depth sensor with F/2.4 aperture. To put it in simple terms, Cameras on the POCO X2 are the best on any smartphone under Rs.20,000. In most lighting conditions you will be really happy with the images that come out of this phone. If you like to take portrait shots, try switching to the Movie mode, and you will be blown away by the results. Now the macro camera is getting quite a bit of heat since last couple of weeks. Sure it’s just a 2 megapixel sensor, but when you think about it, it needs to capture a very tiny part of the scene, and as far as the focus is set properly, it doesn’t really matter how many details are in the remaining part go the image, because most of the times those parts are out of focus anyways. I definitely agree that having higher resolution would be better, but I don’t think this kind of lens needs to have a multiple digit megapixel count. Although it gets 2 front facing cameras, and one of them has a 20-megapixel sensor, selfies from the POCO X2 are not the best. There are some other smartphones at a lower price, which do a better job than this. But it makes up for it by taking amazing videos.

Processor & Performance

POCO X2 can take electronically stabilised 4K 30fps videos, and these videos look really good. A part of why the POCO X2 is so good at taking images is the image signal processing capability of the Snapdragon 730G processor. It is paired with Adreno 618 GPU for smoother graphics, and you can choose from either 6 or 8GB of RAM, coupled with either 64, 128or 256GB of built in storage. Overall performance of this phone is very smooth.

App opening and switching is a breeze, and since the G in the 730G processor stand for gaming, the gaming performance of this phone is really good. Games that support higher refresh rate of120Hz on a smartphone are just s treat to play on this phone. POCO X2 not only shows better benchmark scores than the competing phones in its price range, the overall daily performance shows that itis a very capable smartphone.

The phone does get a bit warm if I use the camera for a long time or after playing a few games, but I won’t say it got so hot that I would be worried or anything like that. Little bit of heat is expected, especially in summer season, like we are in right now.

Battery Performance

As long as we are on the topic of issues, many people had a few of them with the battery on this phone. There were complains that even with a 4500mAhbattery, their phone won’t last long enough on a single charge, and that they even faced ideal battery drain. While I got 5 and half to 6 hours of screen on time with 120Hz mode on all the time, I think I could have made the battery last longer by switching to 60Hz. I still think the battery optimisation should have been better, because a battery this large should last for at least a day and a half.

When its time to charge it up, we get a 27wattcharger in the box, which is pretty quick. Although there is a glass back, there is no wireless charging, but for this price, we don’t even expect phones to pack in this feature.

Sensors

POCO X2 packs in all the necessary sensors like the ambient light and proximity sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, IR sensor, GPS, Bluetooth 5.0, wifi 5.0, dual VOLTE and it also gets FM radio, which is very important to some people.

Software

Coming to software side of things. Even if this is technically a Xiaomi phone, POCO X2 runs a version of MIUI 11 that is specifically tweaked for POCO smartphones, on top of Android 10. Now since it is still technically a version of MIUI 11, there are a few aesthetic similarities, but the POCO launcher has a few new features of its own. Well first of all, there are no spam ads on the UI of this POCO X2. That being said, you will still see these ads if you open Mi browser or Mi videos app, so the best thing to do is download Google apps like chrome, as soon as you get this phone, and never use the preinstalled Mi apps.

There is an app drawer, where apps are classified according to their category or you can even group them by colours, if you think that makes it for you to find them. This not unique to the POCO X2, as the POCO launcher is available on the google Play store, and you can install it on any android smartphone.

While the experience was not all that smooth when this phone first came out, there have been a few software updates since, and everything seems pretty smooth now. So my overall experience has been pretty smooth with this phone. I did not encounter any performance issues, or excessive heating issues, so it has been smooth sailing for me

Conclusion.

If you are ready for to use a huge phone, and you want the best smartphone under Rs.20,000 right now, I think you are going to love the POCO X2. Big display with 120Hz refresh rate is not only amazing for playing games, but it offers overall amazing experience with very good brightness levels, and good amount of contrast with accurate colours. Snapdragon 730G processor ensures a smooth experience overall, and the cameras are simply the best in this price range. POCO has proved that if there are any issue on the software side of things, they are fast enough to push out updates to fix it. All of this, makes the POCO X2 the perfect smartphone for anyone who is willing to spend Rs.17,500.

Do comment in the box below, how you guys like the review? and what you like or dislike about the phone.

The phone is available on Flipkart to buy.

Jai hind

Please follow and like us: