With so many glorious midrange smartphones out there now, how do you select? Yearly, Xiaomi’s Poco vary pushes {hardware} expectations, and the Poco F6 and F6 Professional are not any exception. The Poco F6 Professional (£499) struggles to justify the Professional tag, however the cheaper Poco F6 (£399) is an absolute cut price (much more so for those who bagged the early-bird value of £339). You’ll battle to seek out this processing energy or show high quality elsewhere with out paying extra.
Xiaomi routinely rebadges inexpensive telephones launched in China below its Redmi model as Poco telephones for Europe and the remainder of the world, although they aren’t bought in the USA. Poco shortly constructed a popularity for worth, and the F6 is a robust instance of why. It ticks all of the containers with a beautiful show, zippy efficiency, succesful digicam, and quick charging, although the software program and battery life let it down some.
The Poco F6 may very well be the right telephone for avid gamers on a price range this yr and is nearly compromise-free. The Professional is just not value the additional money, so I’ll concentrate on the Poco F6 on this evaluate, however I’ll drill deeper into the variations under.
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The design is maybe the least fascinating factor about these telephones, however it’s also the obvious distinction. The Poco F6 is all-plastic, with a flat body, a gently curved shimmery again that doesn’t present finger smudges, and two large digicam lenses on the prime left flanked by a smaller flash. My evaluate unit is a good-looking inexperienced, but it surely additionally is available in black or a beige gold that Xiaomi calls titanium.
The F6 Professional has an aluminum body and a glass again with a marble impact end. My evaluate unit is black, however you can even go for white. The digicam module is way larger, spanning nearly the entire prime of the F6 Professional, with three medium-sized lenses and a flash in a symmetrical grid of 4. The F6 Professional is a contact thicker and heavier than its sibling, and you’ll inform it’s the dearer of the 2, although I most popular the F6. The Poco branding is mercifully refined. That stated, neither design may be very thrilling.
{Photograph}: Simon Hill
Each telephones have a fingerprint sensor below the display screen, and it labored tremendous for me, normally unlocking the primary time. However it’s weirdly low in contrast with different telephones, so I stored having to regulate the place of my thumb. Surprisingly, the F6 has a superior IP64 rating for water resistance and Gorilla Glass Victus to guard the display screen, whereas the F6 Professional is IP54 and has the older Gorilla Glass 5.
These telephones are nearly identically sized, each boasting a 6.67-inch AMOLED with a 120-Hz refresh rate, although it’s essential to activate it within the show settings. The excellence is the decision, with the F6 Professional at 3,200 x 1,440 pixels and the F6 at 2,712 x 1,220 pixels, and the F6 Professional is meant to get a bit brighter. Even side-by-side, I couldn’t see a lot of a distinction. Each screens are sharp and vivid sufficient to see outdoor. These are stable telephones for film watching (for those who should watch films in your telephone) with stereo audio system and assist for Dolby Imaginative and prescient and HDR10+.
