With so many wonderful midrange smartphones out there now, how do you select? Yearly, Xiaomi’s Poco vary pushes {hardware} expectations, and the Poco F6 and F6 Professional aren’t 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 if you happen to bagged the early-bird worth of £339). You’ll battle to search out this processing energy or show high quality elsewhere with out paying extra.
Xiaomi routinely rebadges reasonably priced telephones launched in China underneath its Redmi model as Poco telephones for Europe and the remainder of the world, although they don’t seem to be offered in the US. Poco rapidly constructed a status for worth, and the F6 is a powerful instance of why. It ticks all of the packing containers with a beautiful show, zippy efficiency, succesful digital camera, and quick charging, although the software program and battery life let it down some.
The Poco F6 might be the proper telephone for avid gamers on a funds this yr and is sort of compromise-free. The Professional just isn’t price the additional money, so I’ll concentrate on the Poco F6 on this evaluate, however I’ll drill deeper into the variations beneath.
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The design is maybe the least attention-grabbing factor about these telephones, however additionally it is 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 enormous digital camera 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 it’s also possible to go for white. The digital camera module is way larger, spanning virtually 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 costlier of the 2, although I most well-liked 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 underneath the display screen, and it labored nice for me, often unlocking the primary time. However it’s weirdly low in contrast with different telephones, so I saved 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 virtually identically sized, each boasting a 6.67-inch AMOLED with a 120-Hz refresh rate, although you have 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 vibrant sufficient to see outside. These are strong telephones for film watching (if you happen to should watch motion pictures in your telephone) with stereo audio system and assist for Dolby Imaginative and prescient and HDR10+.
