What do you hear more about POCO when you hear about it? Camera? No way, POCO isn’t a camera-centric Smartphone. It might be gaming! In fact, POCO has always been a performance-centric Smartphone to enhance the gaming experience. POCO M5 is focused entirely on performance and design, making it the most affordable smartphone for under ₹15,000. Does it make sense to spend so much on this budget gaming smartphone? Let us know more…

In addition, this M5 comes with 18W fastest charging support to charge the 5000mAh battery, although a 22.5W charger is included in the box. It has a MediaTek Helio G99 (6nm) processor, one of the fastest in its price range. It has 4G connectivity, which means no 5G here, and is one of the most powerful 4G smartphones to date. So now it’s time to dig deeper.

What’s there inside the box?

These are the following items included sequentially in this POCO M5 box:

• Sim Ejector Tool
• Documentation
• Transparent case
• Handset
• 22.5W Charger
• USB Type A-C Cable

Design

There are three different color options to choose from: yellow, icy blue, and power black. Although all the colors look gorgeous and have a stylish aspect to them, I personally prefer the Yellow color variant which has a very attractive and eye-catching look. The POCO M5 Back panel is made of plastic with a leather-like texture that gives a sense of awe and wants to be held for a long time due to its attractive design and color. It sort of looks like one of the character from Among Us.

At the top of the back panel, there’s a black band from the left edge to the right edge in which there’s POCO branding. In addition, there’s a big camera island housing three lenses and a flash. A flat edge design and a leather texture on the edges of this M5 offer a comfortable grip, as well as stain and smudge resistance so that the Smartphone remains stationary without moving. And it weighs 201 grams, but the weight distribution is quite good. In my opinion, this yellow color variant looks cool!

Also, consider reading: Lenovo Tab M10 Plus (3rd Gen) – Everything You Need To Know!

Ports and buttons

At the top of the Smartphone, there’s a 3.5mm audio jack and an IR blaster, which means you’ll not need to operate any physical remote for your TV. On the right side, there’s the volume up and down button and the power button with a fingerprint scanner on it which means the fingerprint is not on the screen or back side of the Smartphone. The left side is clean. And at the bottom, there’s a Type-C port, primary mic, and a loudspeaker.

Display

POCO M5 comes in a 6.58″(i.e., 16.71 cm) FHD+ IPS LCD Water Drop Notch Smart Display, which features an adaptive 90Hz refresh rate with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which will work 30/60/90Hz depending on what you are doing in the screen, and also has 240Hz touch sampling rate and supports Widevine L1 certification. Just be careful around water and dust as it is not given an official IP rating.

Specifications

POCO M5 is powered by a new MediaTek Helio G99 processor, which is one of the most powerful processors in the 4G segment for this price point. In comparison to the 12nm-based MediaTek Helio G96 processor, the Helio G99 processor offers better battery and usage performance.

In the battery section, there is a 5000mAh battery that supports 18W fast charging, however, in the box will be a 22.5W charger. Then comes the Antutu benchmark of this Smartphone which lies between 3,65,000-3,70,000 which is decent. As well, if we compare this processor with Qualcomm Snapdragon 680-based Smartphones, which fall in the same price range, the Antutu benchmarks would fall in the range of 2,80,000-3,00,000, which is not any better than this Helio 99-powered smartphone. Furthermore, the battery backup of this M2 Smartphone can easily last a day or one and a half days while you are playing games, streaming videos, or interacting with social media. I can confidently say that POCO M5 can even last you two days if you are a light user, though I didn’t expect such effective battery optimization from POCO.

Camera

The POCO M5 has a triple camera setup on the backside, a 50MP primary camera, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 2MP macro lens. The front camera has an 8MP selfie camera for taking average-to-fine selfies. Now the primary lens takes some nice and sharp shots in the daylight, with pretty detailed and quite punchy. The dynamic range is not the most impressive, however still quite decent at this price. Portrait shots are detailed and separate the subject from the background nicely. And hear this, Images in low light were not so good, they lacked details and were grainy and night mode does help a bit to get brighter shots. Also, the depth sensor and the macro lens shots lack detail due to the low resolution. These shots are nothing to talk about because they’re just there to increase the camera count.

Talking about the selfies which had some detailing and were on the softer side. The colors were pleasant and close to natural. You can record videos in 1080p at 30fps from both the main and front cameras. There’s no OIS instead you get EIS support and the videos recorded from the main lens are detailed and decently stable as well. POCO isn’t really known for its cameras, so I wasn’t expecting that much from this M5.

Also, consider reading: Xiaomi 12T Series Could Become The World’s Second 200MP Camera Smartphone; Here’s Why?

Does it really worth it?

This POCO M2 is available in two different variants those are 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage which cost you ₹12,499 on Flipkart and select retail outlets in India and the other one comes with 6GB RAM and 128GB internal storage which costs ₹14,499. And both variants comes with LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage, as well as 2GB of virtual RAM available. As I already mentioned, you can purchase it in 3 different colors: Yellow, Icey Blue, and Power Black. This is one of the various smartphones that looks promising on paper and offers a number of improvements that were previously only present on more expensive devices.

Hence, if you wish to purchase an attractive-looking Smartphone that provides amazing gaming performance and decent battery backup under ₹15,000, then you should choose this device. The POCO M5 will offer better looks, battery life, performance, features, and even a decent display, which makes it far better than every other smartphone under ₹15,000 in this segment.

Now, what do you think about this POCO M5? Let us know in the comments! Also if this POCO M5 Smartphone review helped you in choosing this best under ₹15,000 or if not, and if there is a Smartphone you want us to review, let us know as well. And for the latest tech news, follow Cosko TechScoop on Instagram, and Linkedin.