Review of POCO M4 Pro 5G – an inexpensive smartphone

Design and ergonomics

The POCO M4 Pro 5G has grown in height by a couple of millimeters, but this has no effect on ergonomics. The smartphone still fits comfortably in the hand. It is well balanced, so you are not afraid to drop it.

We tested a graphite-colored model, which the manufacturer calls “charged black”. This option doesn’t seem boring. The sophisticated dark gray goes well with the rounded rectangle at the top where the camera block is. The contrast here is not as bright as that of smartphones in a different color – yellow or blue.

The main body material is plastic, pleasant to the touch. Fingerprints appear on it quickly, but they do not wear off well, so it is better to immediately pack the gadget into the case that comes with the kit.

A huge block of cameras creates the illusion that a smartphone has at least four lenses, but this is not so. The POCO M4 Pro 5G has only two cameras, and the rest is a flash, a red dot that has no practical function, and a tiny AI icon that denotes artificial intelligence support when shooting.

The active parts of the POCO M4 Pro 5G case are designed according to the classic scheme. On the right is the power button, which has a built-in fingerprint scanner. It is slightly lower than we would like. Because of this, there are problems with fingerprint recognition: when you take the smartphone in your hand, your finger rests on the volume rocker located above. This is not a critical drawback: if it is inconvenient, face recognition can be used for identification.

On the left is the card slot. It can accommodate two SIM cards or just one, and the second slot can be used for storage up to 1 TB.

At the bottom, in addition to the speaker, USB Type-C and microphone, there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack – a rarity in modern smartphones.

Screen

The POCO M4 Pro 5G has a 6.6-inch display with a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 pixels. From above it is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The frames are thin, and the cutout for the front camera is small.

In the smartphone settings, you can choose the classic look, which visually enlarges the upper frame. Or, conversely, remove the control buttons from the bottom panel to make the screen “limitless”.

The POCO M4 Pro 5G display is a pleasure to look at. Colors are natural, balance and contrast are good. I would like only a little more margin of brightness.

The smartphone supports a screen refresh rate of 90 Hz. This makes content display smoother – for example, when scrolling down a page on a site.

This mode increases the load on the battery. Xiaomi says they have solved this problem by adding dynamic adjustment: the smartphone automatically switches to a less power-hungry mode if the application does not support 90 Hz.

It is impossible to check whether this is so, since the change in frequency is not recorded anywhere. But we really didn’t notice a big increase in the discharge rate due to the increase in the refresh rate.

Performance and operating system

POCO M4 Pro 5G, like the previous model, is built on the Mediatek processor, only now it is the Dimensity 810 chip – more powerful and energy efficient. Two versions of the smartphone will be on sale in Russia:

• 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of permanent memory. The recommended price is 20,990 rubles.
• 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of permanent memory. The price is 2,000 rubles higher. (This is exactly what we had.)

In synthetic tests, our specimen showed modest results , but in everyday life it behaved well. I was surprised only by a slight slowdown when entering the “Settings” menu. Most likely, this is a bug that will be fixed in the future.

In games, the device performs well if you do not set a high refresh rate. Even with serious loads, the case does not heat up much.

This model runs MIUI 12.5 with POCO Launcher desktop. Of the interesting features of the software shell, we note a couple:

• dividing the upper curtain  into two – with notifications and the most popular settings;
• organizing all applications by thematic tabs: “Communication”, “Entertainment”, “Photography” and so on.

What pleasantly surprised the POCO M4 Pro 5G is the non-intrusive advertising. The most striking features are the suggestions to install new programs and the Google Discover newsbar, which appears when you swipe to the left of the home screen. But it is also disabled in the desktop settings .

Sound

The smartphone cannot boast of audio quality. The sound is flat, and when the power slider is turned to maximum, the dynamics clearly begin to wheeze.

In telephone conversations, the gadget proved to be excellent. The interlocutor can be heard well, there were no problems with the microphone either.

There is no proximity sensor in POCO M4 Pro 5G, its role is taken over by a virtual one. It uses microphones to understand when you’re on the phone and turn off the display.

This replacement is practiced in low-cost smartphones to reduce costs and often causes complaints from users. They complain that this method does not always work correctly. We tested how the POCO M4 Pro 5G virtual sensor behaves and found no glitches during testing.

Cameras

Despite the impressive appearance of the main camera unit, everything here is modest for the POCO M4 Pro 5G. It received a 50-megapixel main lens and an ultra-wide-angle 8-megapixel camera with a 119 ° field of view. There is no depth sensor in the smartphone, so the depth of field in portrait mode is determined by software methods.

The declared 50 megapixel main lens should also not confuse you. In auto mode, shooting is carried out in standard 12 megapixel resolution, and “ultra-high” is switched on separately and in fact does not give an advantage.

The smartphone does not always cope with macro. The POCO M4 Pro 5G camera can focus only at a distance of at least 10-15 cm.