The Poco X6 is one of the best smartphones I have used in this segment. While it isn’t a perfect phone, it’s almost there. Despite a few of its quirks, overall, the smartphone offers a solid performance. It has a bright and vivid AMOLED display, a long-lasting battery, a decent camera, and an amazing design. On top of that, the phone is priced quite competitively. With the features the Poco X6 offers, some of which are only available in premium devices, the starting price of the phone at Rs 19,999 is almost tempting.
I have been using the Poco X6 for a couple of weeks –– you may have sensed it by now –– and I am quite enjoying the device. I am especially impressed by its design and display, and I am going to talk about them in detail in just a minute. Overall, over the Poco X5, which was also one of their popular offerings, the Poco X6 offers some notable improvements in terms of display, chipset, camera and fast charging. Let’s explore these in detail in this review.
Design and Display
The first thing I noticed about the Poco X6 was how light the phone is. The phone weighs 181 grams. For perspective, it weighs less than a one-litre bottle of water, a pair of shoes, or even a mug.
The Poco X6 has a flat display and a square-ish design. The variant I have is white and has a reflective marble-like finish and a glossy finish. On the top is the signature Poco design with the big protruding cameras on the left and the Poco logo on the right –– all of this is housed inside a black rectangle. The phone’s design is very neat and is a refreshing departure from the usual colours and textures we have been seeing on smartphones. Having said that, while the phone’s design and build are beautiful, the glossy finish at the back makes it a little slippery. But that’s easily fixable with the case that Poco offers out-of-the-box.
On the front, the Poco X6 has these noticeable bezels around the display, but they are sleek enough to not bother you. Additionally, the phone has a floating camera on top, an in-screen fingerprint sensor, a Type-C charging port, a 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo speakers, and an IR blaster.
As for the display, the Poco X6 features a 6.67-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1220p and a 120 Hz refresh rate. It is one of the cheapest phones to support Dolby Vision, and it supports HDR10+. The display also has 1920 Hz PWM dimming, which means the display can automatically reduce the likelihood of flickering, which, if happens, can be noticeable and may cause eye strain or discomfort for some users.
The Poco X6 display has pretty good colours. It’s quite responsive and has really fast animations too. And thanks to HDR 10+ and Dolby Vision, watching videos and shows on the phone is a delight. The colours remain vivid, there are no lags and even the speakers on the phone are loud enough to enjoy the video content.
Performance, UI and Battery
Talking about lags, there were none to be found while using the Poco X6. It runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset and offers up to 8 GB RAM. The performance of this chipset falls short of both the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 and the original Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, but it still is an improvement over the Snapdragon 695 SoC found in the Poco X5. We also ran some benchmark tests on the Poco X6 and found that it is quite capable of handling medium to heavy tasks. I also played titles like Asphalt 9 on the Poco X6 and the device offers a solid performance. I experienced no frame drops or lags. I was also using the Poco X6 as my primary device, which required me to shuffle between multiple social media and work apps simultaneously, without any issues.
As for the user experience, the Poco X6 uses MIUI 14, unlike the Pro variant that comes with HyperOS out of the box. The Poco X6 is scheduled to receive the HyperOS update soon, though. Coming back to MIUI 14, it retains the familiar user experience from its predecessor, MIUI 13, and this consistency is by no means a drawback. The interface remains responsive, swift, and highly customisable. The haptic feedback is also crisp. It actively responds to various system actions and navigation gestures. Users also have the flexibility to adjust the haptic feedback intensity based on their preferences.
There are some advertisements present, but the UI offers the option to disable them directly within the app settings. The Poco X6 is also loaded with bloatware, with pre-loaded games, and random apps. However, the good thing is that all these apps are uninstallable.
Supporting the performance is a battery that is also solid. Even though I was pushing the phone with multi-tasking and gaming for my review, the phone’s battery easily lasted me for over a day. I charged the phone only every other day. Charging is also really quick on the Poco X6, in about 15 minutes you can fuel up to half, from zero. To charge it up to full, you need about 45–50 minutes.
Camera performance
When I said at the beginning of the review that the Poco X6 isn’t perfect, I was talking about the little gaps in the smartphone’s performance. When it comes to cameras, the Poco X6 can click decent pictures in a well-lit space. However, it only struggles when it comes to low-light images. In low light settings, you can notice a loss in details and images also look a bit washed out. Images in night mode are artificially lit –– thanks to AI –– but you can notice a soft focus and general haziness in the images.
Videos shot on the Poco X6 are surprisingly stable but again, in low-light settings, they lack some details. They aren’t as sharp in a well-lit setting either, but the quality is still quite acceptable.
In the image below, which I shot in night mode, you can see the hues of yellow, orange and red of the fire, but when you zoom in, you would notice that the image lacks sharpness.
Similarly, in this image of my cat, the colours are generally OK, and close to real-life colours, but there is no sharp focus on the cat or any other object in the image.
However, in this picture of my ginger cat, because there was ample light on his face, you can notice that it retains a good amount of details and maintains colour accuracy.
Should you buy the Poco X6?
The Poco X6 sits in direct competition with the Redmi Note 13 Pro. While the latter, with its 200 MP camera, will surely offer a better camera performance, there is also a big price difference between the Poco X6 and the Redmi Note 13 Pro. The Poco X6 is priced in India at a starting price of Rs 19,999 for the 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage variant and goes up to Rs 22,999 for the model that offers 12 GB RAM and 512 GB storage. The Redmi Note 13 Pro, on the other hand, is priced at Rs 23,999 for the 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage version and goes up to Rs 27,999 for the 12 GB RAM and 256 GB option. There is a price difference of straight up Rs 4,000 for the base variant and Rs 5,000 for the top variant.
Essentially, the Poco X6 can offer a more well-rounded performance for a much lower price. So, unless you are looking at a camera-centric performance, and don’t mind shelling out an extra grand, the Poco X6 would be better value for money.
