When we are asked to recommend a mobile phone with a long-lasting battery and a large screen, it is one of the first brands or devices that comes to mind. A LITTLE.

This company knew very well how to enter the mid-range mobile phone market with well-maintained devices at the spec level and at very attractive prices for many consumers. Good examples of this are the POCO F1 or POCO F3.

POCO has expanded its catalog over the months and we currently have several different device ranges. Now, to develop the POCO X4 Pro, the company has presented us with its first two offerings for 2023: POCO X5 5G and POCO X5 PRO 5G.

I’ve been testing the POCO X5 Pro for a few days to see how it performs in all usage scenarios, and the first thing I want to point out about it is that the spec sheet is slightly lower than what I was hoping to find in 2023. Is this a negative point? Does it perform well? I tell you.

Technical page of POCO X5

Design and display: simple but effective

LITTLE X5 5G this is a big phone. We have a front with a wide panel of 6’67 inches which makes the phone have a height close to 166mm. Despite this, POCO knew how to take good care of the weight department as we were dealing with a 180 gram device that was less than 8mm thick.

This data provides a very comfortable and lightweight user experience that allows us to use POCO X5 with one hand smoothly. The phone is very nice in the hand and part of the flaw lies in the back. matte finish is very soft to the touch. This model comes in three different colors: Green, blue and black, the version I use these days. The most notable thing in this industry is the camera module placed in the upper left corner, which results in a rear that is very similar to what we have on the POCO X4 GT.

One of the parts that left my mouth the best taste while using this LITTLE X5 5G the screen was. The company has finally chosen to include AMOLED technology in the core models of this phone range; this is something we’ve requested in the company’s previous models. In this way, we can enjoy the screen of this POCO X5 5G with any content and application, thanks to the Full HD + resolution distributed over 6.67 inches. Also, since the phone comes with 60Hz active from the factory, it is a very fluid panel as we have a 120Hz refresh rate that we need to activate.

On the other hand, the panel has a very generous brightness capacity and manages to reach this capacity. 1,200 nits peak. For its part, the automatic brightness adjustment works perfectly and the brightness adapts seamlessly to all occasions, and it works especially well in bright environments where the sun is directly on the screen.

Hidden in power, insufficient in software

If we look at the spec sheet, we see that the processor powering this POCO X5 5G is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 695. This decision surprised and surprised me, because at the moment we are talking about a processor. Released in October 2021and we currently have more updated models for such ranges and devices. Maybe I would like to see a more powerful Qualcomm model like the Snapdragon 778+, a processor from the Mediatek Dimensity series or a processor we found in the POCO X5 Pro 5G.

However, after my tests with this POCO X5, the Snapdragon 695 enough to handle most tasks that we can develop on the phone. Even the most demanding ones like playing very powerful video games like “Call of Duty: Mobile” or “Asphalt 9”. Yes definitely, with poor graphics quality. In these cases, the phone behaves perfectly, does not shake, does not lag, and the terminal does not heat up either.

On the other hand, it is a pity that I cannot say the same for system performance. The software version I am currently testing on this POCO X5 5G is MIUI 13 for POCO, based on Android 12, Xiaomi’s customization layer tailored to these systems. MIUI is eating the phone’s performance again, and develops some glitches in overall fluidity, has longer-than-normal wait times, and some native apps like the camera hang from time to time. Unfortunately, this is something I’ve discussed on other occasions with other mid-range phones, especially with many terminals that are part of Xiaomi’s Redmi Note family.

That’s why my experience the performance of this POCO X5 5G was bittersweet. It’s amazing how well it handles so many tasks and dissipates heat, but it’s a phone that feels bulky because of the system. Xiaomi urgently needs to work on MIUI, as it is a very capable and promising layer, but I think it is not well optimized on computers with fairer specs. We’ll see if this gets fixed in future software updates.

Fair camera and expected battery

Now we will talk about the camera part of this POCO X5 5G, which, as I expected, is not the main claim of this phone. The camera configuration of this Poco X5 5G consists of:

• 48MP main sensor with f/1.8 aperture lens
• 8MP ultra-wide-angle sensor with 118º field of view
• 2MP macro sensor with f/2.4 aperture lens.
• 13MP front sensor with f/2.45 aperture lens

As we can see, on paper we have a very simple set that conforms to midrange mobile telephony standards. In general, the cameras of POCO X5 5G are working properly, as long as the lighting of the scene is suitable. That is, in well-lit environments, with natural or artificial light, we can take decent quality photos in automatic mode.

The 48MP sensor is a good ally to save the maximum possible details of the environments we want to photograph, as long as we have the 48MP mode enabled. If not, the quality of the details degrades, albeit not dramatically.

As always, the ultra-wide-angle sensor allows much more information to be extracted from the image, but unfortunately its quality is very degraded and in many cases presents graininess that is very present even in good lighting. Therefore, if we do not want to get bad results in our photos, I recommend that you do not use too much. As always, the macro sensor looks more like a reference than useful to me, and I’d dream of replacing it with a telephoto lens on mid-range phones. I must admit, though, that the dream is getting longer.

when night falls, quality also drops drastically In photos taken with the Poco X5, the use of “night mode” is completely mandatory if we want to take photos in these light conditions.

The video section limits the quality of the recordings to 1080p Full HD resolution at 30 frames per second and is sufficient for capturing certain shots. On the other hand, if we as a team want the mobile to record videos repeatedly, I do not recommend it. I missed a stabilizer (even digital) due to the resulting footage.

battery separate This is what I enjoyed most during my POCO X5 5G experience. We have a phone with a battery with a capacity of 5,000 mAh and I must say that it is very well optimized both for heavy use and at rest. There were days when it was hard for me to drain the battery 100% even though I was on the active screen for a few hours and using very demanding apps.

At rest, when you rest at night, and after about eight hours, its battery runs out at most 2 or 3 percent, so its optimization here is very well done. On the other hand, I think fast charging could be much faster as 33W seems a bit reasonable to find ourselves in the middle of 2023. He thinks Little can bet on more capacity. At least 67W as we have in the Pro model of this generation.

LITTLE X5 5G, Xataka’s opinion

As a result after my experience with the POCO X5 5G, I think this phone is closer to the entry-level mobile phone range, although it fits in the mid-range due to its price. 299 euros separates you from the base model of this phone with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, a price in my opinion, a bit high for everything it has to offer.

The striking thing about this story is that for another 100 euros (349 euros), We can have the base model of POCO X5 Proa phone that improves on all parts of the regular model and looks worth the investment.

In short, the POCO X5 5G is a phone that focuses on users who don’t want to spend a lot of money and prioritize a large screen and a very capable battery above all else. For the rest, it’s a fair cell phone for taking photos and videos, its optimization in terms of power isn’t the best of its range, and it wobbles from the start, partly due to its customization layer. In a universe where the POCO X5 Pro 5G exists, the regular model loses some meaning.