Poco F7 Ultra review: Flagship performance, mid-range price

Best Prices Today: Xiaomi Poco F7 Ultra

Poco is known for producing capable mid-range phones at shockingly affordable prices, but when it comes to flagships, they normally carry the badge of ex-parent company Xiaomi. However, with the launch of the Poco F7 Ultra, it seems that’s beginning to change.

The F7 Ultra has all the makings of a true flagship-level device. It comes with one of the fastest chips on the market, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, a massive battery, a lovely display, speedy wireless charging and a well-specced triple camera system on the rear.

Even the build gets the premium treatment, with a metal frame and glass rear panel that you typically only find on the priciest phones. The question is, does this keep up with 2025’s impressive array of flagship handsets, or is Poco’s budget-oriented heritage still apparent? I’ve been living with it for the past week, and here’s what I think.

Design & Build

• Aluminium frame, glass back
• 160.3 x 75 x 8.4 mm, 212g
• IP68 rated

The Poco F7 Ultra is available with a classic black finish, but the signature bright yellow colourway (complete with contrasting black siderails) is much more interesting.

It probably wouldn’t be my first choice, but I like that such a bold option is available, it’s sure to appeal to beekeepers and Wu-Tang Clan fans alike.

The phone has a completely flat screen, with boxy sides and a flat rear panel with subtle curves at the edges. It’s a large phone, and the boxy construction makes it feel larger still, but it’s not especially heavy, only tipping the scales at 212g. At the same time, it’s substantial and dense enough as to not feel cheap.

It’s a large phone, and the boxy construction makes it feel larger still, but it’s not especially heavy

There’s a circular camera hob on the rear, positioned in the upper left-hand corner. It looks nice enough, but I can’t help but think it looks a little retro.

Most modern flagships are opting for centrally placed camera units, while this reminds me of the Vivo X90 Pro from a few years back. Needless to say, if you don’t like your phone rocking about when placed on a table, this one won’t be for you.

The F7 Ultra has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance, which means it’s immune to dust and can be dunked in fresh water without harm.

The phone also boasts ‘Poco Shield Glass’, the brand’s toughest-ever screen coating, which is said to boost drop resistance and scratch protection. My sample hasn’t been treated too roughly, but after using it for a week or so with no screen protector applied, it’s still looking spotless. So, it seems the Poco Shield Glass is doing its job. 

If you want to keep your phone looking fresh, you also get a basic TPU case included in the box. It’s a matt black case, which I’m happy to see. These cases tend to fare better in the long term than their transparent counterparts, as you’ll see less dust accumulation, and it won’t turn yellow. It’s always nice to get a decent-looking case at no extra charge.

Screen & Speakers

• 6.67-inch, 1440 x 3200, OLED, 120Hz
• 3200 nits, DCI-P3 wide color gamut
• Stereo speakers

The Poco F7 Ultra has a wonderful display. It’s a spacious 6.67-inch OLED with an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 3200 nits.

After spending a lot of time with quad-curved devices, the fully flat screen is refreshing, and I definitely prefer it for gaming. It’s a good choice here, since gamers are likely the main audience for this phone. That said, gesture controls that require you to swipe from the edge of the display don’t feel as nice, especially with a case attached.

The screen covers the DCI-P3 wide gamut and produces highly accurate colours with excellent contrast levels

The screen covers the DCI-P3 wide gamut and produces highly accurate colours with excellent contrast levels. If you prefer to tweak your image, you’re given more options in the settings than most of the competition. The list includes four preset colour modes, all of which can have their temperature adjusted, as well as an advanced mode for more thorough calibration.

There are plenty of eye-care measures built in, including a layer of circular polarisation that more closely matches natural light. It also supports up to 3840Hz PWM dimming rates, ensuring a flicker-free experience at low brightness levels.

This display has another trick up its sleeve: a co-processing chip called the VisionBoost D7. This is supposed to increase clarity on apps like YouTube and Netflix without as much strain on the battery. To be honest, I didn’t see a huge difference with the setting toggled on, but if you have a particularly low-quality source, it might make a bigger impact.

The F7 Ultra is also rocking an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner hidden under the display. This feature is omitted on some of the priciest flagships around, so I’m chuffed to see it here. It means your phone will unlock quickly and reliably, no matter how dirty your screen gets.

The phone boasts stereo speakers – one that fires out from the bottom next to the USB-C port, and another that fires from the earpiece. This creates a nice, wide soundstage that’s great for gaming and movie-watching. 

The clarity is great and the speakers get plenty loud enough, but they’re lacking in the bass department – as is so often the case. If you want the best audio experience, you’ll probably want to get a pair of wireless earbuds.

Specs & Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite
• 12GB / 16GB RAM
• 256GB / 512GB storage

The Poco F7 Ultra has one of the most powerful chips on the market, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite. It comes in two varieties, either with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, or 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage. I have the latter model in for testing, which has more than enough room for all the media you could want to consume.

With a powerful chip like this at its core, it’s no surprise that the F7 Ultra is a top performer. Everything feels lightning-quick, from navigating the OS to opening apps and multitasking. If you switch the animation speed to “fast” in the settings, it feels like an absolute rocket.

This device is easily one of the best performers in its price category

If you’re looking for gaming performance, this device is easily one of the best performers in its price category. By default, it’ll run any game you can throw at it on maximum graphical settings without issue, but the Poco F7 Ultra has a few extra tricks to push the performance further.

The built-in game overlay allows you to enable Super Resolution and Smart Frame Rate, two new features that utilise the VisionBoost D7 chipset. These work a little like DLSS and frame generation on a gaming PC, using AI algorithms to interpolate and upscale your gameplay.

It works pretty well, and essentially allows you to run the game at a lower preset without sacrificing smoothness or quality – which is easier on your battery and generates less heat.

The Smart Frame Rate feature impressed me the most, and it’s especially good for Genshin Impact, which is limited to 60fps on Android. With the feature enabled it looks much closer to 120fps, which is a luxurious experience.

Poco F7 Ultra benchmarks

Frustratingly, a lot of our usual benchmarks were blocked on this phone. It’s nothing new; we’ve seen the same from pre-release Xiaomi and Redmagic devices plenty of times, but it does make it difficult to compare the performance with competing devices.

At the very least, I was able to run Geekbench 6, where the device scored a little lower than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but higher than the Oppo Find X8 Pro. It’s still well behind dedicated gaming phones in the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro and Nubia Redmagic 10 Pro, though.

Cameras

• 50Mp main sensor
• 50Mp 2.5x telephoto
• 32Mp ultrawide
• 32Mp selfie camera

As usual, Poco has placed more emphasis on the F7 Ultra’s gaming performance than on its cameras, so I wasn’t expecting the world from these lenses. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the results. 

Of course, image quality is somewhat subjective, but for my tastes, the Poco F7 Ultra might take the best photos of any gaming-centric phone. It easily trades blows with the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro, and it outclasses any of Redmagic’s attempts, too.

The Poco F7 Ultra might take the best photos of any gaming-centric phone

The main reason for this is the image processing: colours look pleasing and lifelike, dynamic range is great, and the trio of lenses give you a good amount of versatility for framing up shots. It handles digital zoom better than I expected, too, delivering usable results up to around 10x magnification.

The ultrawide is the weakest of the trio, as is often the case, and that’s especially true at night. Details are very muddied on this lens and it doesn’t have autofocus, so you can’t use it for close-up shots. The colours are also a little shifted compared to the others.

During the day, the main and telephoto can capture some stunning shots, but at night, you’ll want to stick to the main camera as much as possible. The telephoto does a decent job, but there’s only so much you can do with this tiny sensor, and you’ll be heavily relying on night mode most of the time.

The selfie camera is solid, but not the most remarkable. I was pleased with the level of detail, and the portrait mode effects work well, but there’s no autofocus, and colours lack some vibrancy in low light conditions.

For video shooting, the F7 Ultra can record at up to 8K 24fps on the main lens, but only for 6 minutes at a time. More realistically, you’ll want to shoot at 4K 60fps, which works on the main and telephoto cameras. Meanwhile, the ultrawide and selfie cameras max out at 1080p 60fps.

The results are decent enough, but the inconsistency is a clear indicator that this system is a step below your typical flagship. You’ll need to think carefully about which resolution to choose before hitting record, or else end up stuck with a smaller selection of lenses.

Battery Life & Charging

• 5300 mAh battery
• 120W wired charging
• 50W wireless charging

The Poco F7 Ultra has a 5300mAh battery pack, more than your typical flagship, but not quite matching the latest silicon-carbon models that hover around the 6000mAh mark. Because of this, I was expecting good battery life, but nothing mind-blowing. However, the F7 Ultra surprised me.

I managed two days on a charge without trying, and I’m a fairly heavy user. If you were more considered, I think making it well into a third day is feasible. Of course, intense gaming sessions will drain the battery much faster, so as always, it depends on how you use it. In any case, it’s safe to say the battery life is great.

The phone managed to go from fully dead to 100% charged in just over half an hour

When you eventually drain it, you won’t be waiting long for a charge. With the included 120W wall adapter, the phone managed to go from fully dead to 100% charged in just over half an hour. If you prefer wireless charging, you can expect impressive speeds there too. The Poco F7 Ultra supports up to 50W wireless charging with the appropriate charging pad.

Software & Apps

• HyperOS 2, based on Android 15
• Circle to Search and Gemini
• Some bloatware to deal with

The Poco F7 Ultra runs HyperOS 2, a heavily customised version of Android 15 found on many Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco phones. If you’ve used a recent model from any of these brands, you won’t be in for too many surprises.

Starting with the positives, HyperOS has a very slick look, and it’s very speedy. There’s some iOS influence here, especially with the quick settings shade and lock screen customisation. Personally, I’m fine with that, as both look great.

There are tons of customisation options in every area of the system, so if anything doesn’t look or act the way you want it to, there’s a good chance you can change it. I love the freedom it affords, and I also appreciate the sheer amount of apps I can have on my home screen.

The downsides are the same as ever. There’s a bit of bloatware to clean up when you first set up the device, nothing too bad, but a frustration I could do with out. There are also ads baked into some of the system apps, like the wallpaper selector and the game centre. It really detracts from an otherwise premium-feeling experience.

I was pleased to see that the phone has Google’s latest features included, like the ability to set Gemini as your default search assistant, and Circle to Search. These aren’t too novel in 2025, but they’re very useful to have. Otherwise, AI functionality is a little scarce, aside from the aforementioned gaming enhancements.

Price & Availability

The Poco F7 Ultra launched globally on 27 March 2025.

In the UK, the phone costs £649 for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while the 16GB+512GB model is £699.

You can buy one outright from the Xiaomi website and via Amazon. However, no networks are selling the phone on contract, and it’s not available in the US as usual.

That outright price puts it at the upper end of the mid-range phone market, where it’s competing with devices such as the Xiaomi 14T Pro and OnePlus 13R, while the Google Pixel 9 is often discounted to a similar price.

Should you buy the Poco F7 Ultra?

If you’re seeking flagship-level performance but can only stretch to an upper mid-range budget, it’s hard to think of a better option than the Poco F7 Ultra. It’s superb value for money and delivers a gaming and productivity experience that’s up there with the best phones on the market.

It’s only really the cameras that aren’t quite flagship-level. They’re still quite good, and certainly better than most gaming phones, but won’t match handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or Xiaomi 15 Ultra.

Otherwise, the screen, battery life and charging speeds are all top notch. It’s a pleasure to use, and so long as you’re not too picky with your photos, you’re in for an excellent time.

Specs

• HyperOS 2, based on Android 15
• 6.67-inch, 1440 x 3200, OLED, 120Hz display
• In-display ultrasonic fingerprint reader
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite
• 12GB / 16GB RAM
• 256GB / 512GB storage
• Cameras:
  • 50Mp main sensor
  • 50Mp 2.5x telephoto
  • 32Mp ultrawide
  • 32Mp selfie camera
• Up to 8K @ 24fps rear video
• Stereo speakers
• Dual-SIM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e/7
• Bluetooth 6.0
• 5300mAh battery
• 120W wired charging
• 50W wireless charging
• 160.3 x 75 x 8.4 mm
• IP68 certified
• 212g
• Colours: Yellow, Black

Best Prices Today: Xiaomi Poco F7 Ultra