Poco’s new X8 Pro series puts Max pressure on the Galaxy A57

Xiaomi’s Poco sub-brand has just announced the Poco X8 Pro and the Poco X8 Pro Max, promising a level of mid-range performance that Samsung’s Galaxy A57 and A37 will struggle to match.

The Poco X8 Pro Max is the brand’s first ever Max phone, and it sets out to earn that moniker. It’s fronted by a hefty 6.83-inch 1.5K 120Hz AMOLED display with a 2772 x 1280 resolution and a 2000 nit maximum brightness in HBM, with a 3500 nits peak. It houses an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, too, which isn’t a spec you commonly see on a mid-range phone.

This display is housed in a chunky 162.9 x 77.9 x 8.2mm IP68-certified body, which weighs a substantial 218g. There’s a very good reason for that heft, too.

The phone’s battery is an 8,500mAh monstrosity. This suitably Maxed-out cell is accompanied by support for 100W wired charging, which presumably you’d need just to get it charged before you wake up.

This should be the fastest Poco X-series phone ever too, with a Dimensity 9500s processor and 12GB of RAM. There are both 256GB and 512GB variants.

The camera provision looks predictably humble, with a 50Mp main camera housing a 1/1.95″ Light Fusion 600 image sensor and an 8Mp ultra-wide. There’s also a 20Mp front camera.

More interesting than the cameras themselves are the new Dynamic RGB Light that surrounds them. These RGB lights are programmable, so you can set them to illuminate according to incoming notifications.

Poco X8 Pro

While the new Max model is likely to hog all the attention, there’s another phone in the roster. Or two phones, actually.

The Poco X8 Pro gives you a similar but smaller design, with a 157.53 x 75.19 x 8.38mm and 201g body housing a 6.59-inch 1.5K 120Hz AMOLED display. The latter reaches the same brightness as its Max brother.

There’s a smaller – but by no means small – 6,500mAh battery and the same 100W HyperCharge wired charging support.

The camera set-up looks much like the Max, but with a slightly different (but still very similar) 50Mp Sony IMX882 main sensor.

Performance doesn’t look quite so strong, but the MediaTek Dimensity 8500-Ultra should prove capable for the money, even paired with 8GB of RAM. There’s also a 12GB variant.

Both of these phones run Android 16 with Xiaomi’s busy HyperOS 3 UI, and you’ll get four years of operating system updates and six years of security patches.

We mentioned a third phone, and really, it only warrants a brief shout out. The Poco X8 Pro – Iron Man Edition is a limited version of the regular Poco X8 Pro, with branding from Marvel’s Iron Man plastered over the back, an accompanying custom UI and fancy box, and the top memory spec.

It’s not being sold in the UK, and European pricing is said to be under final review.

Talking of which, the Poco X8 Pro Max starts from £469 for the 256GB model, moving up to £519 for 512GB. That’s the most expensive the X series has ever been, but it still undercuts the Samsung Galaxy A56 (and likely the Galaxy A57) and the Google Pixel 10a.

More telling is the price of the Poco X8 Pro, which starts from £349 for 256GB of storage, moving up to £399 for 512GB, and topping out at £429 should you want 12GB of RAM. That’s a £40 price bump over the Poco X7 Pro before it, showing that Xiaomi isn’t immune to the pricing pressure that’s hitting all manufacturers.

As always, Poco is running some generous early bird offers, so if you’re in the market for a mid-range phone that punches above its weight, get in quickly.