Poco F8 Ultra Review: Comfortable like a pair of jeans

In a smartphone world where all devices look the same, launching a phone with a faux-denim back and a dedicated subwoofer is bold, to say the least. It’s also refreshing. The Poco F8 Ultra doesn’t look anything like its predecessor as well, polishing the Ultra experience and doing so in style.This phone screams flagship, and thanks to the Bose sound, it does it in quite a loud voice. From the 6.9-inch OLED screen that’s impressively bright to the versatile camera system, fast chipset, and the aforementioned subwoofer, it’s all engineered to give those iPhones and Galaxies up there a run for their money.Speaking of money, Poco’s not the super-affordable brand it used to be, and the Poco F8 Ultra starts at the respectable $729 for the base 12/256GB model. Does it have what it takes to challenge the big boys? Let’s find out!

Poco F8 Ultra Design and Display

Denim, baby

The Poco F8 Ultra looks unique. The Denim variant comes with a blue, rubbery back that imitates denim quite well. It’s soft to the touch, doesn’t collect fingerprints, and looks extremely cool. 

The camera housing bears resemblance to the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, but it houses three cameras and a Bose subwoofer. I guess it’s the year of the “extended plateau.” However, thanks to the subwoofer system and the denim-silver contrast, the phone does look unique.

The retail box is a slight disappointment, as there’s no charger inside. Given the phone supports up to 100W wired fast charging, it would’ve been nice to get the appropriate charger in the box. There’s a silicon case that’s opaque (why you would want to hide the denim back is beyond me), a cable, and some paperwork. Moving on.

Poco says the display panel inside the F8 Ultra is the first HyperRGB display, using a full RGB subpixel structure that activates every red, green, and blue subpixel. The panel also supports dynamic 120 Hz refresh rate, and according to Poco, it can output up to 3,500 nits of brightness. The screen has a 2608×1200 resolution, resulting in around 416 PPI pixel density, and also covers 100% of the DCI P3 color space. There’s Poco Shield Glass on top of the display for protection. It’s time to see the lab results.

In terms of biometrics, there’s an ultrasonic fingerprint under the display of the Poco F8 Ultra—it’s very fast and accurate and probably taken from the Xiaomi 15 series. There’s facial recognition as well, but it relies only on the front-facing camera, with no fancy radar tech involved, so it’s not that secure. Stick to the ultrasonic fingerprint—it’s great!

Poco F8 Ultra Camera

Another plateau?

The Poco F8 Ultra comes equipped with a powerful camera system in its rectangular camera bump. The main camera uses a 50MP, 1/1.31″ Light Fusion 950 image sensor under a lens with an f/1.67 aperture. This camera also has optical image stabilization.Then there’s another 50MP sensor under the ultrawide lens with an f/2.4 aperture. And finally, the triplet is completed by yet another 50MP telephoto camera. It’s a periscope system with an f/3.0 aperture and a focal length equivalent of 115 mm, or 5X zoom if we calculate from the main 23 mm camera. This one has OIS as well. There’s a 32MP selfie camera on the front.

The Camera benchmark score of the F8 Ultra is pretty decent, especially the main and zoom scores (80 out of 87 and 27 out of 30, respectively). The video score drags the final result down, so let’s see how these numbers translate into real-life images and videos.

Time for samples!

Snaps from the main camera look quite good, even in the bleak November conditions in which I had to shoot these samples. There’s plenty of detail, the colors look accurate, and the dynamic range is quite wide as well. 

The ultrawide samples look a bit colder, compared to the images taken with the main camera, and there’s a slight drop in overall quality. I can’t put my finger on it but it might have something to do with the narrower aperture and less light hitting the sensor, especially in less than ideal lighting conditions.

The zoom shots are quite good. Bear in mind that the 2x samples are just crops from the main sensor, the 5x images are the “original” images from the telephoto camera’s optical zoom, and the 10x shots are crops from those 5x zoom samples. 

Out of these various zoom levels, the 5x samples are the most impressive of the bunch, with lots of detail and great dynamic range. 10x shots are also quite good; no huge loss in quality there either.

The selfie camera gets the job done; my face looks natural, and you can clearly see the crow’s feet wrinkles near my eyes. The gray hair is also visible, so point for details and minus point for vanity here.

Video Quality

The Poco F8 Ultra can record videos with up to 8K resolution at 30 frames per second. You’ll probably be better off staying in 4K, though. There’s nothing wrong with the video, the stabilization is decent, the colors are accurate, but the overall quality is a bit unimpressive, especially if you compare it to the still shots.

Poco F8 Ultra Performance & Benchmarks

Elite

The “Ultra” picture wouldn’t have been complete without the latest Qualcomm chipset. And it’s here—the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. This powerful silicon has earned a reputation as a heat monster, so the stress test will be very interesting.In terms of RAM the phone is available globally in two flavors – a base 12/256GB variant and a 16/512GB option. In normal day-to-day activities the phone performs blazingly fast and doesn’t heat up much, but given the powerful chipset, that’s not a surprise. Time to put the Poco F8 Ultra through the grinder of synthetic benchmarks.

CPU Performance Benchmarks:

In the CPU benchmark the Poco F8 Ultra performed on par with other flagships, equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 silicon. The OnePlus 15 was slightly faster, as well as the Nubia Z80 Ultra, but not by much.

The Poco F8 Ultra runs HyperOS 3 out of the box, based on Android 16. It’s the same software you find on Xiaomi flagship phones. HyperOS is a pretty clean UI on top of the Android OS—no bloatware or unnecessary clutter.

There’s also a sprinkle of AI on board—Xiaomi’s HyperAI. It has a suite of useful tools, such as writing aids, live translation, speech recognition, and subtitles. There are also a couple of AI creative tools—image expansion (expands the canvas of an image), eraser pro (removes objects from the frame), AI frame (adds cinematic filters and styles to a video), beautify, and more.

The UI is snappy and intuitive; you can customize the look, layout, and animations, but the default settings are quite good as they are. The Poco F8 Ultra will receive four major OS updates and six years of security patches.

Poco F8 Ultra Battery

Subwoofer woes

We’re witnessing a transition (don’t dare to call it a revolution) in battery tech. Most phones from China now feature silicon-carbon batteries with capacities sometimes twice as big as popular flagships from the big three (Apple, Samsung, and Google).

I would assume the Poco F8 Ultra features the same tech (not specifically mentioned in the press materials), as it comes with a pretty hefty 6,500 mAh battery inside its sleek body. The parent company Xiaomi already uses this tech in its latest flagships, so it’s safe to make the assumption above.

There’s one key element to the longevity of this phone in terms of battery life on a single charge. Let’s check out the results, and then talk about it.

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

As you can see, the browsing result is quite impressive at almost 23 hours. The YouTube streaming and Gaming results, on the other hand, are mediocre at best. This has everything to do with our test, as in both those categories, the phone is at max volume.The culprit is the subwoofer—it draws a lot of battery and influences the final score. In the end, the composite result places the Poco F8 Ultra in the distant 93rd place overall, but there’s more to this score than meets the eye.

We’re going to run the tests again with the sound turned off to get a better picture, but all in all, if you don’t listen to music on the phone or play videos or games at full volume, expect much better results in terms of battery life.

Poco F8 Ultra Audio Quality and Haptics

One of the most exciting features, and a key selling point of the Poco F8 Ultra, is the audio system tuned by Bose. It features a dedicated subwoofer on the back, next to the camera system, circular in shape with a fine grill and the moniker “Sound by BOSE.”

Is it any good? Absolutely! The sound quality is amazing—a night and day difference between this phone and a regular one without a dedicated device for the bass frequencies. You can hear the “woomph” even at low volume, and it gives another dimension to everything you listen to—from music to a simple podcast or a movie.

The subwoofer is backed by the usual stereo combo of an earpiece and down-firing loudspeaker. These two do a good job, but there’s a slight distortion at max volume, mainly in the high-frequency range. There are different presets in the audio settings, as well as a 10-band EQ to further customize the sound, so points to Poco and BOSE for that.

Haptics are good, nothing to write home about, just a solid tight vibration. You can adjust the vibration level via a slider, but even at the max setting, it doesn’t feel all that strong.

Should you buy it?

It’s not hard to recommend the Poco F8 Ultra. Even though the brand has moved away from the ultra-affordable niche, the F8 Ultra is a worthy flagship in its own right. It can compete with your iPhones and Galaxies, both in price and in features. Speaking of price, the base variant costs $729, which is fair for what the phone has to offer.

The Poco F8 Ultra comes equipped with the latest and fastest Qualcomm processor, the phone has a gorgeous display that can get very bright, the camera system is versatile, and there’s a dedicated subwoofer! Poco deserves innovation points for that one alone.

What are the tradeoffs? Well, you don’t get seven years of software support, and even though the camera system is decent, it can’t compete with other “camera” phones, especially in the video department. If you’re okay with that, the Poco F8 Ultra will feel as comfortable as a nice pair of jeans.