Poco X8 Pro review

Display

The Poco X8 Pro packs a 6.59-inch AMOLED screen with 1268 x 2756 pixels, 68B colors (12-bit color depth), 120Hz refresh rate, and up to 480Hz touch sampling. It supports 3840Hz PWM dimming, DCI-P3 color space, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision standards.

The front glass is Gorilla Glass 7i.

According to Xiaomi's official specs, the screen should be capable of up to 2,000 nits of maximum automatic and up to 3,500 nits of peak brightness.

We measured 633 nits of maximum default brightness, but when we turned on the sunlight boost, we got 797 nits. The minimum brightness on a white screen was 2.1 nits.

We were able to confirm the peak brightness - we measured 3,638 nits on a 10% white patch. But the maximum automatic brightness was somewhat unimpressive at 1,090 nits, far from the promised 2,000.

Refresh rate

There are two (well, three) refresh rate modes in the Settings menu - Default (Auto), and Custom (choose between 60Hz and 120Hz).

The screen supports 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz fixed steps. The Auto and Custom 120Hz are adaptive and use 30Hz for AOD, 60Hz for idle screen, and 120Hz in supported apps. Auto would usually choose 60Hz for video streaming apps, while Custom 120Hz will go for a higher refresh rate.

The Custom 60Hz mode is fixed at 60Hz across the entire Android system, except for the AOD screen (30Hz).

The phone does not support Always On Display, but it has a feature called Always On Display, even though it's not really always on, but it lights up for 10 seconds only upon tapping the screen.

HDR

The Poco X8 Pro supports HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision standards, and it will play such videos in Netflix, YouTube, and other popular platforms.

Battery life

The Poco X8 Pro is powered by a 6,500mAh battery, 500mAh more than the Poco X7 Pro. The battery has been limited for the EU market, as the Chinese counterpart - the Redmi Turbo 5 - has a 7,560mAh rated battery.

Anyway, the Poco X8 Pro scored an outstanding Active Use Score of 16:52h. It did very well across all our tests - calls, web browsing, video streaming and gaming. We are particularly impressed with almost 24h video streaming endurance.

The scores of the Redmi Note 15 Pro+ and Poco F8 Pro with the same battery capacity are quite similar.

Charging speed

The Poco X8 Pro supports up to 100W Xiaomi HyperCharge fast wired charging. It can also reverse charge other devices via cable with up to 27W power.

The European version of the Iron Man edition ships without a charger, but we had the 100W Xiaomi power adapter, so we used it for our charging speed test.

There are two Charging Speed options - Standard and Top Speed. We carried out our test on Top Speed (default).

The charging speed is quite impressive. The 100W adapter recharger 41% in 15 mins, 75% in 30mins, and 100% in 41 mins. That's super-fast considering the large battery capacity. The phone becomes quite hot in the process, though.

HyperOS gives you the options to limit the charging to 80% capacity, turn on smart charging that adapts to your charging habits or turn off the fast-charging feature altogether.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Poco X8 Pro has a hybrid stereo speaker setup where the earpiece acts as a speaker together with the full-fledged bottom one.

The speakers scored a Very Good mark on our loudness test. The output is quite pleasant - the vocals are great, the high frequency range is rich, and there is some bass, even if minimal. The audio is shallow, but overall, the speakers produce a good sound quality.

The phone supports Dolby Atmos optimization with a full graphical equalizer with presets and sliders. Dolby Atmos is turned on by default.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.