Super fast and cheap

Review: Xiaomi Poco F7 Ultra - Super cheap top mobile

With Poco's return to the Swedish market, we also regain the product category 'the affordable top model'.

Published 14 April 2025 - 15:11

For many years, we were used to finding mobiles that could be compared with the best Samsung and Apple had but at a significantly lower price, at best half the price. Often it was about manufacturers trying to price themselves into the market by selling good products with very small margins. Once they had built a brand, they gradually raised prices until they were closer to Apple and Samsung. We saw, among others, Huawei, Oneplus, and Xiaomi make that journey in the Swedish market.

In Poco's case, the plan is probably different, because behind Poco is actually Xiaomi. They want it to appear as much as possible that it is its own brand, and for those who are not in the know, it is only “Powered with Xiaomi Hyper OS” on the box of the Poco F7 Ultra that reveals the matter. And of course, the phone is mainly sold via Xiaomi's Swedish online store mi.com. Poco, and for that matter Xiaomi's other budget brand Redmi, is more comparable to the cheaper car brands in the Volkswagen group, a way to capture those buyers who want a cheaper mobile without devaluing the value of their regular brand.

When it comes to cars, you usually notice from everything from the interior to driving comfort if a car is a cheaper brand. For mobile phones, it is not as obvious, and especially for the Poco F7 Ultra, it is difficult to see what you would miss out on.

Almost half the price

The Poco F7 Ultra is a mobile with a 6.67-inch OLED screen and the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the one powering this year's real top models like the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Oneplus 13. The phone is sold for 8000 kronor with 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 GB of storage, for 500 kronor more you get 16/512 GB. This can be compared to the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus which sells for 14,500 kronor, not quite double the price, but not far off.

Of course, this assumes you see the large screen as an advantage, the smaller and more convenient regular S25 is cheaper, and generally, it's rare to find a cheap mobile that's also small and convenient. The Poco F7 Ultra is also a bit thick and heavy for its size, but it's used for a 5300 mAh battery, more than most phones have. For some reason, this is not noticeable in the battery life, which is below average.

The charging speed, on the other hand, is clearly above average, a 120-watt charger is included that charges the phone from empty to 50 percent in 10 minutes and fully in 28 minutes. Fast charging is said to wear more on the battery, at least if done carelessly, but Xiaomi promises that the battery will retain 80 percent of its capacity after 1600 charge cycles, which is more than four years if you charge the phone from empty to full once a day.

The design feels a bit lively with a glass back featuring one matte and one glossy section with interesting patterns. Besides black, the phone is available in a bright yellow colour, but if you're cautious, you might still use the included opaque rubber case, which means you won't notice much of the design.

Water and shock resistant

The durability is not budget either; the phone is waterproof according to IP68, just like the more expensive top models, and the phone's screen is protected by Poco Shield Glass, which must be the same as Xiaomi Shield Glass that protects the screen on the Xiaomi 14 and, according to Xiaomi, has significantly better impact resistance than Gorilla Glass Victus. For obvious reasons, we have not tested this in practice.

The screen also meets top model standards with a fast refresh rate, high resolution, and above all, high maximum brightness, making the screen fully readable even in sunlight.

In performance tests, the phone is just as fast as we expect from a new top model. In some cases, faster, Xiaomi (or Poco if you prefer) seems to be more cautious about throttling the phone's performance at elevated temperatures, which means that in the 3Dmark performance test, the phone maintains high speed over time, unless the test is interrupted due to overheating, that is.

The cameras are the area where I have the lowest expectations for the phone. It makes sense to save on this if you want to make the phone cheaper, and it's also easy to disguise a simpler camera setup with high megapixel counts and extra cameras of limited value.

Xiaomi hasn't done that here. We get a main camera with a sensor as large as the one in the Samsung Galaxy S22, a telephoto camera with 2.5 times optical zoom, and a wide-angle camera with relatively high resolution. All three are acceptable or better.

All-round camera

It's noticeable that Poco phones don't benefit from Xiaomi's collaboration with Leica, the colour reproduction doesn't feel quite as vibrant, but when I compare photos from the cameras with those from the Samsung Galaxy S25 (the Galaxy S25 Ultra plays in a different and more expensive league), I mostly get images that are sharper, have slightly more natural colours, and handle low light better. The wide-angle camera is somewhat worse but still quite okay, while the telephoto camera is noticeably better than the one in the Galaxy S25. The high resolution of the telephoto camera is used to take 12.5-megapixel photos that are sharp at 5 times zoom, and even at 10 times zoom, I find the images clearly enjoyable. Overall, the camera setup matches or even surpasses what you find in many more expensive phones.

The system is Android 15 with Xiaomi's user interface Hyper OS 2, with a special Poco theme intended to give the phone a bit of its own character. Xiaomi is fond of apps, both their own which sometimes duplicate Google's system apps and others. If you're not attentive during the installation process, you'll have a whole bunch of games installed for you, and even when I've unchecked them, I have to uninstall a bunch of third-party apps I don't want. Overall, Xiaomi's user interface is a bit cluttered, but not so much that you don't recognize it immediately from other mobiles.

Xiaomi promises four major system updates for the Poco F7 Ultra. This is significantly fewer than what Samsung promises for its top models but on the other hand, it's as much as they promise for their more expensive Xiaomi 15.

Overall, it's hard to find actual arguments against the Poco F7 Ultra. Why pay 14,500 kronor when you can get an equally good phone for 8,000? The Poco F7 Ultra is not only just as good but in many cases better.

Questions & Answers

I read that the phone has a special graphics chip. What does it do? It is said to provide a better gaming experience and video recording, but I can't say I notice any significant difference.

Does the phone have a memory card slot? No, but you still get a lot of storage for the money in both configurations.

How is the vibration feedback? A bit hard and noisy.

An alternative

If you want a cheaper mobile with top features, the Google Pixel 9a is an interesting alternative. It is smaller and more convenient but lacks a telephoto camera.