Poco F8 Ultra review: lots of flagship for considerably less money

Poco F8 Ultra in test

For the past few weeks, we have been walking around with the new Poco F8 Ultra. A smartphone that succeeds last year's Poco F7 Ultra. At the time, we tested that smartphone extensively in the Poco F7 Ultra review. With the new Poco F8 Ultra, the brand wants to impress the younger generation, with Bose speakers and a high-end chipset, for example. In this Poco F8 Ultra review, we tell you all about the manufacturer's new device.

Unboxing

Poco also delivers this device in the familiar black-and-yellow-coloured packaging. In it you will find the device itself, a USB-C cable, a SIM needle, some paperwork and immediately a silicone case to protect your new device. If you want to get the high charging speed, you will need to provide your own charger. Out of the box, a screen protector is stuck on the phone's screen.

Design and interface

We got the Poco F8 Ultra for the review in the black colour. There is also a stylish Denim Blue colour that has the colour of denim fabric, although it is not used for the material itself. That colour combines blue with silver, while the black one is black/anthracite throughout. Depending on the colour, its weight and thickness may vary slightly.

What is certain is that the F8 Ultra is a fairly large device, equipped with a 6.9-inch AMOLED screen on the front. This is a bright screen that can be nice and bright on sunny days, and dimmed enough in darker environments, which is very nice. The display gives a resolution of 2608 x 1200 pixels and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. We don't really have anything to criticise about the device's screen, although it is not an LTPO display, meaning it cannot handle a dynamic refresh rate, although this is not really a dealbreaker.

On the right side is the volume key and power button, while at the bottom we find the USB-C port and speaker. We also find a speaker at the top. At the back, things are more exciting, as there we find the key feature of the Poco F8 Ultra. Here, the device offers a triple-camera setup with three times a 50-megapixel main camera. We also see in the camera module the Bose grille, which is also a speaker. We will come back to this in more detail later in the Poco F8 Ultra review.

Interface

Poco ships the device with Android 16 and the HyperOS skin. We know this from Xiaomi devices. If you come from another brand of device, you might have to get used to working with it at first. Especially the settings menu can take a while to find the right option, but once you get used to this, it pretty much guides itself. You can access your notifications and quick settings by swiping from top to bottom. With that, you will find the apps in the menu, although you can also choose to put everything on the home screens.

For the lock screen, there are plenty of options to customise it with backgrounds, clock styles and more information. You can also use the always-on display to always be aware of the time and notifications. While in use, everything is smooth and fast, exactly as you would expect from a smartphone in this class. You can still download and use themes and lots of extra widgets via Poco's Theme app.

Communication and multimedia

Making calls and surfing the internet: we do it a lot with a smartphone and on the Poco F8 Ultra, too, this proved no problem. The phone connects effortlessly to the 5G network and can handle WiFi 7. Call quality is fine and the person on the other end of the line can be heard well. Internet browsing is via Google Chrome or its own internet browser.

The Poco F8 Ultra has two SIM card slots and eSIM access. However, the possibility of inserting a second physical SIM card does disappear if you use eSIM. In any case, it is an advance, as its predecessor did not have eSIM support. Calling and texting are done via Google's well-known apps.

Multimedia

Multimedia usage is an important key-feature of the Poco F8 Ultra, with the Bose speakers in the lead, of course. But the screen is also important; after all, this is what you are always looking at. The screen is of high quality and, as mentioned, has a pleasant brightness in both light and dark hours.

But what about the sound quality? Let's get right to the point: this is fantastic. I can't remember a smartphone leaving such a good impression with its sound quality. This is where the Poco F8 Ultra really excels. It can play softly but also quite loudly. Even at maximum power, the sound is still very pleasant to listen to. Whatever volume you choose, the balance between high and low tones is perfect and there is enough bass without it becoming distracting. Poco has taken care of business in this!

Camera

Did Poco also get things right with the camera? The Poco F8 Ultra offers three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel wide-angle lens and another 50-megapixel periscope telephoto lens. Pretty much all the features you'd expect from a high-end smartphone can be found on this Poco, though the wide-angle lens lacks autofocus. The camera app is user-friendly and self-explanatory. You can quickly take your photos, which you can then view in Xiaomi's own gallery app, or of course in Google Photos. Both apps are already installed on the device.

We tested the camera in different conditions. One nice touch was the presence of the Northern Lights. This is clearly better captured by the Poco F8 Ultra than by the Pixel 10 Pro XL. Otherwise, the photos taken by the device are of fine quality. This is true both during the day and at night, as the smartphone takes very good photos in the dark hours too. Sometimes we do catch the device taking a lower-quality photo, where it gets a bit bland. If you use the telephoto lens, you can zoom in up to 10x, of which 5x optically. Photo quality is fine with clear details.

You can check out the photos we took with the Poco in the digital photo album.

Video camera

Prefer to get to work with the Poco F8 Ultra's video camera? That's no problem either. The device knows how to make excellent videos. You can even film in 8K with the Poco, at 30fps. Of course, you can also choose to capture footage in 4K or 1080p. You can watch the video we shot with the Poco F8 Ultra below.

Performance and battery life

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset is fine. This processor has already proven itself in several high-end smartphones, and does so well in the Poco F8 Ultra too. The phone also comes with 16GB of RAM memory, although it also comes with 12GB of working memory. Storage is either 512GB or 256GB, depending on which variant you choose. Under some conditions, the device can get a bit warm. This will hopefully be addressed with an update.

Battery

With a 6,500mAh battery, you won't have to fear a low battery anytime soon. While a large battery capacity doesn't always mean you can also do a long time on a battery charge, you don't have to worry about that with the Poco F8 Ultra. Of course, the endurance depends on your consumption, but on average, you can certainly get about two days and we easily note a screen time between 6 and 8 hours, partly also depending on whether you mainly use the mobile or WiFi network. If the battery does run out, you can charge it with a suitable 100W charger. Wireless charging is also possible, with up to 50W.

Update policy

Poco shared its update policy during the presentation of the device. As a result, we know exactly which updates will be rolled out to the smartphone. Six years of security updates will be rolled out for the Poco F8 Ultra. In the process, the device will receive four Android updates. Out of the box, the smartphone runs on Android 16. At the time of writing, the device has the January security update. A major update for the device was released in the past week.

Review

The Poco F8 Ultra is a very fine smartphone that doesn't really do anything wrong. The device delivers on its promise about sound quality, as you will really enjoy your music with this device. The camera also takes decent photos, although an update could do something about the sometimes shaky images. There is also good battery life and nice screen. With the specifications of this device, the Poco really is a high-end smartphone, but without charging the prices that competitors charge for such devices. Indeed, for around 700 euros, you have this complete phone.

A major competitor to the F8 Ultra is the OnePlus 15, which is around 200 euros more expensive and has an even longer battery life. In our OnePlus 15 review, we were quite pleased with the device. There is a fine camera, and very good performance. However, the camera is better with zooming on the Poco. The update policy is the same with both models.

Want to get started with the Poco F8 Ultra yourself? You can buy the device at Belsimpel and Bol.com.