POCO M4 PRO

Never heard of Poco? It’s actually the cheapest branch of Xiaomi, renowned purveyor of feature-packed phones. And the 5G-ready M4 Pro packs in so many goodies it’s unbelievable at this price point.

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Price ₹15,499 / flipkart.com

This Android uses the MediaTek Dimensity 810 platform – a power-packed octa-core processor that dismisses the Snapdragon snobs. Plus with 6GB of RAM, multitasking isn’t a chore either. Framerates in games aren’t the highest, but more demanding titles are perfectly playable at medium detail settings.

Features: bargainy The 6.6in display is superb, with lovely colours and a 90hz refresh rate – which is most welcome at this kind of price level, delivering super-smooth scrolling. A 5000mAh battery sounds beefy enough for all-day use, but the Poco thrashed our estimates and lasted well into a second day before needing a top-up… and 33W wired charging is also impressively nippy. It has a 3.5mm port for those who prefer their headphones wired.

The camera bump is a tad misleading: there might be five ‘lenses’, but only two have sensors behind them. Still, all credit to Poco for ditching the near-pointless depth and macro lenses favoured by other £200 phones. Instead you get the more standard lenses in the form of a high-pixel main snapper (50MP) and an ultrawide.

The former handles colour and contrast well, and the latter crams a lot more into every shot with its 119° field of view… but neither captures an awful lot of fine detail.

Software: bloaty The interface is pleasant enough and you get two years of OS updates and three years of security updates. The MIUI Android skin blends elements from both Apple and Google, such as the Control Centre-like notification tray and an app drawer that’s fit to bursting right out of the box. Yes, there is a lot of bloatware and you’ll want to bin it off, which is a pain.