Poco X8 Pro Malaysia review: Flagship killer hardware, flagship killer price
As someone who lives and dies by the ‘price-to-performance’ ratio when it comes to tech, Poco has always piqued my interest. Ever since the phenomenal Pocophone F1 debuted 2018, the Xiaomi sub-brand has soldiered on delivering some of the best hardware at great prices.
Their latest to do so is the Poco X8 Pro. While perhaps not as flashy as the bigger Poco X8 Pro Max, it is cheaper, starting at just RM1,499. And considering the kind of specs you’re getting, on paper at least the Poco X8 Pro seems like a classic Poco flagship killer.
Understated design, solid display
I’m going to start off actually with a very minor nitpick. Poco calls this a ‘compact body with flagship-quality design’, and yeah sure it’s smaller than the Poco X7 Pro, but I wouldn’t really call it a ‘compact body’. It still sports a relatively large (mid-sized?) 6.59-inch AMOLED display, pushing a 1268 by 2756 resolution with an up to 120Hz refresh rate, full coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut and up to 3,500nits of peak brightness. Our Poco X8 Pro came in a minty green colourway that’s a little pastel, though standard black and white options exist too.
Not really being compact aside, the screen itself is does the job. It gets relatively bright when using it outdoors with auto brightness turned on—just enough to see things with clarity—while watching HDR content is pretty good on it too. Also, random fun fact, there is indeed Widevine L1 certification here so Netflix content should be great; just a little throwback to the issues some Pocophone F1 users had back in the day.
As for actually watching a full length movie on this, it’ll once again do the job as the Poco X8 Pro gets decently loud, filling up a small room. However, it does lack a little bit on the low end with not much bass. Dialogue though is just fine, and if you really wanted to fine tune it you can customise the audio equaliser in Settings under ‘Sound & vibration’.
Another nice-to-have is a Gorilla Glass 7i front panel for scratch resistance, though no mention about the rigidity of the back glass panel. There’s IP66, IP68, IP69 and IP69K dust and water resistance ratings too, matching some of its flagship rivals in durability.
Poco powerhouse
Where the Poco X8 Pro really shines though is with its performance. Powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 8500-Ultra system-on-chip built on a 4nm process, this allows the Poco X8 Pro to come close to true flagships while still remaining cheap and cheerful. You also get 8GB of LPDDR5X memory and up to 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage.
For reference, we got a single-core score of 1530 and a multi-core score of 6387 in Geekbench 6, which puts it close to flagships from a couple of generations ago. Sure it won’t break any records, but at this price range the performance you’re getting is quite surreal. Everyday casual games such as TFT will run absolutely fine, and it’ll even handle more resource-intensive titles such as Where Winds Meet just fine, albeit at an average of 35fps with High settings preset.
The tradeoff here though is of course that it comes with some bloatware pre-installed. Nothing out of the ordinary for Poco of course, and seasoned Poco users can already expect to do the customary uninstall of apps like Temu and Booking.com when setting it up. The Poco X8 Pro comes with Android 16 out of the box, skinned with HyperOS 3 over it, and once again it’s fairly standard for a Xiaomi device. It’s definitely nice to see though that the Poco X8 Pro will get at least four major Android OS upgrades and six years of security patches.
As for battery life, while the Poco X8 Pro doesn’t share the massive 8500mAh battery in its Pro Max sibling, it does have its own respectable 6500mAh battery with support for 100W HyperCharge fast charging. With roughly five hours of screen time on auto brightness, I managed to go through the whole day no issue with about a third left in the tank, varying only based on how much gaming I did.
Reliable, if unremarkable, main camera
First off, here’s what you’re getting in the camera department of the Poco X8 Pro. You’ll find a main 50MP, f/1.5 camera using the Sony IMX882 1/1.95″ sensor, flanked by an 8MP, f/2.2 ultrawide and a 20MP selfie shooter. One pretty cool thing though is that it comes with RGB lighting around the camera modules, which light up in different colours so that you know it’s charging percentage, when you get calls or notifications or even just to light up in-game.
Now, you don’t really buy a Poco for its cameras, you get it for its performance. The Poco X8 Pro is no different—it’s not going to challenge the likes of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra or iPhone 17 Pro anytime soon. That being said, its main camera is going to be a pretty reliable shooter for your average social media posts with good enough dynamic range and mostly accurate colours, while skin tones are also surprisingly decent.
Don’t expect super clear photos though, and with no telephoto you’ll be relying on sensor cropped zoom shots too. Night shots aren’t particularly impressive either. The ultrawide and selfie cameras also don’t have much going for it, other than that it’s there and it’s usable. Again, I don’t think anyone who’s getting the Poco X8 Pro will mind these cameras that much anyway, and if anything they might be surprised by how well the main camera does.
This might be the most powerful smartphone for its price
At a recommended starting price of just RM1,499, it’s hard to fault the Poco X8 Pro. In fact, at time of writing you can still get it for just RM1,299 for the base model with 256GB of storage, while for RM1,499 you can get the 512GB model instead. These are their early bird prices of course, set to end on 5 April, but with plenty of eCommerce platform deals going around I’m sure you can still get them that low.
The Poco X8 Pro will stand out to a certain type of power user, the type who loves having multiple things running at the same time, with plenty of games installed and frequently uses their smartphone to enjoy content. It probably won’t appeal however to those who prioritise cameras or the sleekest looking device. That being said, for those seeking the most performance-per-ringgit, the Poco X8 Pro is a standout choice.
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