Poco M7 Plus review: Well-rounded budget phone

With a big display and massive battery, consumers can binge watch on OTT apps or scroll endlessly social media platforms without the anxiety of the device running out of juice anytime soon.

While Poco F series is popular in the premium mid-range segment, the M series is the favourite among price-conscious customers.

The company has introduced Poco M7 Plus with big upgrades in terms of solid build quality, a new generation Qualcomm chipset and promises long battery life. Here are my thoughts on this mid-range Android phone.

Design, display, and build quality

Poco M7 Plus comes with a visually pleasing and unique aesthetic. As you can see from the cover photo of our review (Chrome Silver), it flaunts a geometrical design with lines criss-crossing at right angles (90-degrees) on the back panel forming segments in square and rectangular shapes. On the side, it features a bright red-hued thick bezel covering the top half and the rest is painted blue.

The company also offers the device two other colours-- carbon black and aqua silver.

Poco M7 Plus.

The device has a oval shaped camera module in the top left corner, which houses two sensors and an LED flash on the side. The design concept makes the Poco M7 Plus stand out among the rival brands, which come with boring, plain colours.

The smooth metal-like matte finish does a good job to an extent in repelling the sweaty fingerprint smudges. And, the flat railing around the edge offers a good grip to hold the device firmly.

It is not just pretty looking phone, but also sturdy too. The display is protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 3 shield and also comes with an IP64 dust-and-water splash-resistant rating.

And, the company also offers a free silicone case. It is very soft and sturdy, which ensures the device is protected during an accidental fall on the hard floor.

Poco M7 Plus

On the front, it flaunts a big 6.9-inch full HD+ (2340 x 1080p) LCD screen with 144Hz adaptive refresh rate. It has uniform thin bezels and has an 86.6 per cent screen-to-body ratio.

It has a pixel density of 347 pixels per inch (ppi) and offers up to 550 nits peak brightness, which is good enough to read messages and watch content outdoors. Indoors (at home), I had an even better experience thanks to really good speakers.

Poco M7 Plus

The device also comes with a Type-C port, Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ac and a hybrid dual SIM tray (nano SIM-1 + nano SIM-2 or microSD card). It also features a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. It works fine with a low false rejection rate.

Poco M7 Plus.

It also boasts of an infrared sensor, which comes in handy to control Internet-of-Things (IoT) gadgets such as smart ACs, smart TVs, smart geysers and security cameras at home.

Performance

The device is powered by Qualcomm's reliable 6nm class Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 silicon, which can clock 2.3GHz peak CPU speed and comes with 900MHz Adreno 619 GPU, 6GB or 8GB LPDDR4X RAM options. It terms of day-to-day activities such as messaging, answering calls, switching between multiple apps and operating the camera, it works smoothly.

It also supports most of the popular battle royale genre gaming titles available on the Google Play Store.

Poco M7 Plus.

The device runs Android 15-based HyperOS. It has a familiar user interface similar to the Redmi and Xiaomi phones. It has a lot of third-party apps, but there is enough spare storage for customers install their favourite apps and also store hundreds of photos and videos captured on the phone's camera. It comes with 128GB of storage, and as noted earlier, it supports a microSD card, which allows customers to expand the memory by up to an additional 1TB of storage.

The device is guaranteed to get two years of Android OS updates and four years of security patches to protect the phone against emerging cyber threats up to 2029.

The M7 Plus houses a massive 7,000mAh battery. The device consistently delivered more than a day and a half of battery life under normal usage with mixed use of Wi-Fi at home and cellular network outdoors.

The device comes with a 33W charger in the retail box. It also 18W reverse charging capability to share power with a friend's phone.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Photography

The device comes with a dual-camera module-- a main 50MP sensor (with Sony IMX882 optical sensor, f/1.5 aperture and is backed by an auxiliary 2MP depth camera with LED flash on the back.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

As you can see from the camera samples, the Poco M7 Plus does a fine job getting really lovely photos outdoors. The flowers look vibrant and has photo has minute details.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

The Portrait mode also does a fantastic job. It manages to sharply focus on the subject and effectively blur the background.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Even at night, the photo quality is decent. There are no pressing issues to complain about.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Though it doesn't support ultra-wide-angle mode, the phone does a nice job of capturing the vast area of the agricultural land.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample with 2X zoom.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample with 5X zoom.

It also supports 2X zoom, and even here, the image is good without any noise. However, the photos begin become grainy as we cross 2X. It gets more noticeable as we go beyond 5X digital zoom.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample with 10X zoom.

However, at close-up range, the phone punches above its weight to get amazing quality photos.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

On the front, it houses 8MP wide camera with an f/2.0 aperture. It takes really nice selfies outdoors with natural sunlight. Indoors, the image quality is good too.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Both the main and front cameras can record full HD (1080p) video. The quality is decent, on par with rival brands in its class.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Poco M7 Plus' camera sample.

Final thoughts

Poco M7 Plus is a reliable budget phone. It comes with a pretty neat-looking metallic finish on the rear side. It has a decent camera, and performance-wise, it can run day-to-day activities smoothly and deliver long battery life.

With a big display and massive battery, consumers can binge-watch on OTT apps or scroll endlessly on social media platforms without the anxiety of the device running out of juice anytime soon.

Poco M7 Plus.

Poco M7 Plus is available in three colours-- carbon black, chrome silver and aqua silver. It comes in two configurations-- 6GB RAM + 128GB storage and 8GB RAM + 128GB storage-- for Rs 13,999 and Rs 14,999, respectively on Flipkart.

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