Poco F8 Ultra Review: mid-range price, high-end goodness

If you’re not familiar with the Poco brand, you might be more aware of its parent company – Xiaomi.

Pitched as mid-range devices, Poco phones usually offer a good array of specs at a more affordable price than the higher-end models that you would usually associate with the main Xiaomi brand.

Such is the case here with the Poco F8 Ultra, which has a triple high-resolution sensor set up, plus a range of other enticing specifications including a partnership with premium audio brand Bose for the speakers.

Is there enough here for the phone to make it onto our list of the best smartphones for photographers? Only one way to find out…

Poco F8 Ultra at glance

• 3 x 50MP sensors
• 8K video recording
• 6500 mAh battery
• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Processor
• Bose speakers

Features

For photographers, the headline feature here is the triple high-resolution cameras that the Poco F8 Ultra offers.

You get a main camera, plus an ultra wide and a telephoto (using a periscope design), all of which are 50MP. There’s also a pretty high-resolution (32MP) selfie camera, too.

That periscope lens is a 5x optical zoom lems, but there’s also 10x “in-sensor” zoom (where an image is taken from a central portion of the sensor), plus 20x UltraZoom (which uses AI / computational photography to recreate the look of a 20x zoom).

For video users, 8K recording is available – though most will probably be more than satisfied with 4K options.

A long battery life is promised by the 6500 mAh battery, while the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, should also see it perform efficiently, too.

The speakers are made by Bose, which should mean that they outperform other phone speakers – could be useful if you like to watch a lot of content on your phone without external speakers or headphones.

Other useful / enticing features include a large 120Hz screen and up to 512GB storage space.

Build and Handling

At 6.9-inches, this is one of the biggest screens on the market – which is pretty impressive for a mid-range phone. It’s also a decent resolution and has a 120Hz refresh rate, and is nice and bright too. The bezels around the edge of the screen are very thin at 1.5mm, so you get most of the screen to use (94.2%, apparently) – plus the selfie camera is behind a hole punch cut out, too.

The phone uses a flat screen and rounded corners – a lot like many others on the market, it’s obviously the style of the time. What sets the design of this particular phone apart is the colourway – if you opt for the denim one. Its slightly rough texture also makes it feel like material too. It’s quite attractive, but I can imagine it looking quite dated, quite quickly – and it might be more difficult to resell it than a simple black one.

All of the camera units are arranged in a square, with the Bose speaker next to them.

In terms of protection for the device, the screen has “Poco Shield” glass, designed to withstand scratches, while the chassis of the phone itself is made from strong aluminium alloy. The F8 Ultra has an IP68 water and dustproof rating, meaning you can submerge it in 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes. It’s not quite class leading anymore – many of the top-end phones now have IP69 ratings – but unless you’re planning to subject your phone to high-powered hot water jets, you’ll probably be just fine with IP68.

Native camera app

There’s a decent range of options with the native camera app. The default mode is “Photo”, where you can access the various lenses plus the digital zoom options. In this mode, Night mode will automatically activate, while you can access “Super Macro” by swiping down on the app screen to reveal some additional settings.

Other options found here include the ability to change photo resolution, aspect ratio and switch on the Timer.

A Portrait mode can be used to create a shallow depth of field effect, with the ability to use the 1x, 2x or 5x zoom options. You can also adjust the strength of the background blur.

Pro mode comes in useful if you want to take greater control, or shoot in raw format. You can adjust shutter speed, ISO, white balance and exposure compensation here.

The video mode gives you access to different resolutions and frame rates, plus there are also some additional video options such as “Slow Motion” and “Time-lapse” which you can select as well.

Further settings can be accessed by a more elaborate “Settings” menu, where you can change things like image format (shoot in HEIF to save storage space, JPEG for most compatibility). You can also enable useful features such as the ability to say “Cheese!” to take a photo. Well, useful if you like that kind of thing.

A range of inbuilt editing tools are included, with fairly standard options such as cropping and adjusting brightness also joined by more extensive AI options. You can change the sky in your landscape shots, add filters, erase annoying passers by and more besides. Some of these features you will need a Xiaomi account to use, so that’s something to take note of.

Image Quality and Performance

The Poco F8 Ultra is capable of taking some great photos, across a range of conditions. There are certainly better performers on the market, but at this price point it’s pretty impressive.

Default colours are a little on the bright side, but if you like images that really “pop” you might find that to be a good thing. Detail is best from the main lens, while the ultrawide and telephoto lenses are a bit softer if you scrutinise closely on a large screen – the overall impression of both is fine, certainly on a phone screen, anyway.

Images taken in low light are best from the 1x lens, as I’d expect. The ultrawide is a bit smudgier in low light than I’d like, but again, when looking at the images on a small screen it’s not so noticeable. The telephoto lens also struggles a little too, but if you’re keen to get closer to the action then it still produces usable images.

The Portrait mode creates pleasing shallow depth of field effects, which look pretty natural and with good skin tones. It doesn’t do too badly with slightly fussy outlines, but the best results are with a clean / straightforward subject.

For the selfie camera, you get very sharp results – arguably a bit too sharp, giving a sort of hyper-realistic look, but it’s a pretty good performer for this price point.

If you switch on the “Super Macro” mode, the phone uses the telephoto lens for close-ups. The results look good on the phone screen, but you can see some smudginess if you look closely or transfer the images to a computer screen – still, the overall impression is great.

We’re obviously not an audio site, but being as Bose is being used as a selling point of the phone, I listened to a song on the Poco F8 Ultra (via YouTube), and the same song (also via YouTube) on my iPhone 17 Pro. The Poco F8 Ultra was slightly better to my ears, but perhaps not exactly revolutionary. Still, the F8 Ultra is less than half the price of an iPhone 17 Pro, so it’s doing very well for a mid-range phone.

Value for Money

The Poco F8 Ultra offers fantastic value for money – if you can get hold of one.

At £599 for the base model, or £649 for the additional RAM and storage option, you get a huge amount of phone for your money. Sadly, it seems to be sold out in a lot of places so it might prove a bit tricky to get hold of.

Still, if stock becomes available it’s a great buy. It’s also not a phone you can buy in the US easily – you can import it, but remember to be aware that you might be liable to additional taxes and it will be harder to get support if something goes wrong.

At the price listed above, the F8 Ultra offers much better value than the likes of the iPhone 17 or the Samsung S25 – but then again, those two models will likely hold their value a lot better.

Verdict

If you want a well-performing smartphone across a range of different areas – not just photography – then something like the Poco F8 Ultra makes a lot of sense.

You get a large, bright and detailed screen, excellent sound, great battery life and the cameras are also pretty decent too.

Models like this show that you don’t need to spend a huge amount to get the best phone specs – however, there’s a big problem, the phone is sold out – so until it gets restocked, you might struggle to find one.