POCO X6 Neo review
The POCO X6 Neo is one of the best phones for content consumption under ₹16,000. Its incredibly slim bezels coupled with a bright AMOLED display ensure that you are in for a visual treat – at home or on the go. The phone also boasts an amazingly slim and lightweight build, perfect for day-to-day usage. However, it does miss the beat in some areas. For example, the copious amounts of bloatware is quite annoying and the battery life isn’t the best in the segment. Moreover, the phone’s performance is nothing special compared to the competition. Is the phone worth its asking price? Yes. The value aspect only crumbles if you’re a power user who prioritises speedy performance and excellent battery life the most.
POCO recently launched its POCO X6 series – including the POCO X6 5G (review) and POCO X6 Pro 5G (review) – to much fanfare. Now, POCO is bringing the youngest sibling of the trio to India. Priced at ₹15,999, the POCO X6 Neo contends in the cutthroat sub-₹20,000 segment to prove its mettle amidst tough competition. The phone packs the 6 nm MediaTek Dimensity 6080 chipset, an AMOLED display, and a 108 MP primary camera. POCO has also considerably trimmed the bezels to offer a better visual experience. However, phones such as the Lava Storm 5G (review), Motorola G54 (review), and Realme 11x (review) offer tough competition. Let’s see if the POCO X6 Neo is a good proposition you could consider in this competitive landscape in my full POCO X6 Neo review.
The POCO X6 Neo is exceptionally well-designed for the price. Despite having a plastic build, the phone looks pretty impressive. Its slim 7.69 mm profile looks sleek and sophisticated. Additionally, the POCO X6 Neo is also quite lightweight at just 175 g. It’s exceptionally comfortable to hold and the corners are rounded enough to ensure it doesn’t dig into your palms. The company has also provided a premium-looking black case in the retail box.
If you choose to go caseless, most won’t regret it since it looks quite eye-catching. I got the Martian Orange colour variant for review. The rear panel has a marble gradient effect that shines when light hits it – creating a cool ripple-like effect. It may be too garish for some, so the Black and Blue variants would suit those who like a more muted look.
The rear panel and frame have a matte finish ensuring no fingerprints or smudge marks mar the look of your phone. The large rectangular camera module has become a POCO staple now, but the effect could be more pronounced if it was a contrasting colour or simply black. There’s a capacitive fingerprint sensor embedded on the power button which is quite speedy and accurate.
What’s most impressive is the front of the phone – the bezels are super slim; some of the slimmest I’ve seen at this affordable price point. The display is topped by Gorilla Glass 5 and the phone comes packing an IP54 dust and water resistance rating. The IP rating is a good quality-of-life feature to have at this price that offers peace of mind in the long run.
The POCO X6 Neo is quite a beast for content consumption. It is one of the few phones in this price range that comes packing a large 6.67-inch AMOLED display. Add to that the slim bezels we previously talked about, and you’ve got yourself a stellar content-watching experience. Note that competing smartphones such as the Lava Storm 5G and Moto G54 feature IPS LCD displays, so the POCO X6 Neo has a clear leg up in this department.
The display comes with Full HD+ resolution, so everything looks pretty crisp for the price. The colours are a bit on the oversaturated side, but it isn’t too jarring. It does support over one billion colours and a 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour gamut, making it a capable display in this price segment. The display has 120 Hz refresh rate support keeping things feeling super smooth when you’re navigating the UI.
The display’s rated peak brightness is 1,000 nits on HBM (High Brightness Mode) and in my testing, the reading hovered around the 935-940 nits mark, which is very close to the quoted numbers. The display also supports 2160 Hz instant touch sampling rate, so when you’re gaming, your touches are registered within a jiffy.
There’s no HDR support; quite common at this price but you do get to enjoy Widevine L1 support which allows you to watch HD content on streaming platforms. All in all, the POCO X6 Neo has one of the best displays on the market under ₹16,000 – a treat for those who use their smartphones as their primary content consumption device.
The POCO X6 Neo is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 6080 chipset. It features 8 or 12 GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128 or 256 GB of UFS 2.2 storage. Graphics are handled by the Mali-G57 MC2. I found the performance to be pretty average for the price; it matches up to its competitors pretty evenly.
Kicking things off with benchmark numbers, the POCO X6 Neo scores 4,58,608 in AnTuTu v10. This pretty much lines up with the Lava Storm 5G’s score which has the same processor. However, the Moto G54 with the Dimensity 7020 surpasses the X6 Neo’s scores by a slight margin. In GeekBench, the POCO X6 Neo scored 756 in the Single Core test and 1961 in the Multi Core test. So, it lagged behind both the Lava Storm and the Moto G54. The biggest gap was seen in PCMark Work which tests how the phone would perform when handling typical home user workloads. The POCO X6 Neo only got a score of 10726 here.
In GPU benchmarks, the POCO X6 Neo is pretty much neck and neck with the Lava Storm 5G in 3D Mark Wild Life. However, most of its GFXBench scores are considerably lower. Fortunately, the raw performance you get won’t get throttled much even through intensive use. The CPU Throttling Test showed no throttling even after running for 15 minutes, which is impressive.
Look, for a ₹16,000 smartphone, the POCO X6 Neo is incredibly smooth in the real world. I felt no lag or stutter during my usage and could game at Medium graphics without a hitch in BGMI or Call of Duty: Mobile. Does it have mindblowing performance? No. Is it enough for the price? I think, yes. It doesn’t get outclassed by any of its similarly-priced competitors that we’ve tested.
As for the UI, the phone ships with MIUI 14, which sits on top of Android 13. I really think POCO should have provided Android 14 out of the box since most of the latest phones ship with Android 14. MIUI also has quite a bit of bloatware. Everything from Opera to Netflix to PhonePe is preinstalled. In fact, there are about 8 games preinstalled as well, which can be quite frustrating to clear during setup.
The POCO X6 Neo houses a dual camera array with a 108 MP Samsung ISOCELL HM6 primary sensor headlining the setup. The phone also comes with a nominal 2 MP depth camera. On the front, you’ve got a 16 MP selfie shooter. The phone is capable of shooting 1080p video at 30 fps from the rear and front cameras.
To start, let’s talk about the daylight camera performance. The phone clicks decent photos with good amounts of detail and vivid colours. The dynamic range is a bit of a hit-or-miss. Occasionally, the highlights are slightly overblown. Close-up photos are decent, but they can be a bit soft at times.
Portrait photos are mediocre – the edge detection is not the best and detail retention could be better. Additionally, in harsh light, the phone does tend to overexpose the entirety of the photo.
Selfie pictures are good in daylight, but the quality quickly degrades in low-light conditions. Low light pictures from the primary camera have a fair bit of noise and low sharpness levels.
The POCO X6 Neo houses a 5,000 mAh battery and features 33 W fast charging. The phone can last a whole day if you’re a light to medium user but if you play a lot of intensive games or use the camera for a long time, you may need to plug it in by evening. In contrast, the Motorola G54 lasts much longer with its massive 6,000 mAh cell.
The POCO X6 Neo lost about 8 per cent battery while running Google Maps for an hour, which is on the higher side. It also lost 7 per cent battery in just 15 minutes of playing COD: Mobile. The 33 W charger takes over an hour and a half to charge the phone from empty to full.
The POCO X6 Neo is one of the best phones for content consumption under ₹16,000. Its incredibly slim bezels coupled with a bright AMOLED display ensure that you are in for a visual treat – at home or on the go. The phone also boasts an amazingly slim and lightweight build, perfect for day-to-day usage. However, it does miss the beat in some areas. For example, the copious amounts of bloatware is quite annoying and the battery life isn’t the best in the segment. Moreover, the phone’s performance is nothing special compared to the competition.
Is the phone worth its asking price? Yes. The value aspect only crumbles if you’re a power user who prioritises speedy performance and excellent battery life the most. For better battery life, you can instead look at the Motorola Moto G54. If you’re seeking out a better camera experience, you can check out the Realme 11x.
