Xiaomi has launched the Poco X7 range internationally, continuing the budget-focused brand’s trend of offering incredible value for money – but not even I was ready for what the Poco X7 Pro offers for just £309.
Don’t get me wrong, Poco has always had a reputation for offering seemingly flagship-level tech in a budget-focused smartphone, starting all the way back in 2018 with the Pocophone F1 and its Snapdragon 845 chipset.
That was the flagship chipset of the year at the time, shared with other top-end smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and OnePlus 6, despite costing just £309.
Since then, the Xiaomi sub-brand has seemingly gone from strength to strength, with the culmination of the Chinese manufacturer’s efforts being 2025’s Poco X7 Pro – and it’s an absolute doozy of a smartphone.
That starts with the inclusion of the Dimensity 8400-Ultra chipset – the first smartphone to ship with the new chipset internationally.
Granted, it may not be the new top-end Dimensity 9400, but the 8400-Ultra is just one step down in MediaTek’s chipset collection, pointing towards strong everyday performance – and when you consider other £300ish phones offer much less powerful chipsets like the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite’s Snapdragon 695 and the Motorola Moto G85 5G’s Snapdragon 6s Gen 3, that’s pretty impressive.
That’s paired with Xiaomi’s Wildboost Optimisation 3.0 tech to further boost the gaming performance on offer for a more stable experience while also helping with overall battery life.
You’ll also find LiquidCool 4.0 technology, bringing the 3D cooling system from Xiaomi’s flagship range to Poco devices for the first time. It’s not a basic system either, sporting 10 internal temperature sensors to monitor heat generation.
It’s safe to assume that the Poco X7 Pro will be one of, if not the best-performing smartphone in its price segment, though I’ll reserve my final thoughts until I’ve fully benchmarked the smartphone.
Moving away from the sheer performance on offer, the Poco X7 Pro sports other flagship-level features including full IP68 dust and water resistance, a first for a Poco phone, along with Gorilla Glass 7i screen protection protecting its pixel-packed 6.67-inch 1.5K AMOLED display – a display that can reach an almost-flagship 3200nits when watching HDR content, by the way.
The cameras – well, one of them at least – seem equally impressive for the price, with a main OIS-enabled 50MP main camera with an f/1.5 aperture for a massive 65% boost to light intake compared to the X6 Pro, along with a fairly average 8MP ultrawide.
The phone also sports Xiaomi’s UltraSnap tech, allowing the phone to capture faster night shots and photos of fast-moving subjects without blur, and that’s backed up by OIS-enabled 4K@60fps video capture with advanced options like 10-bit LOG shooting.
There’s also a surprising number of AI features for a smartphone so cheap, borrowing features from the Xiaomi 14T Pro including AI Image Expansion, AI Erase Pro, AI Call Boost, AI Notes, AI Recorder, AI Subtitles and more, complete with Gemini and Circle to Search support.
Being a gaming-focused smartphone, there’s also a whopping 6000mAh cell to power the experience, which Xiaomi claims can power over 8 hours of PUBG before needing a top-up. And, when that time does come, you’ll get 90W HyperCharge support – another first for the Poco range, though the charger doesn’t come in the box.
It’s at this point I need to again remind readers that you’ll get all of this for just £309 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, or £349 for the top-end combination of 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
In terms of spec, at least, that’s unmatched in the budget-focused smartphone market, offering unreal value for money for those on the hunt for a cheap upgrade. I’m not quite sure how Xiaomi has managed this one without losing money on every unit sold.
Now that’s not to say that it’s the perfect smartphone; Xiaomi’s HyperOS 2, even after a redesign, isn’t the most user-friendly version of Android that you’ll find, packed full of Xiaomi-developed features and UI tweaks, and there isn’t a firm commitment to software upgrades where Poco devices are concerned, meaning you might be left without OS upgrades sooner than you might expect.
But for such an affordable price, I’m willing to bet that these are compromises that many will be willing to accept – and I can’t say I blame them.
