POCO F7 Ultra review

At the bottom there is a slot for two physical SIM cards, but the model does not support eSIM. There is also a USB Type-C port of the slow USB 2.0 standard. The smartphone has IP68 protection and the ability to withstand immersion in water to a depth of 2.5 meters – more than the standard limit of one and a half.

Flagship picture

The display of the POCO F7 Ultra is similar to the one found in the POCO F6 Pro, but with some improvements. It’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED matrix with a resolution of 3200 x 1440 pixels and 12-bit color depth, which means it can display 68 billion shades. Gorilla Glass 5 was replaced by POCO Glass.

For the POCO F6 Pro, a peak brightness of 4000 nits was claimed, while for the POCO F7 Ultra it was 3200. But this value is for HDR content with a minimal portion of the active screen. At the same time, the declared maximum brightness for normal use has been increased from 1200 to 1800 nits. Tests with the measuring device show that with manual adjustment and with Sunlight mode active, the Ultra model’s screen produces up to 900 nits, with automatic adjustment – about 1500, and with 20% of the active screen – almost 3000. There are no problems with visibility even in sunny weather.

Unfortunately, the POCO F7 Ultra does not have an LTPO panel – there is no dynamic adjustment of the refresh rate and down to 1 Hz. Depending on the use case, only 60 Hz or 120 Hz can be obtained. In automatic mode, the system selects the refresh rate of the screen itself, but if you turn on constant 120 Hz, you can manually set the frequency for each specific application. For example, force some programs to always run at 120 Hz, and others at 60 Hz.

Hello Telephoto

One of the main compromises of POCO smartphones has always been cameras. In the case of the POCO F7 Ultra, the manufacturer was generous with a TV camera for the first time. However, it is without a periscope lens – it is a 50 MP sensor with 2.5x zoom and support for macro photography from a distance of 10 cm. For comparison, the Xiaomi 15 uses a more advanced Light Fusion 900 matrix. The third rear camera is a 32 MP ultra-wide with a 120-degree viewing angle. The same resolution is for the front camera.

During the day, the rear camera takes decent pictures in terms of contrast, saturation, dynamic range, and white balance. The detail is also at a high level, but when you zoom in, you can see the work of the algorithms, especially on grass and other complex textures. The smartphone does a good job with portraits, although when choosing the 35 mm mode, you will have to sacrifice a little detail.

At 2x zoom, the smartphone crop from the sensor, so the photos are not inferior in quality to those taken without zoom. When switching to a TV camera with a 2.5x zoom, we get a slightly closer approximation, but with excellent detail. Even with a 5x zoom, the pictures are suitable for publication on social networks.

The manufacturer claims the possibility of shooting on a TV camera in macro mode with a minimum focal length of 10 cm, but in practice you can shoot from about 8.5 cm.

The ultra-wide-angle camera is devoid of autofocus, which does not allow you to shoot at close range. There is also a lack of resolution if you consider the frames in magnification.

The rear camera supports video recording up to 8K at 24 fps or 4K at 60 fps. A maximum of 4K at 60 fps is available for the TV camera, while 1080p at 60 fps is available for the ultra-wide-angle and front cameras. Not at all flagships.

If you shoot with the main camera, the video is generally of good quality, detailed. The picture from the telephoto lens is less sharp and slightly overexposed, and the situation is even worse on the ultra-wide and front camera.

The stabilization works well, although a slight shaking while walking is still noticeable. For the smoothest possible picture, there are Shoot Steady and Shoot Steady Pro modes, but they are limited to 1080p at 30 fps and are only available for the main and ultra-wide-angle cameras.

Top “dragon”

The current flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite was chosen as the POCO F7 Ultra processor. In the Geekbench 6 benchmark, the device scores about 3000 points in single-core mode, which is comparable to other smartphones on this chip, but in multi-core it turns out to be about 8900. For comparison, the iQOO 13 and realme GT7 Pro give out about 9500 points.