Following the official launch of the POCO X4 GT in the Philippines, one of the features that caught our attention is its use of a Dimensity 8100 processor. Said to rival the likes of the Snapdragon 888, the Dimensity 8100 is based on TSMC’s 5nm process and uses four Cortex-A78 cores that are clocked at 2.85Ghz. This make it at par with the Snapdragon 888’s configuration, which has a Cortex-X1 Core clocked at 2.84Ghz and three Cortex-A78 cores running at 2.42Ghz.

Given that the POCO X4 GT is priced at under Php 20k, we were curious as to how it fares among the competition in the Php 15k-20k segment. We compared the synthetic benchmarks we got on phones that use a Snapdragon 778G, Exynos 1280, and the previous-generation Dimensity 900, and Geekbench scores show that the POCO X4 GT’s Dimensity 8100 blew away the competition. This is clearly seen especially with GPU performance, where it presented an improvement of almost 40% compared to the Dimensity 900.

The trend of the Dimensity 8100 dominating the Php 15k to 20k segment in synthetic benchmarks is more evident with 3DMark’s Wild Life, where you get a whopping 67% better score compared to the Snapdragon 778G–a processor we regarded as one of the best mid-range processors for 2021. The same applies to PCMark Work, where the Dimensity 8100 is one of the very few (if not the only) mid-range processor to breach the 10k mark.

Now that we know how the POCO X4 GT’s Dimensity 8100 is an absolute beast in the mid-range segment, how does it fare with the last 3 generations of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 series chips? Comparing the Dimensity 8100 to the Snapdragon 888, 888+, and 8 Gen 1, we were surprised that Mediatek’s new mid-range chip was able to match the performance of those three Snapdragon 8 chips closely in Geekbench multi-core.

The results we got from Geekbench single core and compute are no slouch either, as the Dimensity 8100 was able to trail behind both the Snapdragon 888 and 888+ nicely. That’s already an impressive performance considering that the cheapest Snapdragon 888 phone you can get in the Philippines will cost you around Php 26k, and that only the ROG Phone 5S Pro is the phone officially sold in the Philippines that uses a Snapdragon 888+ chip–and that getting one will cost you around Php 60k, or roughly three times the price of the POCO X3 GT.

While the results in PCMark do not paint a solid picture, the scores we got with 3DMark Wild Life shows that the Dimensity 8100 can outdo the Snapdragon 888 and closely match the Snapdragon 888+. Again, still an impressive feat for the Dimensity 8100 considering that it is a mid-range chip (MediaTek’s current flagship chips are the Dimensity 9000 and 9000+).

What we could conclude with these synthetic benchmarks? For one, the POCO X4 GT is definitely going to be the mid-range phone to beat in 2022 in terms of price-to-performance, and that it will be challenging for the competition to match what the POCO X4 GT has to offer.

Do note that this is only the initial set of tests we did with the POCO X4 GT, so expect a more detailed explanation in our full review in the coming days.