The recently-announced POCO F6 Pro is gaining waves, as it is an affordable Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phone with a starting price of Php 27k for the 12GB/256GB variant. POCO gave the F6 Pro the best possible components like UFS 4.0 storage, LPDDR5X RAM, an aluminum frame, and a WQHD+ display, making it a strong contender as a gaming phone. You also get POCO’s 4th Gen LiquidCool tech, which should keep the F6 Pro’s thermals stable even under heavy loads.

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To see what the F6 Pro is capable of, we used it to play five of the most demanding mobile games in the market and see how well it can run them at the highest graphics settings.

Testing methodology

All five games are tested using the highest possible graphics settings. 60FPS is enabled for Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Wuthering Waves, while we went for 90FPS and uncapped FPS for Tower of Fantasy and Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile respectively. All games are played on the POCO F6 Pro in WQHD+ resolution, and all metrics are recorded using GameBench.

 

Genshin Impact

Starting with our go-to title for gaming tests, the F6 Pro performed flawlessly with Genshin Impact, as we were getting an average of 59FPS at 92% stability even at the highest graphics settings. We only experienced minimal heat build up with the F6 Pro, and the phone managed to maintain those FPS numbers despite prolonged gaming sessions that include dealing with endgame content.

Given the immersive graphics of Genshin Impact, GPU usage is very high at 72.25%, while CPU usage at a rather conservative 16.42%.

 

Honkai: Star Rail

Genshin Impact’s sister game is notorious for being graphics heavy, which is evident with a whopping 91.65% GPU usage based on GameBench. Of all the phones we have tested Honkai: Star Rail so far, the F6 Pro offers the best performance with an average of 56FPS and overall stability of 88%. That’s a very impressive showing on the F6 Pro, despite the number of cutscenes involved with every match.

To offset its very high GPU usage, Honkai: Star Rail has the least CPU usage among the five titles we used for our gaming test at 11.34%.

 

Tower of Fantasy

While its popularity has waned these days, we added Tower of Fantasy to the list of titles we used for gaming tests as it is one of the few that offers a 90FPS mode, allowing us to see the maximum potential of any phone. With the F6 Pro, we were doing an average of 86FPS at 81% stability, which shows that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip is pushing its limits in running Tower of Fantasy at the highest possible settings with minimal heat build up.

Despite having a 90FPS mode, Tower of Fantasy has lower GPU usage compared to Genshin Impact at 69.94%, while CPU usage is slightly higher at 18.47%.

 

Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile

The latest title from the Call of Duty franchise is the most brutal mobile game out there: aside from people complaining how hard it is to run the game, we can confirm that Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is very demanding as we recorded a whopping 97.92% of GPU usage on the F6 Pro. While we enabled uncapped FPS during our tests, we were only doing an average of 57% FPS at 77% stability.

It’s the only title that has stability dipped below 80%, but is still a great figure for all things considered. One thing we also noticed with Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is that the F6 Pro became warm much faster than the other titles we have used for this gaming test, which can be attributed to its insanely high GPU usage.

 

Wuthering Waves

Of course, our gaming test with the POCO F6 Pro is not complete without Wuthering Waves, which is the hottest mobile RPG right now that is said to give Genshin Impact a run for its money. We’ve played the game for a few days, and we did notice that the graphics are slightly better (despite the hiccups it faced on release day). Maxing out all the settings and enabling FSR (a unique feature of the game), we were averaging 56FPS with 92% stability, making the F6 Pro an ace in running this game.

Looking at CPU and GPU usage, Wuthering Waves uses the F6 Pro’s GPU heavily at 71.11% (albeit slightly lower compared to Genshin Impact), and has higher CPU usage compared to Genshin Impact at 25.21%. So for those who plan to play Wuthering Waves, do note that it has roughly the same demands as Genshin Impact.

 

Final Thoughts

The F6 Pro is a powerful budget flagship phone if you’re after hardcore gaming. Armed with the best possible components, a still-potent Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, and POCO’s own take to vapor chamber cooling, the F6 Pro has everything you need to play the most popular mobile games out there at their highest possible graphics without a hitch.