Review Verdict: POCO’s first run at an “Ultra” phone is insane from a sheer price-to-performance perspective. It’s one of the most affordable phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. In that sense, it is indeed Ultra, but in true POCO fashion, the biggest compromise is the camera performance.

Pros:

• Insane Performance
• One of the Most Affordable SD 8 Elite Phones

Cons:

• HyperOS is HyperOSing
• Overly Processed Photos

POCO has just gone Ultra. They’ve always been known for delivering phones that give us kick-ass performance without our wallets suffering a beating, but this is the first time they’ve given one of their phones the Ultra moniker, and people in the comment section have been concerned that it could have an Ultra price tag. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.

We’ve been using the POCO F7 Ultra for a little over a week, and now that it’s been made official, we can finally share our thoughts about their first “Ultra” phone.

POCO F7 Ultra Review Philippines: Design and Build Quality

Let me put things to rest for some of you who expressed concerns about the build quality of the POCO F7 Ultra in the comment section of our reels. It’s made of premium materials. It features a glass back that gently curves into a metal frame that feels solid in the hand but feels lighter than most Ultra phones I’ve used recently.

They didn’t specify what kind of glass they’re using for the back panel, but emphasized in the product brief they sent to us that this was built to last. The display is said to have “POCO Shield Glass,” which has stood up to a couple of tumbles on my end, and it does have an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, just in case you’re the type to bring your phone into the shower.

As for the design, I’m a little on the fence about the circular camera module that sits on the upper left-hand side of the phone, since I’m used to other designs, but it’s not a deal-breaker for me. What I do like is the matte finish on this device, particularly with this colorway of the POCO F7 Ultra.

It has a bit of glossiness towards the top part of the device but not as much as the Black and Silver variant of this phone, which makes me prefer the yellow that also gives me some Bumblebee vibes as well.

POCO F7 Ultra Review Philippines: Display and Speakers

As far as the display is concerned, I have no complaints, since it does fall nicely into what you would expect in an Ultra smartphone. It has a 6.67″ 2K Flow AMOLED display with a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, it has great pixel density at 526 pixels per inch, 3200 nits of peak brightness, and a 480Hz touch sampling rate, making it feel even more responsive for gaming compared to other POCO phones we’ve tried in the past.

I’ve enjoyed watching YouTube videos and Netflix shows using the POCO F7 Ultra; browsing through articles and my feed has been nice and smooth, plus I’ve been able to use this outdoors without any issues despite the summer sun being nasty. The speakers are also fairly decent, provided that you stay around the 70-percent mark, since I did notice distortion kick in at that point.

POCO F7 Ultra Review Philippines: Performance and Battery Life

There should be no surprise here that the POCO F7 Ultra performs like a champ, since you are getting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor under the hood of this phone, making it one of the most affordable—if not the most affordable—devices with the flagship processor of choice these days. Our unit has this paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

Going by the numbers, you can see that the POCO F7 Ultra holds its own against some of the recent flagships the team and I have been able to try out recently, especially when you have Ultimate Mode turned on. It breezed through all my daily tasks (even though I had Ultimate Mode disabled for the most part) with little to no issue.

As far as gaming is concerned, again, you shouldn’t be surprised that the POCO F7 Ultra was able to handle demanding titles like Wuthering Waves with no noticeable frame drops in the time that we spent with it.

For the battery, we’ve seen some complaints about its 5300mAh capacity, with some wishing that it had been bumped up to 6000mAh. In our experience, though, it was more than enough to last an entire day and then some with our typical use. It lasted 14 hours and 55 minutes on our battery benchmarks, which is about the same as other flagships we’ve gotten our hands on in 2024.

Charging was incredibly quick as well, since it supports 120W charging that had me up and running from 15% to 100% in about 30 minutes.

If there’s one issue we’ve had with this phone, it is with HyperOS. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate everything that they’ve done so far. They’ve optimized this a lot, but they could do more to reduce the bloat on it and not have us jump through as many hoops to disable some of the more annoying apps that often litter our notification tray.

POCO F7 Ultra Review Philippines: Camera Performance

But if you want to find the Kryptonite of this phone, it’s with its cameras. POCO has always compromised in this department, and, sadly, that remains true with their first go at an Ultra device. We are getting some relatively heavy hitters in terms of hardware with a 50-megapixel main camera that has a Light Fusion 800 image sensor, a 50MP telephoto that gives us 2.5x zoom, a 32MP ultrawide shooter, and a 32MP front camera.

What I had issues with here is that some of the photos looked way too overprocessed, to the extent that they look like AI renders. To be fair, it’s not the case with all of the photos, but the fact that it did that when light wasn’t an issue just rubs me the wrong way. I will say that I was surprised by some of the low-light shots we were able to take with the cameras on the POCO F7 Ultra, though, and I’m hoping that they’re able to tweak and fine-tune camera performance with updates.

As far as video is concerned, we have nothing unusual to report. You can shoot up to 8K 24 using the main camera, but I recommend staying at 4K 30 to take advantage of all of the focal ranges, plus the image stabilization, which was smooth.

POCO F7 Ultra Review Philippines: Wrap Up and Conclusions

For the most part, I loved my time using the POCO F7 Ultra. It delivers everything we’ve come to expect in a POCO device and then some, thanks to the SD 8 Elite processor it has on board. Is this an Ultra phone, though? I would say that in terms of performance, yes, it is. But, you’re still getting a few compromises to make sure that they can still maintain a fairly aggressive price tag on this phone.

If you’re mostly in it for the raw power of a smartphone, I’d say put this on your shortlist if you’re picking out a smartphone this year.

POCO F7 Ultra Review Philippines: Pricing and Availability

The POCO F7 Ultra has a sticker price of Php 36,999 for its base variant with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but if you want to max out the specs of the phone like the review unit we have that has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, you’ll be paying a bit more at Php 39,999.

They do have an Early Bird price for the phone that’s exclusive to Lazada, with the base variant being sold at Php 34,999 and the top-end model at Php 36,999, so it’s best to take advantage of that if you’ve been eyeing this phone.