the Poco m4 pro 5g just arrived on the scene and it is a very late but very sizzling hot contender for the best budget smartphone of 2021 crown and to show just how ruddy good it really,
I thought I'd put the Poco m4 pro up against two of my other favourite budget smartphones of 2021 namely the Xiaomi Redmi note 10s and the Realme 85g this is my full side by side comparison to see how these budget blowers stack up for the camera tech gaming chops battery life all that good stuff,
- Design
- Software
- Display & audio
- Performance & gaming
- Connectivity & battery life
- Camera test
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| Redmi note 10s |
(1) Design
so here is the illustrious lineup got the Poco m4 pro 5g here on the left Realme 8 5g here on the right and then the fill in for this delicious budget smartphone sandwich is the Xiaomi Redmi note 10s s the only one of the bunch not to support,
a very very yellow box of course far from the only difference between these three view them all from the front fairly similar sort of design fairly chunky bezels surrounding those displays though you do have a central selfie orifice on the Poco and the Xiaomi smartphone,
whereas the Realme wedges it away in the corner which I actually prefer even if that orifice is a rather gay pin uh so to speak the Poco is actually the biggest to the trio at 6.6 inches although the 6.5 inches real me is pretty much the same in terms of dimensions,
because it's got slightly thicker bezels surrounding that display meanwhile the Redmi in the middle the 6.4 inches is the smallest but not exactly by a huge amount,
I mean no matter your choice you're gonna want to use it two-handed because yeah the Poco and the Redmi smartphones actually have a gorilla glass 3 display whereas there's no mention of Gorilla glass whatsoever in real me's official specs for the 85g that said the Realme 85g does at least have a pre-installed screen protector on it as does the Poco m4 pro 5g but none of that on the Redmi note 10s,
so let's just flip this budget morphs about all three of these budget handsets have a plastic back but as you can see there they support a very different design the Redmi and the real me smartphones are actually probably the closest they've got quite a glossy uh,
the back end does tend to pick up greasy prints rather easily meanwhile Poko has gone for a very different matte plastic finish that tends to hide the greasy marks a little bit more easily but then you also have this whopping huge bit of Brandon on the Poco,
m4 pro compared with the relatively subtle uh efforts here on the Redmi and the real me gotta say though I've personally found that of this trio the Poco m4 pro is the hardiest I've chucked all three in my backpack I've generally treated them like crap and this one so far still in pristine condition,
whereas you've got a few tiny little scratches here and there on the Redmi and the real me as for the exciting topic of ratings well both the Poco and the Redmi is ip53 splash resistant so good news,
if you know you like your drink you're in the habit of accidentally knocking your shandy over occasionally if the Poco or the Redmi get a soaking no worries they're probably going to be absolutely fine whereas in case the real me no official IP ratings,
you've got to be really careful around moisture and good news if you've got more than one sim card as well because you've got dual sim support on all three of these budget handsets,
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(2) Software
now let's move on from design to software and all three of these smartphones rock a bit of android 11 but on the Poko and the Redmi you've got Xiaomi's Miui 12 launcher slathered on top and here in the case of the roomie 85g it's the Realme,
UI launcher instead now the overall vibe with both of these launchers now is a fairly stock Android experience thankfully,
so you've got an app to tray if you flick up nice and easy to store away all your bits if you flick like so you've got the google to discover feed all of your latest headlines one of the main UI advantages of me Ui,
something I really like is the control centre which you can drag down from the right-hand side of your desktops like so this gives you fast access to a whole bunch of toggles including yes all of your smart home goodies you don't get that in the real me UI,
that is me UI exclusive so you just drag down your notifications bar as usual and then there are your toggles and what we're in here you see all three smartphones,
but the usual features you would expect even on budget-friendly blows the likes of NFC present and correct on all three actually dive on into the settings you'll see uh you get all of the standard android features packed onto all three of these blows as,
well but you also get some bonus bits in me UI and Realme UI these include various gesture controls and yes you do get a bit of one-handed help on all three as well you've also got a dedicated gaming mode on all three of them,
these blowers as well great news if you are a gamer we'll be touching more on gaming in a bit and all three of these smartphones rock an edge-mounted fingerprint sensor built into that power button just a quick tap of your digit against that and,
you are straight in there all super fast super responsive certainly had absolutely no problems whatsoever with any of these blows as far as that sensor goes and all three of these budget smartphones also support face unlock as well which is just as nippy as the fingerprint sensor,
but I wouldn't entirely depend on it to be the most secure method of unlocking your smartphone for one on all three the face and lock works even when you're wearing a face mask unlike rivals from like Samsung and apples or yeah in terms of security,
and maybe just stick with a fingerprint sensor, unfortunately, one of the bad bits about grabbing Poco Xiaomi or real smartphones is the sheer amount of crap wear that you get bundled on these things,
I mean these things are practically filled to the brim it was especially worse on Poco and Redmi smartphones you get all kinds of just crappy games a bundle on here the likes of tile fun you've got shambles on browsers other first-party apps in the,
case of the Poco phone you've got the links to the pocket store and the pocket community amazon shares LinkedIn tick-tock all of that crud and the real smartphone certainly ain't any better you've got stuff,
like all roman crammed on there once again tick-tock a whole bunch of stuff I'm not even sure what it is like 92. thankfully you can just delete a lot of this crapware straight off and in terms of the storage you do at least,
get 128 gigs on all three of these smartphones although you do have different skews of storage available in different regions and all three support MicroSD memory calls to expand that storage as well if you want to do these,
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(3) Display & audio
budget blowers all support a screen size about the same but the technology is different the Poco and the real me sport and IPS display whereas the Redmi is an AMOLED panel and you can notice the difference immediately side by side,
like this that AMOLED screen is brighter than the other two when you max them out it's got poppier colours and the contrast is sharper as well you've got really properly black blacks so if you're after a proper bit of eye candy,
then definitely the Redmi is the way to go that said the IPS panel on the real me 85g and the Poco m4 pro 5g definitely aren't put to shame they're pretty strong for IPS panels especially at this budget,
price point nice wide viewing angles the colours you know certainly on dull and lifeless they're reasonably punchy it has a full HD plus resolution on all three as well 2400 by 1080 it's a nice crisp detail all of the usual display settings that you can tinker,
with are present and correct on all three of these smartphones including the likes of the dark mode you've got reading mode slash eye comfort mode which helps to filter blue light in evening times and you can also play around with the colour output here on the miui,
devices and the colour temperature at the very least here on the real me and of course that AMOLED tech here on the Redmi note 10 s does come at a price and that price is the refresh rate you've got 90 hertz supports here on the Poco,
and the Realme smartphones with their IPS panels but because it costs more to have a higher refresh on an AMOLED panel, unfortunately, the Redmi does top off at 60 hertz that's for the built-in speakers but it's actually a stereo speaker output here,
on the Poco m4 pro and the Redmi note 10 s although admittedly that top speaker is a bit tinny on both so it's not a true stereo speaker effect but pretty good for this budget price point meanwhile on the real me at 5g it is just the mono,
The speaker down below is easily muffled unfortunately uh but the output's all right and you've got respectable wireless audio support as well,
Bluetooth 5.1 on the Poco and real me smartphones it's only Bluetooth 5.0 on the Redmi button all three absolutely fine for streaming two Bluetooth speakers and headphones nice and dependable and a decent range,
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(4) Performance & gaming
so now performance and all three of these budget handsets are actually powered by a MediaTek chipset so you've got the MediaTek Dimensi 810 fresh six-nanometer chipset,
here on the Poco m4 pro 5g in the case of the Redmi, it's an helio g95 and on the real me it is the older MediaTek dimensionally 700 I've actually got the six gig model of the Poco and the Redmi is the 8 gig model of,
the Realme 85g so that helped to bump up the score somewhat and haven't used all three as my full-time smartphone I can see the everyday shenanigans absolutely fine on all three you can run plenty of apps at the same time and gamers will,
be happy with just you know your basic call of duty Pubg style titles don't expect to be playing gentian impact on a playable frame rate on any of these blogs but certainly you know your online shoot em up efforts run absolutely fine respectable frame rate,
on the sort of medium detail settings got a responsive screen on all three as well so no worries there and yes you do have that dedicated gaming mode on all,
three of these budget blowers as well which could just capture limit distractions by blocking notifications you can take screenshots and actually record the action mid-game clear up the memory with just a tap all that sort of,
(5) Connectivity & battery life
stuff however one problem with the helio chipset used by the Redmi note 10s is the fact that it doesn't have a built-in 5g modem unlike the chipsets that are used by the Poco m4 pro 5g and the real me it 5g the clue's kind of in the name,
so if you do want that future-proof connectivity you'll have to choose between the others as for the battery life well I'm happy with all three of these budget-friendly handsets because they all pack a 5 000 milliamp capacity battery and that,
ll keep you going all day long unless you really really punish these things you can generally get a lot of screen on time plenty of mixed-use lots of audio streaming in the background while you're messaging messing around and doing a few camera shenanigans,
as well all that good stuff however while the Poco and the Redmi smartphone support 33 watts charging so you'll get filled back up again reasonably nipply the real meat 5g tops off at 18 watts so it is noticeably slower now let's finish up this best,
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(6) Camera test
budget smartphone comparison with a squint at the camera tech and all three offer different sensors the popcorn you got a 15-megapixel primary sensor the Redmi has a 64-megapixel primary sensor and on the real me it's a 48-megapixel primary sensor now,
if you jump on into the camera apps on these three phones it's a very similar experience on all three so pretty much identical of course on the Poco and the Xiaomi's they both use the standard miui camera app but even the real me one is very similar indeed,
they've all got an ai mode which you can quickly activate with a quick top of the toggle up there this can just tweak the settings for your photo automatically on your behalf to suit whatever you're trying to shoot to be it in this case,
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the gorgeous veronica of course I tend to leave that knocked off though in general because it does tend to boost the colours a little bit on occasion and make everything look a bit artificial of the three of these budget blowers the real me tends to over saturate images more than its rivals when conditions are a bit tricky it also pumps out the most artificial-looking colours when you're shooting in daylight,
but if you prefer punchier visuals you might actually get on with it move indoors and the Redmi starts to struggle a bit with colour accuracy compared with the other two here and the Redmi also feels in low light with serious grain even when the night mode is employed,
in contrast, the Poco really brightens up a scene while the real me captures something closer to what you'll see with the naked eye you've also, of course, got the same bonus modes on all three basically as well including a portrait mode,
which you can swap to the like so that just adds a nice bokeh style effect behind your subject lots of other bonus modes as well which you can have a bit of a tinkering to play with and when you do get more on uh the Xiaomi and the Poco smartphones I found that the best stuff is still found here on the Realme you've still got a slo-mo mode you've still got a pro expert mode and you can use this to mess around with the iso level shutter speeds all that,
kind of shenanigans if you needed a very specific kind of shot however while both the Poco m4 pro 5g and the Redmi note 10s both have an ultra-wide-angle shooter and both of these phones it's an 8-megapixel sensor you don't actually,
get an ultra-wide-angle shooter here on the Realme 85g instead the real me just has your bog-standard boring mono and macro sensors you also get macro and depth sensors here on the Redmi smartphone whereas the Poco literally has the primary sensor and,
the ultra-wide-angle shooter and that is it no bull macro or depth sensors or other pointless shenanigans that are from video well it's very basic on the Poco and the real me which can only shoot full HD resolution footage at 30 or 60 frames per,
second whereas in the case of the Redmi you can bump that right up to 4k res footage,
at 30 fps so more detail nicer looking video all three are perfectly fine for your everyday home movie shenanigans you've got decent image stabilization on all three as long as you drop down at that full HD resolution on the Redmi at 4k ultra HD level it things get a bit shaky,
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and the Redmi is actually the more basic of the trail when it comes to the selfie shooter with a 13-megapixel snapper compared to the 16-megapixel effects on the Poko and the real me, all the same, all three are absolutely fine,
for your basic shareable shots they'll do the job in low light, it is again the poker that produces the brightest nicest looking shots but all three do a job with decent lighting,
although the Redmi does tend to blow out the background with the portrait mode active so that right there in a nutshell is how the Poco m4 pro 5g stacks up against the excellent Redmi note 10 s and the Realme 8 5g so which one of these budget blows are you most tempted by being great at your thoughts.
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