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Hey, what's up, guys? Here's a phone that promises plenty of bang for your buck without stretching either your pocket space or your budget. I'm talking about the Poco X8 Pro from Xiaomi. And we even have the special Iron Man edition here. So, is the Poco X8 Pro the mid-range hero we all deserve? Let's run it through all of our tests and find out. The Iron Man edition of the Poco X8 Pro comes in a special box and includes a bunch of goodies, including some schematics from Tony Stark himself. There's also a neat Iron Man themed case, a Marvel branded SIM ejector, and a red cable. But regardless, this phone packs some nice features, including a powerful chipset, a large battery, and fast charging.
You even get RGB LED lights here on the backside around the cameras. They can glow based on notifications, playing media, or a countdown timer for the cameras. The phone itself has a back made of glass and an aluminum frame. Of course, the special Iron Man graphics are specific to this version. And you get full IP68 ingress protection against dust and water. On the front is a 6.59-in OLED display with a 120-Hz refresh rate and Gorilla Glass 7i protection. The screen brightness is plenty here. We measured to nearly 1,100 nits maximum in automatic brightness mode. And when measuring a smaller portion of the screen, that shot up to over 3,600 nits.
Also, this display is plenty sharp, and you get 12-bit color depth. And there's support for both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ video playback. The 120-Hz refresh rate smooths out your swiping and scrolling, and it will dial down to 60 Hz when the screen is idling to save energy. It's worth noting that you don't get an actual always-on display here. You can enable this sort of feature in settings, but the screen won't stay always on. It disappears a few seconds after you tap the screen. And for biometrics, there's an optical
scanner. It's very fast and reliable. For audio, the phone has stereo speakers and they earned a loudness score of very good. And the output is quite pleasant with rich highs and some bass. You can have a listen with our comparison tool linked below. Like other Xiaomi phones, the Poco X8 Pro has an IR blaster for controlling appliances with. And you can get the phone with 256 or 512 gigs of storage on board. The software interface here is Xiaomi's HyperOS 3 running on top of Android 16. It's the same as on any other current Xiaomi phone, except for here there's a neat Iron Man skin on top.
HyperOS 3 includes plenty of AI-based features, which you can find within the Xiaomi Hyper AI menu. And Xiaomi has recently improved the connectivity, allowing you to connect and share with devices from many other manufacturers. And for support, Xiaomi promises four major OS updates and six years of security patches. At the heart of the Poco X8 Pro is a chipset from MediaTek, a Dimensity 8500 Ultra. In benchmarks, the X8 Pro does a great job, even though its CPU performance falls a bit behind other phones with the same chipset. But it's still ahead of last year's Poco X7 Pro. Of course, the numbers are less than what you get from phones like the Poco X8 Pro Max, which pack higher-tier silicon.
And just like its predecessor, the X8 Pro does a great job in thermal management as well, going through our prolonged stress tests without much throttling. The Poco X8 Pro has a pretty large 6500 mAh battery. The resulting battery life is quite good. In our test, the phone earned a competitive active use score of nearly 17 hours. The Poco X8 Pro also supports fast 100-W wired charging. With the proper adapter, we're able to charge the phone from 0 to 75% in half an hour and a full charge took 41 minutes. Quite fast considering the battery size.
There is no wireless charging here, but there is 27 W reverse wire charging to top up other devices with. And it's now the cameras, which include a 50 MP main camera and an 8 MP fixed focus ultra wide. The main camera takes very good photos. The amount of detail was good and there's excellent dynamic range and contrast and vibrant colors. Photos of people are decent with relatively neutral skin tones. The portrait mode blur is believable, too. The main cam's two times digital zoom produces very good results for the class with nice detail.
The X8 Pro's ultra wide camera takes photos with wide dynamic range and pleasing colors. Detail is pretty good considering the hardware. Selfies come out pretty good, too. They have good detail, laid-back processing, and a wide field of view. Stick around at the end for a selfie video, which comes out in 1080p. Now for low-light results, starting with the main cam. Detail is great with a reasonable level of sharpening. Exposures are well judged and dynamic range is excellent. Colors are on point, too.
The ultra wide camera's dynamic range and color rendition in the dark are great, but fine detail is just so-so. The Poco X8 Pro can record 4K videos at up to 60 FPS with its main camera, but the selfie and ultra wide cameras are capped at 1080p resolution. In good light, 4K videos from the main cam are very good, nicely detailed with wide dynamic range and good color rendition. Lower resolution aside, the ultra wide's 1080p clips are good for what they are. The Poco X8 Pro leaves a little bit to be desired when it comes to smoothing out shakiness while walking, but otherwise the stabilization works well.
And when recording in the dark, the main camera is able to hold its own with good dynamic range and good detail where there's enough light. So, that was the Poco X8 Pro. It's a mid-ranger packed with a of value, whether it's the Iron Man edition or not. You get a nice display, a good chipset and battery life, fast charging, and solid camera quality. There's not a lot to complain about, and the price of this phone is quite competitive. So, if you're looking for a good mid-ranger without breaking the bank, the Poco X8 Pro is worth recommending. Thanks for watching, guys. Don't miss out on our reviews of the Poco X8 Pro Max and the Xiaomi 17T, which is closely related. Let us know what you think down
below, and I'll see you on the next one.
