POCO F8 Ultra review – Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with Sound by Bose at a supremely low price

Here’s the new POCO F8 Ultra! It’s actually quite a surprise announcement that I did not expect POCO to just suddenly release a brand new F-series flagship phone equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 so soon. Nonetheless, it’s time to finally review this phone, so let’s uncover what kind of secrets this new POCO F8 Ultra is hiding.

Design

Let’s start off with the design. The POCO F8 Ultra looks really clean with this black matte color

We actually do have two different choices. We have the more traditional, clean, matte black finish like the one we have here – or a denim finish. Seriously, that blue color POCO F8 Ultra is wearing jeans.

Anyway, the phone design is clean, and the camera bump design is designed this way because it houses the camera cluster, and also a subwoofer with Sound by Bose.

Speakers

Yes, the POCO F8 Ultra has a top-firing speaker and a bottom-firing speaker, alongside a subwoofer. That means there’s an entire 2.1 speaker system built into the phone – yet it’s also calibrated by Bose.

I’m not going to talk about how it sounds. To have a listen to how it sounds, watch our review at the top of this review.

We also have a lot of options to customize the speakers. For example, we can change the sound profile between Dynamic for a more boomy sound or Flat. There are also preset EQs that we can select from.

If you’re feeling fancy, we can even make our own custom EQ to further personalize it. I think this is actually an amazing collaboration between POCO and Bose. Even during our gaming tests, the speakers sound amazing on the F8 Ultra. Combined with how smooth it is while gaming, I have somehow forgotten that I’m supposed to be testing the device, but instead just enjoyed playing Zenless Zone Zero and doing all three Deadly Assault bosses on this phone.

Performance

Now, let’s talk about the performance now. The POCO F8 Ultra comes equipped with the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and also coupled with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The RAM amount itself is quite excessive but I’m glad that the RAM speed is fast. Remember, the RAM speed is more important than the RAM amount – which we also have a video talking about this particular topic.

The POCO F8 Ultra does have a lot of new gaming features too. Introducing, the new Game Turbo. It might look similar to what we had previously but we have the option to turn on Wild Boost mode to ensure that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is giving us the best performance possible.

In Genshin Impact with the highest graphical settings, we can get nearly 60fps throughout the entire gaming test – and that’s actually really good. Though, Genshin Impact isn’t the most demanding game that we have to date.

So, we moved on to Zenless Zone Zero, the POCO F8 Ultra manages to sustain around 58fps in the flower boss fight as well, though it will thermal throttle since we are playing the game at such high graphical settings. Surprisingly, even while it did thermal throttle, we’re getting around 42fps. I actually did not realize that it has throttled since the gaming experience is still very smooth and I was hyperfocused on the game.

This is actually thanks to POCO’s first-ever triple-layer 3D IceLoop cooling system, keeping the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 under a safe temperature. We’ve reviewed other devices with this chipset and honestly, POCO managed to sustain the highest frame rate amongst all the other devices so far.

Wuthering Waves is currently the most demanding game that we have. Surprisingly, the POCO F8 Ultra can also handle it really well, as we were getting around 58fps in the nest fight, while consuming upwards of 15W of power. I thought that the chip will definitely be toast and overheat, but the POCO F8 Ultra’s cooling system managed to handle it throughout the entire fight.

Battery life

As for the battery life, there is a 6,500mAh inside the POCO F8 Ultra – which makes me wonder how they can stuff in the 2.1 speaker system, triple cameras, wireless charging, all of that and still fit in such a big battery inside.

Anyway, using our standardized battery life test, the POCO F8 Ultra can last around 22 hours – which is really good.

Charging speed

The charging sped is one of the strongest points of the POCO F8 Ultra. We have a 100W proprietary charger and cable included in the box – and with the default settings, it can charge from 15% to completion in less than hour. That’s already fast, but we can make it even faster.

We can head into the settings menu and turn up the charging speed to the maximum – and that will reduce the time taken to reach 100% to just about 40 minutes. Seriously, it managed to speed up the charging time required by ⅓ of the original time is just insanely good.

But we’re not done. There is yet another surprise. When we did use our own USB-PD PPS charger though, it would take in around 80W max – which gave me whiplash, as this is the first time POCO is supporting USB-PD PPS charging standard to this degree. Using this charging method, the POCO F8 Ultra will still need nearly an hour to charge from 15% to completion, mostly because it only takes in 80W for the first minute or two, then slows down to around 44W, and gradually drops as the charging cycle continues.

Still, it’s great to see POCO supporting USB-PD PPS standards.

Screen

Now, let’s talk about the screen. This is actually a pretty good screen. It’s a 6.9-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2608×1200 pixels and goes up to 120Hz refresh rate – pretty typical on paper, but our tests reveal a lot more details.

Let’s start with the brightness first. The POCO F8 Ultra’s screen can go up to 1100 nits in auto brightness mode, and goes down to 0.91 nits at the minimum. This is important to ensure comfort even while we’re using the phone in complete darkness.

As for the color accuracy, the default Original Color PRO color profile will cover around 97.65% of sRGB and 72.61% of DCI-P3 color gamuts.

Then, we can turn up the vividness in the settings menu by selecting the vivid color profile – and this will increase the color gamut coverage to 98.13% of sRGB and 79.39% of DCI-P3. It’s not the most vivid colors on a smartphone, but vivid enough for our usage.

Software

As for the software, the POCO F8 Ultra is powered by the latest HyperOS 3 on top of Android 16. It brings forth a lot of refinements like animations. It’s really smooth and responsive, but no one will ever use their phones like this anyway.

Either way, we have the HyperIsland feature that is quite obvious where they got the inspiration from, and also a lot of lockscreen customizations. It looks really good, honestly.

Camera

Now, let’s not forget about the cameras. Beside the subwoofer, we have triple cameras that covers all of our needs. There is also a color spectrum sensor to ensure the pictures’ colors are accurate and good-looking.

To have a look at all the pictures taken with the POCO F8 Ultra, watch our video at the top of this review.

A few more things to mention

And there are a few more things to mention about the POCO F8 Ultra. It does have a USB 3.0 port at the bottom for fast file transfers and also supports display mirroring as well. That’s really nice to see.

It also has dual SIM card slots and an IR blaster at the back. These are all great features to have.

Should you buy the POCO F8 Ultra?

And finally – the price. Now, the original price starts at RM3,199 – but if you get it anytime from now until 18th December 2025, you can get it for only RM2,799 and also get a free Redmi Pad SE that is worth RM499! I mean, it’s fun for the whole family – just pass the tablet to your kid, or maybe your nieces and nephew, then you’re suddenly their favorite uncle or aunty.

I mean, the POCO F8 Ultra is currently the most affordable Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 smartphone by a huge margin – and yet it also has an amazing 2.1 speaker system tuned by Bose. It sounds good, plays smoothly, and also lasts a long time thanks to the massive battery.

So, head on to the links in the description below and get yourself a POCO F8 Ultra right now! Remember, free Redmi Pad SE as well.

Where to buy? (Affiliate links)

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