The Poco X8 Power has been launched in India, setting itself apart with an impressive 10,000mAh silicon-carbon battery that provides close to two days of usage. This mid-range smartphone also features a 6.83-inch 120Hz OLED display and is powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chipset. While its 50MP camera excels in daylight, low-light performance is a compromise, and the phone is supported by four OS upgrades and six years of security updates.

The Poco X8 Power has been launched in India, setting itself apart with an impressive 10,000mAh silicon-carbon battery that provides close to two days of usage. This mid-range smartphone also features a 6.83-inch 120Hz OLED display and is powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chipset. While its 50MP camera excels in daylight, low-light performance is a compromise, and the phone is supported by four OS upgrades and six years of security updates.

The Poco X8 Power has been launched in India, setting itself apart with an impressive 10,000mAh silicon-carbon battery that provides close to two days of usage. This mid-range smartphone also features a 6.83-inch 120Hz OLED display and is powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chipset. While its 50MP camera excels in daylight, low-light performance is a compromise, and the phone is supported by four OS upgrades and six years of security updates.

Poco recently unveiled its X8 series of mid-range smartphones in India, with the introduction of the X8 Power, whose 256GB variant is available at ₹38,999.

The headline feature of this smartphone is, of course, its 10,000mAh silicon-carbon battery life. Unsurprisingly, the phone’s battery lasted nearly two days after every single charge. The bundled 100watts charger charges the device in a little over 2 hours, which isn't bad at all for the battery this size.

Combined with the battery and the 6.83-inch Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 display, you might wonder if it’s too heavy or bulky to carry. But it's reasonably thick at 8.7mm and weighs just 229 grams.

The back is made of vegan leather, which is, of course, plastic, and it feels decent to hold. The soft aluminium alloy around the phone eases the hardness on your hand. The 6.83-inch (1280x2772) OLED gives a bright display that's usable under direct sunlight. It supports up to 120Hz refresh rates and has warm colour temperatures. You get good viewing angles, sufficiently sharp video output and good colour range.

The dual camera system at the back includes a 50MP (f/1.5) main camera (with OIS) and an 8MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. I found the portrait shots in daylight to have decent edge detection for most cases, with good colour reproduction. The camera performance, however, takes a tumble when used in low light indoors or with moving subjects. While most details are clearly visible, photos can look grainy in medium to low light.

The front-facing 32MP (f/2.2) camera takes sharp photos and is more than good enough for making video calls. It does over-sharpen skin tones, though keeping the original look from filter settings can help.

The device comes with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chipset (up to 2.6GHz octa-core processor, Adreno 812 GPU) along with 8GB LPDDR5X RAM. It is available with either 128GB UFS 2.2 or 256GB UFS 4.0 internal storage. You should definitely consider the faster 256GB storage, which is much better internal storage for more optimal app performance, startups and future support.

The phone's UI is generally responsive, with no glitches while calling, messaging, watching videos on YouTube, scrolling through social media apps or jumping from, say, Instagram to WhatsApp. Running on Android 16-based HyperOS 3.0 with the July security patch, you can expect the phone to handle games such as Monument Valley without any trouble, but if you ramp up the graphic intensity, you can see the chip's ceiling with BGMI playing at 50FPS or so, and the device starts to throttle within half an hour.

Poco promises 4 years of OS upgrades and 6 years of security patches for the X8 Power. Call quality, including VoWiFi on the device, is excellent, with clear voice on both sides and good 4G and 5G network reception. The phone has no GPS or WiFi issues.

All in all, while Poco's own X8 Pro might still be the better choice for its sheer performance, the X8 Power’s battery life takes the cake. I would definitely pick the X8 Power for the price tag, over the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max or the iQOO Z11. 

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