Poco, an Xiaomi's sub-brand, known mainly for gaming and performance-oriented phones, has been expanding its budget offering lately, launching the Poco M4 most recently, and has now certainly cemented its place within the budget market with the newly announced Poco M5 and M5s. Although they come with tiny price tags – the M5 starts at £189 and M5s at £179 - both offer great specs including 5,000mAh batteries, making them both contenders for the best budget phone crown.
Set to appeal to gamers on a budget, the Poco M5 is powered by the MediaTek Helio G99 chipset, for a smooth gaming experience. The Game Turbo 5.0 intelligently controls and optimizes the CPU, GPU, and memory to support steady gameplay even in heavy-loading games. Happily, the system will also recognize if users are in the middle of a game and not allow messages to disconnect play by popping up a sub-window.
The phone comes with a decent 90Hz DynamicSwitch display, which saves power for sustained gaming. Display-wise, the Poco M5 features a 6.58-inch Full HD+ DotDrop display and a 240Hz touch sampling rate, for fast gaming response.
Camera setup on the M5 consists of a 50MP main camera, a 2MP depth sensor and a 2MP macro camera forming the triple array on the back. The selfie snapper on the front is only 5MP though, which will turn some users off.
Notably, the new smartphone comes with a large 5,000mAh battery with 18W fast charging, that will last all day.
While the M5 is squarely aimed at gamers, the Poco M5s is a budget offering more suited to bloggers and content creators. This model features a quad rear camera setup that can record 4K videos at 30 frames per second. There’s a 64MP primary camera, and an 8MP ultra-wide angle and two 2MP sensors for depth detection and close-ups. The front-facing camera is much better than seen on the M5 too, at 13MP. There’s also a host of photography and film-making features including portraits with a bokeh effect and produce time-lapse and slow-motion videos with the help of AI.
Equipped with a MediaTek Helio G95 chipset, the Poco M5s comes with an impressive 6.43-inch Full HD+ AMOLED DotDisplay and dual speakers. Like the M5, it features a 5,000mAh battery (this model with 33W charging), which Poco says provides up to 12 hours of uninterrupted use and even lasts a month in standby mode!
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Price and availability
Available in Black, Green, and Yellow, the Poco M5 will come in 4GB+64GB and 4GB+128GB variants in the UK and cost £189.99 and £209.99 respectively.
The Poco M5s will come in Grey, White, and Blue and will also be available in two variants in the UK: 4GB+64GB and 4GB+128GB. The cheaper model will cost £179.99 and £199 respectively. Both phones will be available from Amazon UK, and direct from Poco.
There’s been no news to date on the Poco M5 and M5s being available in the US.
Rachael is a British journalist with 18 years experience in the publishing industry. Since working on www.digitalcameraworld.com, she’s been freelancing, and contributing to some of the world’s best-loved websites and magazines including T3.com and TechRadar.com and has also had a book, iPad for Photographers, published. She's currently acting as editor of 5GRadar.com - a website specializing in the latest cellular technology.
