Poco F9 Ultra: An older chip at a higher price?

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in the Poco F9 Ultra is anything but slow. It remains one of the most powerful smartphone chips and offers more than enough headroom even for demanding games. Nevertheless, the decision seems unusual: Instead of waiting for the next generation of Snapdragon chips, Poco is launching its new flagship earlier and, for the first time since the F8 Ultra (buy it here on Amazon), is skipping a generation with the SoC.

Poco attributes this move to economic constraints. In particular, the sharp rise in memory prices has made smartphones significantly more expensive. Switching to Qualcomm’s next high-end platform would have driven costs even higher. The argument is understandable, but only partially satisfying for buyers. After all, the F9 Ultra’s MSRP is still about a third higher than that of its predecessor.

However, performance hasn’t stagnated entirely. Poco has significantly improved the cooling system. While the F8 Ultra experienced a more pronounced performance drop under prolonged load, the F9 Ultra passes our 3DMark stress tests with ease and maintains its performance better. In exchange, Poco accepts higher surface temperatures.

Although the Poco F9 Ultra doesn’t feature a newer processor, Poco is letting the existing one run more effectively. Technically, this is definitely an improvement, but given the significantly higher price, it’s less convincing than a new SoC would have been.