Xiaomi Poco M5: So inexpensive and yet so powerful

It goes without saying that everyone wants a smartphone that offers the best possible specs and performance at an affordable price point. Xiaomi has already demonstrated many times that this is not impossible to achieve.

The Poco M5 is an attempt by the Chinese company to take on the 200-euro price range. Whilst there are many phones competing in this category, most of them only pack enough power to handle basic tasks. These phones let you write WhatsApp messages and, for the most part, have enough power for browsing the Instagram app, but there is no guarantee that you won't experience some occasional stutters.

So are things different with the Poco M5? Yes, because Xiaomi has equipped the phone with a Helio G99, a very powerful processor for its price, and extremely snappy UFS 2.2 storage for fast loading times and data transfer speeds. 

Although this isn't going to turn the Poco M5 into a gaming phone, basic and even slightly more demanding apps are able to run smoothly on the device.

The 90Hz screen also helps make the system feel smooth to use, but it could definitely be brighter in our opinion. Nonetheless, the display has very high colour accuracy – something we didn't expect to see in this price range.

The Poco M5 does have a few drawbacks though: the GPS chip is highly inaccurate and the speaker sounds more like a compromise than a piece of hi-fi equipment.

Having a good phone camera is important to many users. However, the Poco M5 isn't very good in this regard: it has a pretty standard camera setup similar to those on many other budget phones and also lacks a wide-angle camera. Xiaomi also didn't manage to include 5G support at this price point.

Our in-depth review contains many benchmark results and comparison tables. We recommend you give it a read if you want to find out more about the speedy Xiaomi Poco M5.