Poco F9 Ultra review: It feels like a flagship killer, but the price tag says otherwise
Enter the Poco F9 Ultra, a phone that pairs top-of-the-line hardware with a flagship-grade price tag.
The Poco F9 Ultra is one impressive flagship killer. | Image by PhoneArena
Its name might be Poco, which means "small" in Spanish, but let me assure you—there's nothing small about the Poco F9 Ultra.
This phone combines the excessive, over-the-top hardware specs and feels like it could have been a perfect successor to OnePlus's flagship killers on the global market. Sadly, with a starting price of €1,099 for the 16GB/512GB model, it doesn't strike the same chord.
I've spent the past few two weeks with the phone as a co-daily-driver alongside my trusty Oppo Find X9 Pro, and I'm honestly thinking of switching over to the Poco full-time. It comes with an outstanding sound system whick keeps impressing me every day, while the rest of the hardware is equally enthralling. My only gripe is that the software isn't as polished as some other Android skins out there.
As I mentioned, this review is based on my personal usage over the span of more than two weeks. The device has been provided by Poco as a review sample, but the company had no involvement in PhoneArena's testing process or my editorial decisions. All the images in this review are also original photographs captured by the PhoneArena team.
Aside from my personal impressions with the device, it has also undergone our complete testing process, including performance and display tests, as well as our in-house battery benchmark tests.
Table of Contents:
Poco F9 Ultra Design and Display
Solid but far from the most compact out there
The Poco F9 Ultra is one smart-looking device. | Image by PhoneArena
The Poco F9 Ultra doesn't wow with its design as it's pretty standard in terms of overall aesthetics. It definitely looks like the median smartphone out there, combining a flat glass back with an aluminum frame with curved corners and an iPhone 17 Pro Max camera plateau in the back, which is something that many other devices have opted to do, too.
But it has some tricks up its sleeve that sell the overall package. Instead of only leveraging part of the rear camera plateau for the cameras and leaving the rest empty, Poco has introduced a large speaker at the back. This one is an integral part of the Bose-tuned 2.1 audio system on deck.
The rear speaker has a hidden party trick, too: there's a tiny LED ring light hidden beneath it. You can set it to light up in rhythm with your music or have it alert you when a specific app sends you a notification. It's fairly customizable, unlike the Pixel's HiLight, although the presentation here isn't as flashy. It's a bit hard to make out, so I wouldn't necessarily call it useful.
I'd have loved some extra buttons. | Image by PhoneArena
In terms of size, this one isn't compact by any means, but it's not outrageously unwieldy. Dimensions span 163.49 by 78 mm, which is comparable to a Galaxy S26 Ultra, although the Poco is thicker at 8.75 mm and heavier at 235 grams. One delightfully hefty and solid phone.
The only things I miss are a customizable button on the left side and a camera shortcut button on the right side of the frame. I've come to love those and missing them here is a minor gripe.
The phone arrives in Black and a Dark Cherry color that immediately brings comparisons with Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models, which are coming in less than ten days' time. I dig the Dark Cherry color, though I wouldn't have minded it to be a bit more vibrant and popping out more.
The phone arrives in Black and a Dark Cherry color that immediately brings comparisons with Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models, which are coming in less than ten days' time. I dig the Dark Cherry color, though I wouldn't have minded it to be a bit more vibrant and popping out more.
Here's what's inside the Poco F9 Ultra box. | Image by PhoneArena
Inside the box, you will find the following:
- Poco F9 Ultra
- SIM ejector tool
- USB-C cable
- A hard-shell case
- Manuals and leaflets
An expansive and very bright display. | Image by PhoneArena
The Poco F9 Ultra comes with a large 6.9-inch Gorilla Glass 7i-covered display that boasts some impressive specs. 10,000 nits of peak brightness across 1% of the AMOLED display? Super-smooth 185 Hz refresh rate in compatible games? 1-nit minimum brightness? Exceptional 4,800 Hz touch sampling rate? All clear!
The specs are very impressive on paper, but in real life the screen looks lovely as well. We measured a peak brightness of 2,849 nits across 20% of the display as well as minimum brightness lower than 1 nit. Colors easily pop, though they are slightly more vibrant than I'd like them to be even in the default Original color Pro preset.
The Poco F9 Ultra comes with a fast and reliable ultrasonic fingerprint scanner, as well as a picture-based face unlock. Both function perfectly well.
Poco F9 Ultra Camera
A decent and reliable camera system
300 MP looking back at you | Image by PhoneArena
The Poco F9 Ultra comes along with a 200 MP F1.68 main camera with Samsung's ISOCELL HP5 sensor, while the periscope camera is a 50 MP one that offers a pretty decent 5X optical reach. There's a 50 MP ultrawide, too, but it's quite narrow and doesn't provide a drastically larger field of view, and I had no reason to use it in the first place because of that. The ultrawide also has a noticeably warmer color temperature whereas the main and periscope cameras are typically colder, which leads to some serious color inconsistencies between the images
Image quality is very decent, with fairly realistic color science that emphasizes contrast. The dynamic range is very decent, but the phone tends to slightly overexpose some scenes which is surely a creative decision. Nothing wrong with that, but I definitely prefer the overall exposure a bit toned down.
Detail is generally good and the sharpness is very natural. Do I wish photos were sharper? I do, but then we'd probably be leaning heavily into AI upscaling, which isn't ideal at all. I think the Poco F9 Ultra strikes a good balance between overall sharpness and achieving a natural look. That's not to say there isn't any AI upscaling at all: zoom past 30X, and the phone will try to clean up the photo. Occasionally, the results are great, but more often than not, they aren't.
Here are a few daytime and low-light sample images I took with the Poco F9 Ultra the other day.
Poco F9 Ultra sample images | Images by PhoneArena
Video Quality
The phone can capture up to an excessive 8K@30fps video footage. Videos taken with the phone offer decent detail and good dynamic range. They won't blow you out of the water, but they aren't bad at all.
Poco F9 Ultra Performance & Benchmarks
Now that's a proper flagship phone
Playing my favorite games on the Poco F9 Ultra has been a joyous experience. | Image by PhoneArena
The Poco F9 Ultra comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 powerhouse, its best chipset at the moment. This is a proper flagship chipset, and unsurprisingly, the Poco F9 Ultra delivers some excellent performance. To rein it in, Poco has graced the device with a large heatsink that dissipates with the excessive temperature away.
The device arrives with 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM in the base 256 GB version, but the 512 GB and 1 TB versions come with 16 GB of RAM. As usual with most contemporary Android phones, you can extend the memory by leveraging a couple of extra gigabytes of the storage to act as a fast swap memory.
The device arrives with 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM in the base 256 GB version, but the 512 GB and 1 TB versions come with 16 GB of RAM. As usual with most contemporary Android phones, you can extend the memory by leveraging a couple of extra gigabytes of the storage to act as a fast swap memory.
GPU Performance
In terms of graphics performance, the Poco F9 Ultra is up there with the very best Android flagships out there. Playing games on this phone is a joy thanks to the unbeatable combination of an exceptional high-refresh-rate screen and powerful GPU inside. I particularly enjoyed grinding in CoD: Mobile, which is currently a mobile gaming obsession of mine, where the185 Hz refresh rate truly shines.
The phone does get hot during gaming, but that's a good thing. If you feel that the frame of the phone is noticeably warmer than usual, this means the heatsink is doing its intended job and taking the heat away from the internal components. I wouldn't call the phone uncomfortable to hold, but it's warmer than other
Storage speed
As we mentioned, the Poco F9 Ultra comes with either 256 GB, 512 GB, or 1 TB of built-in storage. No microSD card support here. All three storage models use fast UFS 4.1-type storage, which is great to see.
Poco F9 Ultra Software
HyperOS 3 is decent, but still lacks the more in-depth customization that other Android skins offer. | Images by PhoneArena
The Poco F9 Ultra comes with Xiaomi's HyperOS 3 software, based on Android 16. I am typically partial to Xiaomi's new software skin, although I have to admit that it's not my favorite one due to the fairly limited customization options compared with the likes of Samsung's One UI, Oppo's Color OS, or even Vivo's OriginOS. Each of the former generally gives users a slightly deeper level of personalization that I definitely miss on HyperOS.
Still, Xiaomi's custom Android interface is quite polished and works perfectly well out of the box, provided that you quickly get used to its minute peculiarities inherited from MIUI that persist here. It's an acquired taste for sure.
In terms of AI features, we get the standard Xiaomi HyperAI suite here. Here's the full selection of AI features on board: AI Dynamic Wallpapers, AI Writing, AI Creativity Assistant, AI Speech Recognition, AI Translate Conversation, AI Interpreter, AI Search, and AI Subtitles. I wouldn't insult your intelligence by describing what each of these does, as the names are pretty self-explanatory.
The only exception is AI Creativity Assistant, which is actually a combination of tools in the Gallery app that allows for pretty expansive AI-assisted editing options. You can erase objects from and expand your photos, automatically identify subjects and cut them out to create stickers, as well as generate films from your photos and clips.
Of course, the Gemini Assistant is available by default, and you can also rely on whatever other LLM provider as well.
Poco F9 Ultra Battery
Exceptional!
There's a massive 8,050 mAh battery inside the Poco F9 Ultra, and honestly, this still impresses me.
I know silicon-carbon batteries have been around for a few years already and I know the general principle behind them, but having such a large battery in the palm of your hand still feels surreal, especially when the generic flagships coming out of Samsung, Apple, and Google's conveyor belts still struggle to escape the gravity of the 5,000 mAh li-ion battery.
And believe me, the Poco F9 Ultra absolutely delivers when it comes to battery life! In the custom PhoneArena browsing test that I ran, it lasted for nearly 30 hours, which is an excellent result. In our proprietary gaming test, the phone lasted for 13 and a half hours, while the video-streaming test yielded a respectable result of nine hours.
PhoneArena Battery Test Results:
The Poco F9 Ultra supports 100 W wired and 50 W wireless charging.
Charging is plenty fast. | Image by PhoneArena
Poco F9 Ultra Audio Quality and Haptics
And now to the star of the show––the audio system.
The phone comes with a 2.1 audio system tuned by Bose, which has a 1W subwoofer in the back, on the camera plateau. It could either be used as a subwoofer or to extend the audio and function as a third loudspeaker.
The audio quality is exceptional. The 2.1 system creates a wide soundstage with an impressive frequency response. The bass is ample, the mids are well detailed, and the highs are quite crisp. Overall, listening to music from the Poco F9 Ultra can substitute a small Bluetooth speaker.
The haptic feedback is excellent as well. Crisp and strong, it's a far cry from the muddy low-frequency vibrator motors of the past.
The haptic feedback is excellent as well. Crisp and strong, it's a far cry from the muddy low-frequency vibrator motors of the past.
Poco F9 Ultra Specs
And here is an overview of the Poco F9 Ultra specs:
|
| Xiaomi Poco F9 Ultra |
| Dimensions |
|---|
| 163.49 x 78 x 8.74 mm (~12.52 mm with camera bump) |
| Weight |
| 235.0 g |
| Size |
|---|
| 6.9-inch |
| Type |
| AMOLED, 185Hz |
| System chip |
|---|
| Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SM8850-AC (3 nm) |
| Memory |
| 12GB (LPDDR5X)/256GB (UFS 4.1) 16GB/512GB 16GB/1TB |
| Type |
|---|
| 8050 mAh |
| Charge speed |
| Wired: 100.0W Wireless: 50.0W |
| Main camera |
|---|
| 200 MP (OIS, PDAF) Aperture size: F1.7 Focal length: 24 mm |
| Second camera |
| 50 MP (Ultra-wide) Aperture size: F2.4 Focal Length: 18 mm Sensor size: 1/2.88" |
| Third camera |
| 50 MP (Telephoto, Periscope) Optical zoom: 5.0x Aperture size: F3.0 Focal Length: 115 mm Sensor size: 1/2.75" Pixel size: 0.64 μm |
| Front |
| 32 MP |
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