Poco M6 Plus review

The Poco M6 Plus has a beautiful premium-looking design with a plain glossy glass back finished in dual tone. Some of you might find similarities with the latest Samsung Galaxy phones especially if you get your hands on the Misty Lavender colour. It’s also available in Ice Silver and Graphite Black colours. The only hint of it being a budget offering is the plastic frame projecting a bit from the glass surface at the rear with a somewhat sharp edge. A ring light complements the large dual rear cameras. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and an IR blaster on top as expected from entry-level phones. The home button hides a fingerprint sensor.

Both the front and rear are flat and the display is protected by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 panel. The device accepts dual SIM via one dedicated and one hybrid slot shared with a MicroSD card. The glossy rear attracts dust and fingerprints, but Poco has included a silicon cover in the box. The device is not exactly compact but sits at the border of single-handed operation. The device carries an IP53 rating, which means it can withstand mild water sprays at very low pressure.

The phone uses a large 6.79-inch FHD+ (2400x1080)  LCD panel with a 91.20 percent screen-to-body ratio. The display supports a peak refresh rate of 120Hz via AdaptiveSync along with a 240Hz touch sampling rate. Though it doesn’t have the contrast or brightness of an OLED, the display is quite good for an entry-level phone and is a bearable compromise considering the price. The screen is not the best in bright sunlit outdoors. We didn’t feel any lag in touch response or scrolling.

The Poco M6 Plus has dual cameras at the rear. The main camera uses a 108MP Samsung Isocell HM6 sensor and takes advantage of this resolution to offer 3x in-sensor zoom. In normal mode, it uses 9-in-1 pixel binning. The camera shoots decent images in well-lit outdoors but suffers in low-light situations. The colours are close to real life. An f/1.75 aperture ensures shallow depth-of-field in close-ups and portraits. The second camera is a Macro unit witha 2MP sensor. The front camera is a 13MP module with f/1.75 aperture. This one is capable of capturing decent portraits with enough detail for most output requirements. Both cameras support up to 1080p video recording at 30fps. Unlike the Vivo V and X-series cameras, the ring-shaped LED doesn’t have any other function other than a regular smartphone camera light.

Powering the Poco M6 Plus is a Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 AE processor. Built on 4nm process, this is an overclocked version of the regular Snapdragon 4 Gen 2. The phone comes with either 6 GB or 8 GB RAM with a single storage option of 128 GB. 

We used the phone for everyday calling and some light gaming and the device handled these without any trouble. The device handled graphic-intensive games like Modern Waships at medium graphics. We didn’t feel any excess heating or lag during gaming.

The Poco M6 Plus houses a 5030 mAh battery and comes with a 33W charger in the box. The battery lasts more than a day on normal use and the charger ensures fast top-up. The phone comes with a single speaker, which takes away some audio finesse, however, we can’t complain about the lack of stereo speakers in this phone.

The Poco M6 Plus uses Xiaomi HyperOS on top of Android 14 and Poco promises two major Android updates and four years of security updates. The device comes with excessive bloatware as expected from budget smartphones. Most of these can be uninstalled, but this is still an unnecessary hassle.

Smartphone features are improving across all segments, and even entry-level phones now come with tech handed down from the siblings in upper segments. The M6 Plus is one of the best, if not the best in this segment with a premium double glass design, 5G support and decent performance. It is certainly an improvement over the usual laggy phones that generally occupy this segment. The camera is decent, though it doesn’t offer a second fixed focal length or too many features.