Poco M8 Power review: Big screen and long-lasting battery at a decent price

Poco has just launched a new M series device in India. The company is calling it the Poco M8 Power. But does it deliver enough power for you to consider it as your next smartphone? Let's have a look in our full review.The Poco M8 Power brings a large battery at a decent price. Here are our thoughts.In January this year, Poco launched the M8. Now, seven months later, we have the M8 Power. In the past seven months though, a lot has happened in the smartphone industry. Spoiler alert: the Poco M8 Power lands smack in the middle of a global memory crisis.Poco says that the M8 was its most successful M-series device in India, so the stakes are high. The M8 Power needs to prove its mettle and Poco knows this. The company has tried to deliver everything it could in this device including a large screen and a big battery while keeping the starting price at Rs 24,999. But does it manage to live up to the hype? Here is our full review of the Poco M8 Power at India Today Tech.Poco M8 Power design While design is subjective, the Poco M8 Power does have an interesting look. The Poco M8 Power takes a completely different approach than the M8 when it comes to the design. Gone are the curves on the front and the back. Instead, we get a flat plastic frame and a flat display. But what will first catch your attention is the camera module. It is wide with a couple of lines that help keep it interesting. There are two circular cutouts, and you get Poco branding on the right. Thankfully, the matte finish on the back does not pick up fingerprints easily.There is no denying that in the Blaze Orange shade that we have, the M8 Power looks a lot like a certain Pro phone. But Poco is not the only company to opt for such a look this year. Realme’s P4 Power and Infinix’s Note 60 Pro draw from the same source material. But where the Poco feels different is in sheer size. At 6.9-inches, the screen is huge, and you feel it the moment you hold it. The M8 Power is not a phone for one-hand use but you get used to it after some time.The frame and the back are both made of plastic, but the M8 Power doesn’t feel cheap to hold, and build quality is not bad. At just over 8.4mm, the M8 Power is not the slimmest phone out there, but it won’t feel bulky. You do get IP65 rating for dust and splash resistance. While this should do the job for most users, we would’ve liked to see an IP68 or IP69 rating for better protection. The phone also gets an opaque soft case in the box, just like the regular M8.Poco M8 Power display and sound The M8 Power comes with a lot of screen real estate. Now let’s get back to the display. As we said earlier, it is a 6.9-inch panel. There was a time when a phone with this big of a screen would have been called a “phablet.” But today, it is almost the norm.The display is a 120Hz FHD plus AMOLED panel, and Poco claims that it can deliver 100 per cent of the DCI P3 colour gamut. In practice, the Poco M8 Power can show you punchy colours, and the contrast is good too. Though there is a prominent chin at the bottom.The M8 Power gets a peak brightness of 1,800 nits. In real-world use, the screen can get bright enough under direct sunlight, though the Realme P4 Power for instance, gets higher peak brightness at 4,600 nits.The display gets a punchhole for the selfie camera, and an optical fingerprint scanner, which is not the fastest that we have seen, but it does the job.Coming to video streaming, the Poco M8 Power gets a mono-speaker. It also misses out on Dolby Atmos support from the M8. But you won’t feel like you are hearing a single speaker, as it can get quite loud.I tried listening to Petal by Ariana Grande on the M8 Power and then on the Redmi Turbo 5 – a phone that costs Rs 37,999 and has stereo speakers. To my surprise, the M8 Power could go just as loud as the Redmi. Of course, loudness doesn’t dictate sound quality, but at least you won’t have to mess around with earphones all the time.There is Widevine L1 support on Netflix, but for some reason, the M8 Power can only play up to 1080p videos on YouTube without HDR. We have asked Poco for a clarification on this.Poco M8 Power performance The Poco M8 Power can do some gaming. The M8 Power uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 4 Gen 4 chipset, which is based on a 4nm process. This chipset is paired with LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage. Before we discuss benchmarks, keep in mind that the M8 Power is not a phone designed for heavy users.The chipset is quite efficient and does your usual tasks quite smoothly, such as scrolling social media, reading articles online, or watching videos. But where it starts to feel a bit stressed is when you do multitasking – think taking photos while keeping navigation on and also listening to music.You can do some gaming on the Poco M8 Power. Call of Duty Mobile, for instance, can play up to 60fps. However, you may want to play lighter games like Subway Surfers here.In terms of benchmarks, the Poco M8 Power scores 616,904 points on AnTuTu. On Geekbench, the device gets 886 points in single-core and 2,077 points in multi-core. Benchmark results for the M8 Power. To give you some context, the Realme 16, a phone that costs Rs 35,999 today, has a MediaTek Dimensity 6400 Turbo. The OnePlus Nord CE 6 Lite does get a better Dimensity 7400 chipset, but it has an IPS display. But you also have the Samsung Galaxy M47 which uses the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 SoC.Poco M8 Power battery life The M8 Power can easily be a two-day phone for most users. The Poco M8 Power comes with a huge 8,000mAh battery. This makes it one of the largest battery phones in the segment. And you see the result in day-to-day use. As my daily driver, the M8 Power would breeze through a workday, with still around 50 per cent left by bedtime. That is, it is easily a two-day, if not a three-day, phone.On PC Mark's battery test, the M8 Power scored almost 20 hours, which is quite impressive.To top it up, you get 45W fast charging support, with a charger in the box. It does take a bit over an hour to fully charge the phone, but that is due to the size of the battery. Poco has also added 22.5W reverse wired charging support, which actually makes reverse charging quite useful if you want to even top up a friend’s smartphone in a hurry on a night out for instance.Poco M8 Power cameras The M8 Power has a 50-megapixel main camera on the back. The Poco M8 Power gets a 50-megapixel primary sensor. This is paired with an 8-megapixel selfie shooter.Coming to photos, the main sensor can give you decent results with sufficient details, given the lighting is right. Though you may notice some smoothening of faces, particularly in portrait mode.The selfie camera is quite decent too. The skin tones come out accurate, and in portrait mode, the edge detection works fairly well, even with messy hair for instance.Click on any image below to view the entire galleryThe Poco M8 Power does not get OIS so it is not one you would want to use to record videos on the move. Both sensors can only record at 720p at 30fps or 1080p at 30fps, with no option for 60fps recording.Poco M8 Power user experience The Poco M8 Power comes with long-term software support, going all the way till Android 20. The M8 Power runs on HyperOS 3 based on Android 16. If you are familiar with HyperOS, you will feel at home. You get the Poco launcher, the same customisation options, and there’s the Themes app too.But oddly, the Poco M8 Power does not have a depth effect option on the lockscreen. Now this is not a deal-breaker, but it is something that you should know. There is also some bloatware that cannot be uninstalled. Though in 2026, almost every phone at the price now comes with pre-installed third-party apps.But Poco does promise 4 years of OS updates and 6 years of security patches for the M8 Power. This means that the phone will go all the way up to Android 20, which is good to see.Poco M8 Power verdict The Poco M8 Power can be a decent pick for those looking for good battery life at this price. So where does the Poco M8 Power stand in today’s smartphone market? For an average user, the M8 Power gets plenty right. You get a massive screen that can be ideal for watching shows, and the battery life is impressive too. The performance may not be the best out there, but it is ample enough to handle your day-to-day use.That is to say that at a time when the smartphone market is facing price hikes almost every other day, the Poco M8 Power delivers a decent package that gets a lot right even if it may have a few quirks.- EndsPublished By: Armaan AgarwalPublished On: Aug 4, 2026 13:28 IST