Has POCO done the right things to take over Xiaomi?
POCO, a subbrand of Xiaomi has created a huge hype since it got separated from Xiaomi. The POCO products are aimed towards performance more rather than other specifications much. We had some POCO smartphones which were rebranded by Xiaomi smartphones in the past and this time also sees the POCO F3 GT (Review) which is the rebranded Xiaomi Redmi K40 Gaming Edition.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X is also known as POCO F3 in many countries so this rebranding thing has been quite common with these two manufacturers. In fact, the Xiaomi Mi 11X (Review) and the POCO F3 GT are almost siblings born together from Xiaomi. The Xiaomi Mi 11X has been around in the market for quite some time and now the POCO F3 GT has come in to spice up the premium mid-range segment.
The premium mid-range segment has a lot of smartphones to choose from as this segment has gained a lot of interest with smartphones having some flagship specifications and are priced aggressively. Both the Xiaomi Mi 11X and the POCO F3 GT have a lot in common but do differ in many scenarios as POCO F3 GT is more focused on gaming whereas Xiaomi Mi 11X proves to be a good all-rounder.
So which is the better pick of the two and will POCO set the bar for being the true gaming smartphone or shall Xiaomi take away the honors with a statement of versatility. Let’s find out in the full comparison.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Design:
In terms of design, both smartphones have a completely different design where the POCO F3 GT sports a design that is aimed at gamers as it has a lot of lines at the back and there is RGB lighting around the camera module which lights up during notifications and also during charging. The LED flashlight looks like a thunderbolt and around the sides, there are shoulder buttons called Maglev Triggers for gaming.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X has a rather simplistic design with a glossy back if you choose the Cosmic Black color which does attract a lot of fingerprints but if you get the Celestial Silver, the back has a frosted finish that provides good grip and it shines in a combination of different colors. Both the front as well as the back are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on both smartphones.
The POCO F3 GT has a metallic frame around the sides compared to the plastic frame on the Xiaomi Mi 11X which makes it slightly premium. The sides of both smartphones have a power button with volume buttons and to the bottom, there is a USB Type-C port, a loudspeaker grill, a dual SIM card slot, and a primary microphone. The top has the secondary noise-canceling microphone and IR Blaster on both.
The POCO F3 GT gets an additional speaker grille on top and around the side, there is the third microphone also which is one more than the Xiaomi Mi 11X. Both have a side-mounted fingerprint scanner that is embedded into the power button and is accurately fast on both. There is an IP53 rating on both so both are dust and water-resistant up to some extent.
Both have a triple camera setup with almost rectangular modules on both. Overall, the build and design are good on both smartphones but it all depends on personal preference whether you want a clean and plain look of the Xiaomi Mi 11X or the gamer’s design with more lines and those Maglev Triggers for gaming, than the POCO F3 GT is better.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Display:
Both the Xiaomi Mi 11X and the POCO F3 GT have similar-sized 6.67-inches Full HD+ AMOLED displays and both these displays are E4 AMOLED made by Samsung. Both these displays have 120Hz refresh rates with 480Hz touch sampling rate and this aids in smooth scrolling through webpages, playing games, and also while multi-tasking.
On the front, both these have punch-hole displays with the punch-hole being the center on top and the bezels are also minimum to the sides. However, the Xiaomi Mi 11X has a slightly thicker bezel at the bottom compared to the POCO F3 GT. Both these displays have support for HDR10 and Widevine L1 so streaming HD content from OTT platforms is not an issue.
But for now, in Netflix, the Xiaomi Mi 11X can stream HDR content whereas the POCO F3 GT can do HD content only. Maybe POCO fixes this issue with a future software update. The Xiaomi Mi 11X has slightly better color reproduction with a warmer tone compared to the POCO F3 GT. Still, both these displays being AMOLED are great in terms of color reproduction and viewing angles.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X has something called MEMC technology which boosts the smoothness in videos like a 60fps video is upscaled to 90fps thus ensuring smooth content on the display and this is not present on the POCO F3 GT. Both have slightly different color profiles and you can set the display tone to warmer or cooler. Also, both of them cover the DCI-P3 gamut scale.
In terms of peak brightness, the Xiaomi Mi 11X is slightly higher at 1300nits compared to 1000nits on the POCO F3 GT and even the sunlight eligibility is also better on the Xiaomi Mi 11X. Overall, both these displays are great for media consumption and will not disappoint either.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Performance:
In terms of performance, both are almost good as flagships where the Xiaomi Mi 11X has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chipset and the POCO F3 GT has a Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset. Both these are flagship chipsets and when it comes to performance and gaming both of them are great at handling almost all the tasks.
All heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends, BGMI, etc. ran smoothly on each of the smartphones and if you look at BGMI, the gameplay is slightly better on the Xiaomi Mi 11X especially due to better optimizations for gameplay on Snapdragon chipsets. With BGMI, you can achieve HDR/HD graphics with an Extreme frame rate.
The BGMI, on the other hand, can achieve an Extreme frame rate but it does switch to Smooth graphics which is slightly disappointing as Mediatek needs to work with developers for better optimizations to gameplay. However, with the Realme X7 Max (Review), you can achieve an Extreme frame rate with HDR graphics but currently, it is not present with the POCO F3 GT and the OnePlus Nord 2.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X has one advantage over the POCO F3 GT as it gets LPDDR5 RAM which is 20 percent faster compared to LPDDR4X RAM on the POCO F3 GT but if you look at closing and app opening times, both are equally fast but the Xiaomi Mi 11X is slightly faster in the opening of heavy applications and also has better RAM management.
In terms of storage, the Xiaomi Mi 11X comes with two storage options that include 6/8GB RAM with 128GB UFS 3.1 storage whereas the POCO F3 GT is available in three variants – 6GB RAM with 128Gb storage, 8GB RAM with 128GB storage and another 8GB RAM with 256GB storage and speeds are of UFS 3.1.
Many benchmarks like Geekbench 5.1, the Xiaomi Mi 11X scored slightly higher at 969 and 3057 in single and multi-core tests compared to 558 and 2175 respectively on the POCO F3 GT and also in Antutu v8, the Xiaomi Mi 11X scored 678536 which is higher compared to 594499 on the POCO F3 GT but in Antutu v8, sometimes scores are higher on the POCO F3 GT also.
In terms of CPU throttling, there is very little throttling on the Snapdragon 870 chipset compared to the Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset though POCO packs a larger vapor chamber for cooling. Both these chipsets support 5G and carrier aggregation so you get 4G+ in all areas. But still, there are only two 5G bands (N77, N78) on both.
This is slightly disappointing as the OnePlus Nord 2 (Review) which is priced similarly has around 6-7 bands of 5G though sporting the similar Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset. POCO does have those Maglev triggers and the Turbo Mode for enhanced gaming capabilities but the actual gaming is still slightly better on the Xiaomi Mi 11X and it also has slightly better overall performance.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Software:
Both the Xiaomi Mi 11X and the POCO F3 GT run on MIUI 12.5 with Android 11 out of the box. As said earlier also, MIUI has been improving with each of its updates. There is some amount of bloatware but there are no ads on either of these. The POCO F3 GT has quite lesser applications compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X and most of them can be uninstalled also.
The POCO launcher makes the icons look slightly larger and all applications are well organized under different categories. There is the most popular GetApps application that throws in a lot of notifications and is very annoying. The area where MIUI shines is in terms of custom ROM support and also battery optimizations. The POCO gets an additional Game Turbo Mode for playing games.
There are features like the system-wide dark mode, Digital Wellbeing, and also some Android 11 features. In terms of software updates, MIUI is not great but still, you get two years of Android OS updates and security updates. So software experience is good on both smartphones but on the POCO it is slightly more polished and better.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Cameras:
Both the POCO F3 GT and the Xiaomi Mi 11X come with a triple camera setup at the rear where the primary sensor on the Xiaomi Mi 11X is a 48MP f/1.8 Sony IMX682 sensor for the main camera whereas the POCO F3 GT gets a 64MP f/1.7 Omnivision OV4B sensor for the main camera. The 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera is similar on both but the third camera is better on the Xiaomi Mi 11X.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X has a 5MP telemacro camera whereas the POCO F3 GT has a 2MP macro camera. There is a 20MP f/2.5 front camera whereas the POCO F3 GT has a 16MP f/2.4 front camera. The images from the main camera come out with good details on both smartphones where the dynamic range and color saturation are better on the POCO F3 GT.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X has slightly dull colors and the contrast is also not good. The details look sharper on the POCO F3 GT. The images from the Xiaomi Mi 11X have a large amount of noise and when you zoom in, the images have softer details. When doing a digital zoom at 2x, the images from the POCO F3 GT have better details and dynamic range compared to that of the Xiaomi Mi 11X.
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
At night, the images from the main camera on both smartphones come out with good details but Xiaomi Mi 11X has better color saturation with more details when you zoom in whereas the POCO F3 GT has softer details and there is a larger amount of oversaturation in the background. With the Night Mode turned on, the Xiaomi Mi 11X brings out sharper details compared to the POCO F3 GT.
Without Night Mode:
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
With Night Mode:
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
The 8MP ultrawide camera does a good job in terms of details on both smartphones but still, the dynamic range is slightly better on the POCO F3 GT compared to that of the Xiaomi Mi 11X. Other than this, both have softer details and when you zoom in, there is clearly a larger amount of noise present on both. Even there is edge distortion on both images around the sides.
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
Like the images hot during the day, the images shot at night have an adequate amount of details and there is slight oversharpening on the POCO F3 GT but it is hardly noticeable and here also both smartphones suffer from a lot of noise and the details look very softer when you zoom into them. However, both get a dedicated Night Mode for the ultrawide camera on both that does restore some details and lowers noise.
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
The third camera is a 5MP telemacro camera on the Xiaomi Mi 11X which also doubles as a telephoto camera and takes sharper details with proper color saturation and better dynamic range as it focuses much closer to 2cm compared to the POCO F3 GT which has a 2MP fixed focus macro camera that takes images with a lot of amount of noise and the details also look softer with washed-out colors.
(Credits: MySmartPrice)
(Credits :MySmartPrice)
The front camera is better on the POCO F3 GT as it has a wider dynamic range and sharper details compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X and both these front cameras suffer from oversharpening also. The skin tones look slightly natural on the POCO F3 GT compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X. In terms of selfie portraits, the POCO F3 GT has a better dynamic range but edge detection is better on the Xiaomi Mi 11X.
In terms of night selfies, both do have a lot of noise and the dynamic range is above average on both. There is a dedicated Night Mode for the selfie camera on both smartphones also and here the POCO F3 GT has slightly sharper details and lower noise compared to that of Xiaomi Mi 11X. The portraits from the main camera come out good on both but POCO F3 GT has better details and edge detection.
In terms of videos, the Xiaomi Mi 11X can do 4K videos at 30fps whereas the POCO F3 GT can do 4K videos at 60fps with better details and dynamic range. The videos have better dynamic range and stabilization on the POCO F3 GT compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X. The ultrawide camera can do 1080p videos at 30fps only from both smartphones and both get Ultra Stable Mode for videos also.
On the front, the Xiaomi Mi 11X can do 1080p videos at 30fps only whereas the POCO F3 GT can do 1080p videos at 60fps and the videos are better on the POCO F3 GT with a slightly wider field of view and details look sharper and have less noise compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X. The portrait videos are just average on both as there is a lot of oversharpening in the background from the front camera.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Battery Life:
The POCO F3 GT sports a larger 5065mAh battery compared to a 4520mAh battery on the Xiaomi Mi 11X and with both, you can easily get two days of battery life with normal usage but POCO gives you extra hours of battery life especially due to s larger battery and the Mediatek Dimesnity 1200 chipset is based on a 6nm process.
With the display set to 120Hz refresh rate, both smartphones lasted easily for one day with some charge left. The MIUI optimizations for battery give better battery life and even in terms of the standard screen on time, the POCO F3 GT provides around 6.5-7 hours of screen on time compared to 6-6.5 hours on the Xiaomi Mi 11X.
However, in terms of charging speeds, the POCO F3 GT is better as it comes with a 67W fast charger which Xiaomi likes to call the Turbo charger and this charger takes around 50 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 percent which is much better compared to the Xiaomi Mi 11X which takes around 1 hour 15 minutes to charge completely from 0 to 100 percent with the 33W fast charger supplied inside the box.
The 67W fast charger does feel slower compared to other fast chargers like OnePlus Nord 2 that sports 65W Warp charging only takes around 40 minutes for a full charge from 0 to 100 percent. So clearly in terms of battery life and charging, the POCO F3 GT holds an edge.
Xiaomi Mi 11X vs POCO F3 GT Audio Quality:
Both the Xiaomi Mi 11X and the POCO F3 GT sport a dual stereo speaker setup where they both have speaker grilles on the top as well as the bottom. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack on either of them but POCO does provide a USB Type-C to 3.5mm headphone jack converter inside the box. The POCO F3 GT has better audio quality with more bass and is much louder at the highest settings.
Verdict:
Both smartphones are very close in terms of specifications with some differences while being siblings from the same manufacturer with different naming conventions. In terms of build and design, the POCO focuses on a more gaming design with indents around the sides, RGB lighting on top as well as the bottom of the camera module and thunderbolt LED strip whereas the Xiaomi Mi 11X has a practical design.
The Xiaomi Mi 11X looks cleaner with no such kinds of stuff as the POCO F3 GT. Both have a 120Hz AMOLED display but brightness levels are better on the POCO F3 GT and even the audio quality is better on the POCO F3 GT so media consumption is good on both but slightly better on the POCO F3 GT. In terms of software experience, POCO F3 GT is slightly better with less bloatware of the two.
When it comes to performance, both smartphones are evenly matched and in terms of gaming, so all heavy games with ease but the Xiaomi Mi 11X is slightly better in terms of gaming and also heats lesser compared to the POCO F3 GT. The battery life is slightly better on the POCO F3 GT and the 67W fast charger does have better charging speeds compared to the charger provided with the Xiaomi Mi 11X.
In terms of cameras, the Xiaomi Mi 11X has a better macro camera and low-light performance compared to the POCO F3 GT but the overall camera and video output are better on the POCO F3 GT so optics clearly the POCO F3 GT is better than the two. So as an overall package, if you want better performance and gaming, the Xiaomi Mi 11X is better, or else the POCO F3 GT is the better of the two.