Poco X8 Pro Max Reddit Verdict: Battery Beast or Camera Letdown?

It's a great phone but to say that it doesn't have anything that will dissuade you to buy it is very misleading. You play emulator games for PC and switch that needs specific drivers, you want to take great photos and videos, you don't want a bulky and big phone, you dislike Hyperos and want the software experience to be good out of the box.

I'm not in the market for a new phone but if I was, that would definitely be the phone I would go for and at £350 it's an absolute steal and really exposes how inflated the flagship brand market has become. It's meant to be great for gaming, better than most flagship phones, and the battery is an absolute beast. I know the camera can't compete with flagships, but from what I've seen it's more than decent for everyday snaps. Also 4 years OS updates is plenty for me.

Time to upgrade my redmi note 11 pro I guess

F8 Ultra has way better camera and processor is also much better than X8 Pro Max.

For the love of god can they stop putting USB-C 2.0 ports on devices especially with those price ranges. They brag about how fast is ufs storage but then when you need to move something around with the cable you are still bottlenecked by USB 2.0 a standard that shouldn't be used anymore for transferring data!

Ultrawide camera is fairly basic. No dedicated telephoto camera. Like they might not be terrible but there are better camera phones even for the price.

3 million AnTuTu is pretty good, same as my F8 Pro. Poco really made something special. If I had the option today I would probably just get the X8 Pro Max — the battery life seems much better than my F8 Pro.

MediaTek Dimensity 9500s seems amazing as long you don't care about emulation. Also an 8500mAh battery is terrific.

The major con for me is software. I had an f6, I didn't like HOS at all with the iosification and poor thermal control. In any other phone, custom roms give a lift of about 30%. The hw is good but sw is really poor and them restricting bootloader unlocking and making it hell just pushed me away. I'd rather have 2nd best performing chip with open ecosystem than top tier stuff with restriction.

Just preordered Poco X8 Pro Max 512GB/12GB RAM for only 314 USD in the Philippines for the early bird price plus online shop vouchers — crazy deal.

The best value for money, together with the Redmi K80 Ultra, for native Android gaming. Not so much for PC gaming emulation.

Almost just straight 60% battery life increase in every category compared to the other D9400 Xiaomi 15T Pro.

I fully agree, I got it for around £320 because of the additional 10% coupon code. Absolute bargain.

Poco Camera is dogshit just so you know. Normal tempered glass screen, no wireless charging and all. It's a good phone but for someone already on a flagship it makes no sense. The Poco X8 is good for the price but for a flagship owner it's not the right choice.

Build quality is premium, has good performance, battery and screen. If you're looking for a good camera, this is not it.

Here in the Philippines, the 512GB is 235£ for the early bird price and 292£ after that. And it comes with a charging brick too.

I use my phone to game, doomscroll, messaging apps and banking apps in that order. This phone is perfect for me. I am its target market. The cheap price for what I get is excellent, even if I wreck the battery from charging/discharging daily.

No lol. Xiaomi 14 is still a more premium device. Cameras are far better. Wireless charging etc.

Still not beating that Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 though, the F8 Ultra is still about 20% more powerful. Everything else? Yes, the X8 Pro Max is incredible, especially the battery size. But I wouldn't say it's better than the F8 Ultra. It's just fairly close for its price.

I ordered the X8 Pro (smaller version). It's a compact phone with decent performance than those from other brands for $250 (12GB/512GB), which is honestly insane value. Definitely a bang for the buck.

It's barely half the price of other flagships lol.

Battery life straight up doubling vs Poco X7 Pro is crazy.

Since charging it to 90%, it is currently on 51% with 7 hours of screen on time. I was mainly using TikTok and Reddit replying to people. I also ran 2 GeekBench marks during this time.

I upgraded from a Poco F6 to the Poco X8 Pro Max. I don't encounter heating issues with this phone anymore unlike my Poco F6.

I feel satisfied overall but the only downside I notice is the camera at night — it just doesn't click even using night-mode. I'll probably get an S25U when it gets cheaper later.

Finally a Poco with actually good battery results since the X3 series!

The GPU performance is close to twice as fast as the Poco X7 pro and CPU singlecore is 70% faster (though this is more expensive). It's as fast as the Poco F7 Ultra and Poco F8 Pro, so you get performance close to being flagship level at 400€ which is quite good. Along one of the best battery durations on the market, eSIM, okay main and selfie camera and 6 years of security updates. Solid choice for 400€.

Great device but sadly not fit for emulator because dimensity. But even worse light fusion 600 is a low tier camera and not that great. If you don't care about camera and emulator it's a great device. For anyone else I strongly recommend last year's Poco F7 Ultra.

Now if only they would add bypass charging and air triggers, it would be perhaps a proper 'gaming phone'.

It has bypass charging, but no shoulder triggers. I would know — I also have the X8 Pro Max.

I played for 5-6 hours straight on day one at full settings on Genshin and CODM, no drops or issues. Heat was not noticeable — when it did feel warm I just removed the cover and it was totally fine after that.

No 6GHz WiFi even though the chipset supports it. Very annoying for me, with a WiFi7 Tri-band mesh network at home. I confirmed this personally — it does not use 6GHz on my WiFi 7 MLO network and it does not show my 6GHz standalone network in the WiFi list.

Unless you need insane battery life and bigger screen, probably not worth upgrading from a Xiaomi 14. You'll have a massive downgrade in cameras. If you're looking for a real upgrade, go for Xiaomi 17 or Poco F8 Ultra.

It's a stupidly powerful phone for what it is. The camera is a slight let down but it's understandable — it's still serviceable. Currently it's on sale in my region for about the same price as the X8 Pro which makes it even better value.

Not if you care about the camera and software. It's like a side-ish grade from a Xiaomi 14. You will probably get more battery life and minor performance boost but significantly reduced camera and build quality. You also get ads.

That battery alone makes this feel like a proper daily driver, and if the dimensity 9500s is as efficient as recent ones, this could be seriously dependable.

Poor thermals are why I'm moving away from Poco. I have the X6 and it gets hot even for normal use like doomscrolling. It's unbelievable. In India, good thermals are a necessity.

WHY DOES THIS NOT HAVE USB 3.0? I'm a photographer and I want to send photos quickly from my Canon or SD card reader. I need to transfer like 50GB of data, and that's why I still have to carry my laptop.

My next phone is going to be the Xiaomi 15T Pro. I prefer that one over this one. Poco phones are nice but Xiaomi main phones are better in my opinion.

On paper, the specs make sense because of the MTK Dimensity 9500s — you're getting flagship-level CPU cores, a strong GPU, and an efficient 3nm design. That combo should translate into smooth UI, fast app loads, and solid sustained gaming without aggressive throttling.

If Poco figures out the cameras, then it is definitely over for other brands in the midrange segment. I always recommended 1-3 year old flagship devices if you have a midrange budget, but hopefully that will change soon so everything becomes more price competitive.

Don't be fooled by Xiaomi — the X series would always be their least priority in terms of software updates. You may have the fastest SoC but that can only get you so far. Software is trash in Poco series phones. I highly recommend getting Xiaomi 15T at least for better software and camera experiences.