Poco X6 Neo 5G First Impressions

Poco added a Neo phone to the X6 lineup today and it brings some impressive specs for its price. According to the company, this is the thinnest Poco smartphone yet. The most interesting feature of the phone, at least the one that caught our attention, was the display. It has uniform and thin bezels all around, which is not something you will find on a phone that costs under Rs. 20,000. We’ve been using the Poco X6 Neo 5G for a few days now and here’s our first look at the phone.

Starting with the design, the front of the Poco X6 Neo is better than the back. Poco has managed to reduce the bezels evenly on all sides, meaning there’s no fat chin here. The company advertises a screen-to-body ratio of 93.30%, which is quite impressive. The left and right bezels are only 1.5mm thin, while the top and bottom are 2mm and 2.5mm respectively.

The display offers 120Hz refresh rate and full-HD+ resolution. It’s a 6.67-inch AMOLED panel that’s protected by Gorilla Glass 5. You get a punch-hole cutout at the top for the selfie camera. For content consumption and gaming, this is an excellent panel. We’ll test the display extensively in our full review.

Turning to the back, the back panel is plastic and has a marble finish that looks unique when the light hits it. We’re using the Martian Orange variant of the Poco X6 Neo and it looks like the back panel pattern should resemble the surface of Mars (it doesn’t).

It has a dual camera setup with a primary 108-megapixel sensor. I tested the camera and it seems to take good photos in daylight. Once again, we’ll be testing the cameras in our full review, so stay tuned for that. The cameras are placed on top of a rectangular module, which is similar to what we’ve seen on other phones in the Poco X6 series. The handset has flat sides with slightly pointed parts, which makes it comfortable to hold despite its large size. The frame also seems to be made of plastic.

In terms of connectivity, the smartphone has a USB Type-C port at the bottom, an IR blaster at the top, dual-band Wi-Fi, dual-SIM 5G support, GPS and Bluetooth 5.3. It also gets an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. The volume and power buttons are located on the right side of the phone, with the power button also acting as a fingerprint scanner. The scanner registered my fingerprint quickly and worked well. Poco has included a single speaker in the X6 Neo, but you get a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top.

In terms of hardware, the Poco X6 Neo is equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 6080 SoC, which is paired with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. In the few days we used the phone, things were mostly fast, with the occasional lag. However, we’ll need to run some games and benchmarks and use the phone more to find out how it fares in everyday tasks. Will it heat up during intense gaming sessions? You’ll have to wait for the full review to find out.

On the software side, the Poco X6 Neo comes with MIUI 14 based on Android 13. The company offers two years of Android updates and four years of security patches. When most phones, including the other phones in the Poco X6 series, are running Android 14, it’s disappointing to see the Neo on Android 13. There’s also a lot of bloatware on the phone, but we’ll dive deep into them or run away from them in full. review.

Poco has packed a 5,000mAh battery on the X6 Neo that supports 33W fast charging. You also get the charger in the box, which is nice. The outstanding features in this price range – the phone starts at Rs. 15,999 — are the display and the 108-megapixel rear camera. How will the phone fare against the competition? We’ll find out in the full review, which should be out soon.