The Poco F9 Ultra closes in on mainstream flagships, at a far lower price

Poco has been producing anti-flagship phones for quite some time now, and while its latest F9 Ultra bumps up the price it's still a seriously competitive alternative to your go-to high-end Ultra Android devices.

The Poco F9 Ultra starts at $799 for a 12GB / 256GB configuration, moving up to $949 for 16GB / 512GB and $1,199 for 16GB / 1TB. That's $500 less than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra at the bottom end of the spec list and $600 less if you're going for the full 1TB.

Considering it's packing a stunning visual and auditory experience, the battery life to see more casual users through days of pocket carrying, and enough speed to push the biggest games to their limits, things are looking pretty good here.

RedMagic has ruled the best gaming phone roost year round, but if you don't want those hard angles and industrial aesthetics the Poco F9 Ultra could well be your next upgrade.

Key features

The first thing you might notice casting an eye over the Poco F9 Ultra's spec sheet is its use of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset. It's the brain powering the RedMagic 11 Pro at the top of the Android gaming tier list and you'll find the same chip in the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra as well.

Essentially, it's as fast as you'll find in most flagship releases from the last 12 months, even if the Gen 6 model is poised to take over in a short while. This is the base version, rather than the overclocked 8 Elite Gen 5 Leading Version positioned in the newer, and more expensive, RedMagic 11S Pro.

Xiaomi has matched up 256GB storage options with 12GB RAM, while 512GB and 1TB models both upgrade to 16GB. Notably, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra will still keep you at a lower memory amount with 512GB of storage.

Design

Having come from older Poco devices, there's nothing budget about this model's looks. The F9 Ultra could be an iPhone 18 Pro Max at first glance, with its soft rounded corners, bold grape color, and accented bulge around the camera array at the top.

It's a sophisticated design that marries well with the trends of more premium devices today. From its flat sides to soft-touch finishing on the rear panel, the Poco F9 Ultra certainly feels like an upgrade in the hand.

It's not quite backing that luxury up with its build materials compared to the real flagships, though. While the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra upgrades you to full Corning Gorilla Glass Armor 2, the F9 Ultra uses a simpler Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which will drop anti-glare features. It's still the go-to for durability and scratch protection, but not the top end of the market.

Poco shares its aluminum frame with Samsung and Apple flagships, but swaps the former's Gorilla Armor 2 and the latter's Ceramic Shield glass backs for a lighter, cheaper glass-fiber polymer backing.

That doesn't mean it drops weight, though. In fact, I have smaller hands and struggled to wield full control of the F9 Ultra when held vertically in one hand. At 235g it's not wildly out of contention with its peers. The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra goes a little easier on the joints at 214g, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max comes in even heavier at 239g.

Sometimes cumbersome heft aside, though, that additional weight goes a long way to keeping the Poco F9 Ultra's overall feel competitive with far more expensive releases. There's a satisfying clunk to this thing, and landscape gaming positioning never felt too awkward over longer sessions.

Display

The main face is a 6.9-inch AMOLED display running at a blistering 185Hz refresh rate (though the vast majority of titles won't be able to make the most of those speeds), Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support, and a 1,200x2,608 resolution at a 416ppi density.

This is Samsung's M11 generation OLED panel, touted for far greater efficiency over previous displays while marketing materials are shouting about 10,000 nits of peak brightness. It's a particularly dazzling screen, yes, but those headlines should be taken with a grain of salt. Across the whole screen at once, this thing is generally hitting around 2,000 to 2,500 nits in its high brightness mode.

That's still going to be particularly punchy, and colors are represented well straight out of the box. Additional customization sliders are available for fine-tuning that color handling as you would like as well. Without any tweaks, colors remain vibrant and clearly defined, with even lower light video and game portions benefiting from enhanced detail and an appropriately moody tone.

Things aren't quite as bold as the RedMagic 11 Pro here, but there's a subtlety that the high-contrast cartoon-favoring Nubia device can't quite match. While RedMagic's panel seems a touch sharper in its presentation, the Poco F9 Ultra still manages to pair high-impact colors with natural toning.

Of course, we can't discuss that screen without talking about the full audio-visual experience when debating the F9 Ultra. That's because the OLED display is also accompanied by a robust three-speaker system pairing two stereo with one subwoofer for a 2.1 audio setup.

Located on the main back panel, this additional subwoofer comes courtesy of Bose, rounding out your phone's audio with a layer of bass that texturizes movies, music, and in-game sound effects in a way I haven't experienced before. You can leave the earbuds in the drawer for this one.

Cameras

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A phone with this kind of screen refresh rate and power under the hood is usually geared towards dedicated mobile gamers, thereby dropping its focus on camera quality. Instead, the Poco F9 Ultra manages to squeeze an impressively competent 200MP main wide camera into its spec sheet, followed up with a 50MP ultrawide and a telephoto zoom at 50MP as well.

Stock daylight photos from the main camera run with clarity, a bold pop of color, and confident color handling. That's in the usual 50MP shooting mode, whacking things up to the dedicated 200MP shooting mode might have its appeal for those framing individually composed shots particularly thoughtfully (as long as subjects are still). For everyday use, though, its results aren't strong enough to warrant the extra shooting time.

Still, this is far more than you'll find on a traditional gaming device. In bright lighting, shots are toned nicely, with no over-processed color vibrancy, and a crisp, clean result. Darker scenes still give it something to think about, with smudges and smears creeping into finer details and a drop in both color and sharpness handling.

Highlights are well balanced, though, and more information has been retained by the sensor compared to cheaper dedicated gaming alternatives.

Software

Everything is running on Android 16 with HyperOS 3 over the top, good for four major OS updates in the future. There's a lot of extras to wade through when first setting up, with the usual suspects pre-installed and a range of additional menus to spring through as well. Overall, the software itself runs well with no bugs, hitches, or glitches in my weeks of testing. I never experienced menu slowdown or crashing, and navigation felt smooth.

There's a lot of borrowing here as well. Hyper Island functions similarly to Apple's Dynamic Island, with an always-on minimized view of certain apps and processes like timers, Spotify, and recording.

Gaming

Xiaomi made the choice to block UL Benchmarks' 3D Mark tool on its Poco devices, which means we've got good old lived experience to go off here. Geekbench 7 throws up a sturdy score of 2055 single-core and 8865 multi-core.

In practice this makes for incredibly smooth gameplay, whether I'm exploring Genshin Impact or stacking up a battlefield in MTG Arena. The 185Hz refresh rate doesn't exactly come into its own, there are only about 20 titles with support for these kinds of speeds.

It does, however, mean that more demanding titles, like the above and Call of Duty Mobile, can comfortably run in their higher graphical settings without having to sacrifice framerates. Too high a ceiling in a device undercutting others in price is never a bad thing.

Battery

Powering everything is a massive 8,050mAh battery, stomping all over the S26 Ultra's 5,000mAh and topping RedMagic's 7,500mAh on its 11-Series devices. Plough through that and you'll be glad for the 100W wired charging as well. In casual use, a few lighter games, music streaming, YouTube, calls and texts, and web browsing, I didn't need to plug in until day three.

Straight out the box (so with a fresh battery) an hour of Genshin Impact drove my charge down by 6% at 50% brightness, and 10% at full brightness. An hour of YouTube only killed 3% of the charge at 50%.

Should you buy the Poco F9 Ultra?

The Poco F9 Ultra is a sophisticated piece of tech undercutting its mainstream flagship competitors in price pretty easily. While that budget option would have been a lot cheaper a few years ago, the power, camera system, battery life, and combination of display and boosted speakers make for a compelling alternative to both dedicated gaming phones and fancy annual releases.

While its size and weight can prove a little tricky to wield in smaller hands, those after an immersive streaming, gaming, and web browsing experience that keeps up with the big dogs should certainly be interested.

How I tested the Poco F9 Ultra

I used the Poco F9 Ultra as my daily driver for a period of two weeks, with an additional week spent with the iPhone 13 Pro in my pocket for comparison. During that time, it ran my entire life while I also tested it across Call of Duty Mobile, Genshin Impact, MTG Arena, TMNT, and Marvel Snap. Battery tests were performed at both 50% and full brightness, while system performance was measured in Geekbench 7. For more information on how we make our recommendations, check out the full GamesRadar+ Hardware Policy.

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