On Creative Bloq, we know it's not all about the latest and most expensive tech. Affordable alternatives to popular products are essential for getting the job done with a tighter budget. With this in mind, I think I've found a new addition to our best budget camera phones guide, with the POCO X6 Pro.
I've been using this smartphone for a few months now, and I'm seriously impressed with its AI camera features and overall performance. If you aren't familiar with POCO, it is a more affordable sub-brand of Xiaomi, which also owns Redmi. Xiaomi makes excellent top-grade camera phones, like the Xiaomi 14 (which blew our Tech Reviews Editor away with its quality). Erlingur described it as "the greatest phone camera" he'd ever seen.
The POCO X6 Pro has a retail price of £369 / $375 but can be bought on Amazon right now for just £299 in the UK with a two-year warranty. There are plenty of other POCO phones out there, some even cheaper than this one – see the Poco M6 Pro (only $132/£103) – but the reason I'm highlighting the POCO X6 Pro is that it ticks so many boxes for creatives, and proves that phones don't need to cost more than a mortgage to be suitable for content creation.
I've listed some of the key specs of the Xiaomi Poco X6 Pro below.
I own the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra as my everyday camera phone, and while I've found that nothing compares to the quality of this phone, at least in my opinion, there's no denying that for under £300, the POCO X6 Pro really gives it a run for its money and can hold its own supremely well.
I even had a shoot-off between these two camera phones inside a plant store in central Bath, and as you can see from the results below, there's not an overwhelming difference in quality when exported online. Although you would definitely notice the difference when zooming in or exporting for print.
I'll try and keep this short, but the standout features of the POCO X6 Pro for photography include its triple AI camera array, offering a 64MP main camera (f/1.7), plus a macro and ultra-wide camera.
It has built-in optical image stabilization, and the ability to create long exposures, panoramas, time lapses, and apply filters that are actually nice and not over-processed. You have full manual control over the aperture and blur control in portraits, can make use of motion tracking focus, and my favourite feature was the voice-activated shutter for a hands-free experience.
Bizarrely, last year's POCO X5 Pro model boasts a higher 108MP main camera than the X6 Pro, although this new model trumps its sibling in almost every other area and is equipped with wider apertures at minimum focal lengths. We also know that megapixels aren't an accurate way to determine overall image quality anymore, with pixel binning and compression playing a part. The X6 Pro also supports HEIF (high-efficiency image file format) and HDR10+ video recording.
The X6 Pro is also one of the first phones of 2024 to ship with Xiaomi’s latest HyperOS operating system, as opposed to MIUI, and boasts a MediaTek Dimensity 8300-Ultra processor, which is an improvement on the mid-range Snapdragon chips found in most budget smartphones at this price point. This means that performance has not been sacrificed in this phone for the benefit of affordability.
It's not as commonly available as most other smartphones, but you can purchase the POCO X6 Pro directly from POCO's website, on Amazon, or via wholesaler sites like Aliexpress.
For all of the best deals and prices on POCO tech in your region, see our clever deals widget below. It updates 24/7, working around the clock to find you the best offers from local retailers, so keep checking back for the right time to buy.
