This $400 budget gaming phone runs the same chip as the Nothing Phone 3

The POCO F5 and POCO F6 were two of the best gaming phones on a budget as they offered powerful chips for the price. Now, the Xiaomi sub-brand is back with the POCO F7.

The POCO F7 continues the trend of offering great performance for your buck, as it uses the brand-new Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 processor. This chipset offers an impressive CPU (1x Cortex-X4, 7x Cortex-A720) with no little cores. The chip also uses an Adreno GPU based on the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s sliced architecture, albeit with two slices instead of the high-end chip’s three slices. This processor theoretically means that the POCO F7 could offer performance that’s roughly on par with last year’s flagship phones. However, our own POCO F7 benchmark article reveals a sizable gap to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones when it comes to peak CPU and GPU performance, but sustained performance is another matter altogether.

In any event, I tried a few demanding games like Genshin Impact, GRID Legends, and War Thunder Mobile, and they all ran smoothly in extended play sessions. I also had enough headroom to turn up the graphics in GRID and War Thunder, and the device didn’t get hot, either. So you should definitely keep this phone in mind if you’re a mobile gamer on a budget.

POCO’s phone also has an impressively large 6,500mAh battery to keep the lights on. This means you should be able to game for a while compared to other handsets. This is a downgrade compared to the Chinese model (Redmi Turbo 4 Pro), which features a ridiculously large 7,550mAh battery, but a 6,500mAh battery is still plenty large in 2025. I’m also glad to see 90W wired charging here, with POCO claiming an 80% charge in 30 minutes. I reached the 80% mark in a slightly slower but still great 33 minutes. In fact, it only took 45 minutes for a 100% charge. Very impressive for a 6,500mAh battery.

The POCO F7 isn’t a photography champion by any measure. Expect a 50MP main camera (IMX882, OIS) and an 8MP ultrawide shooter. Meanwhile, a 20MP camera is available in a central punch-hole cutout for selfies. The cameras do a good job at 1x, but the ultrawide lens is a budget-tier camera that falls apart indoors and after sunset. The ultrawide camera also tends to differ wildly from the 1x camera in terms of image consistency. These cameras aren’t going to threaten the likes of the Pixel 9a, then. However, I am glad to see features like 4K/60fps video capture and motion capture functionality.

Otherwise, the new phone also offers a 6.83-inch 120Hz OLED screen (1.5K) that gets bright enough for outdoor viewing. As for the phone’s durability, you can expect an aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass 7i on the front, a glass back covered in Panda Glass, and an IP68 rating. In fact, this might be the first standard POCO F series phone (i.e., not Pro) with full-fledged water resistance. The F7 is quite hefty at 217 grams, though, putting it on par with the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

POCO is offering four years of major OS upgrades and six years of security patches. That’s not on par with Samsung’s six years of OS/security updates for the Galaxy A36 5G and seven years for the Pixel 9a, but it’s still a respectable update policy.

The POCO F7 starts at just $399/£389 for the base 12GB/256GB model, while the 16GB/512GB model costs $449/£429. This makes it slightly cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy A36 5G (£399) and significantly cheaper than the Google Pixel 9a (£499). The company is also offering early bird promotional pricing, taking the phone down to a base price of $339 and £319.

The phone will be available in various markets, including Europe, India, Latin America, the UK, and Southeast Asia. POCO is also offering the device in Black, White, and a special Silver option with a Snapdragon logo on the back. So you should definitely give this a look if you want a cheap, powerful, and long-lasting phone  — if you don’t care about the camera experience.