The POCO F8 Ultra would be one week shy of one month from the day it was officially launched in the Philippines, and by now, we’ve heard everyone, from reviewers to users, hark on about its unbeatable price-to-performance ratio, upgraded cameras, and great speakers, co-tuned, of course, by Bose.
But there seems to be one aspect of the POCO F8 Ultra that most reviewers don’t give much attention to, and that’s the battery. According to POCO, the F8 Ultra’s 6500 mAh battery is the largest they’ve ever put in an F series phone.
So today, we’re giving it the full treatment, the whole nine yards, just to see if it lives up to the “Ultra” branding, just like the other features do.
Before we start…
The benchmark we used in testing the battery endurance of the POCO F8 Ultra is PCMark’s Work 3.0 Benchmark test. And to be completely transparent about our process before giving you the score, here’s a list of features we enabled and or disabled before running the test:
- The brightness was set as close to 50% as we could on the display slider to mimic average usage.
- Performance mode was set to Balanced, again to mimic daily usage.
- Refresh rate was set to the highest that the phone supports, which was 120Hz.
- The phone was charged to 100% before running the test.
- Airplane mode was enabled to prevent cellular drain, but Wi-Fi remained enabled.
- Volume was muted and notifications were turned off, as well as all background apps being closed.
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s see how the POCO F8 Ultra performed.
How did it perform?
On PCMark’s Work 3.0 Benchmark, the POCO F8 Ultra managed to last 18 hours and 53 minutes. That’s with multiple loops of web browsing, photo editing, and data manipulation. It’s the closest data that we could gather that mimics daily usage.
That number checks out with POCO’s claims that the F8 Ultra can last for more than 15 hours of continuous use. Of course, your usage may vary depending on what you do on your phone and how you do it. There are also environmental factors at play, like temperature and humidity.
But for a controlled test like PCMark, lasting for almost 19 hours is impressive considering the power that it packs. It just goes to show how efficient the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is when coupled with HyperOS 3 and a dedicated cooling system.
How about charging?
In our full review of the POCO F8 Ultra, I mentioned that when it comes to battery and charging, you win some, you lose some. We’ve already covered the part where you’re winning, and that’s the massive 6500 mAh battery, which performed marvelously.
If that’s the case, what are you losing? First is the included charging brick in the box, which can be substantial for some, considering you’re missing out on a 100W charging brick. The other is the step-down from the F7 Ultra’s 120W charging speed (and that’s with the brick included) to 100W.
Now, I can forgive the step down in speed because charging at higher speeds does heat up the battery more. Heat is bad for your battery because it accelerates the chemical reactions inside the battery, which shortens its lifespan. Plus, if you turn on smart charging, the phone doesn’t really charge constantly at 100W, it automatically adjusts the speeds based on temperature.
But the loss of a 100W charging brick does sting a bit. Thankfully, we have a spare 100W charging brick lying around to test the charging capability of the POCO F8 Ultra.
After running the PCMark benchmark, which left it with an 18% charge, we plugged in the POCO F8 Ultra and charged it to 100% with the Smart Charging and Battery Protection features disabled. The phone does detect when you’re using a 100W charging brick by showing a “100W Max” animation when plugged in.
To sum it up…
At the end of the day, the POCO F8 Ultra’s battery performance is one of its most underrated strengths. An almost 19-hour result on PCMark’s Work 3.0 Benchmark is no small feat, especially for a phone running a flagship grade chipset, a high refresh rate display, and a feature packed OS. It backs up POCO’s claims and then some.
Yes, there are compromises. The missing charging brick and the step down from 120W to 100W might sting, particularly for users upgrading from older Ultra models. But when you look at the bigger picture, the massive 6500 mAh battery, paired with the efficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and HyperOS 3, makes this a phone you can confidently use all day, and then some.
If you value long battery life just as much as raw performance, the POCO F8 Ultra doesn’t just play the numbers game. It proves that endurance can be just as Ultra as everything else it brings to the table.