Poco introduced its entry-level smartphone named Poco C51 Recently in the Indian market, around Rs. 8,000. Although you can find many smartphones in this range, there are only a few that really offer a good mix of features and performance. Competes with smartphones like the C51 lava youth 2 pro And Moto E13 in the market. Is the Poco C51 a good buy in this price range? Know in this review.
Poco C51 price in India
Poco C51 has been launched in a single variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, priced at Rs. 7,999. It is available in two color options, Power Black and Royal Blue, of which we have the latter for review.
Poco C51 design and software
As is often the case with entry-level smartphones, their designs are very simple and usually don’t say much about the build quality. However, this is not the case with the Poco C51. Personally, I feel that the smartphone has better design, grip and build quality than its rivals. It has a polycarbonate back panel with grainy texture, which I felt was comfortable to hold for long periods of time at a time. It offers good grip and the weight is distributed in such a way that it doesn’t feel heavy in the hand even though it weighs 192 grams.
A small camera module with a negligible bulge is available on the back of the Poco C51, which houses a dual-camera setup and an LED flash. Waterdrop-style notch is available in the front of the phone. Being an entry-level smartphone, you get thick bezels all around the display. The volume and power buttons are placed on the right side of the frame. The phone is relatively large, due to which you may have to struggle a bit to reach the volume buttons when using it with one hand.
The fingerprint sensor fits into the circular cutout on the back panel and is easy to reach. The bottom of the Poco C51 houses a Micro-USB port along with a 3.5mm headphone jack, and the top of the frame includes a single speaker that gets quite loud. On the left is the SIM slot, which supports two SIM cards and a microSD card. Overall, the design of the Poco C51 is good for an entry-level smartphone.
Poco C51 display is good but not great
Talking about the display, the Poco C51 features a 6.52-inch LCD display with 60Hz refresh rate and HD+ resolution. The display isn’t very crisp, but the quality is still above average for its segment. Colors look a bit washed out and there is no option to adjust them. Peak brightness is 400 nits, which may sound low on paper, but I had no problem viewing content even in direct sunlight.
Poco C51 offers clean software experience with Android 14 Go Edition. While writing this review, I received the March 2023 Android security patch update but nothing new yet. There are some preloaded apps that can be uninstalled. However, if you’re looking for advanced customization options, you won’t find them here. Overall, the interface is simple and basic and in some ways better than mid-range and premium Poco smartphones.
Poco C51 performance and battery life
The Poco C51 uses the MediaTek Helio G36 SoC, and the phone runs Android 13 Go Edition, which is a lite version of Android 13. Sadly, the software experience isn’t as smooth as I would have liked, even with this lightweight version of Android. , Even before loading any app or data, I found that the phone is very slow even in normal use. Apps in general took a long time to load and there was a visible lag in multitasking.
Being an entry-level device, it is not fair to expect much from the benchmark scores, but here are some numbers nonetheless. The Poco C51 managed a score of 101,771 in AnTuTu, and returned 5.7fps and 29fps in GFXbench, the Car Chase and T-Rex test suites, respectively. As far as gaming is concerned, the C51 could run Call of Duty: Mobile but load times were extremely long and there was occasional slight lag during gaming even at the lowest graphics settings. Simple games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Shadow Fight 4 ran smoothly on the smartphone.
Poco C51 has a Micro-USB port for charging
The Poco C51 houses a 5,000mAh battery, which only supports 10W charging. The device should comfortably last around two days with moderate to light usage (social media, instant messaging and calling, and a few hours of media streaming). In our HD video loop test, the C51 lasted 15 hours, 13 minutes, which is above average. However, with just 10W charging, you will have to wait for hours for it to fully recharge. I found that the phone charged only 21 percent in 30 minutes, and reached full charge in 2 hours, 40 minutes.
Poco C51 cameras
The Poco C51 gets a dual rear camera setup, which includes an 8-megapixel main camera and a VGA (0.3-megapixel) depth sensor. The main camera takes average looking pictures in good lighting. Colors are often dull in some shots and some were overexposed. HDR performance wasn’t consistent either. However, most of the photos were still usable for social media, without the need for extensive editing. The depth sensor didn’t do much in portrait mode, either the images had negligible bokeh, or the background was overexposed. Background blur also felt quite artificial.
Poco C51 daylight camera samples (Tap to see full size)
The main camera sensor struggled a lot in low light. Most of the pictures were a bit blurry and there was a lack of detail. The selfie camera is 5-megapixels and it clicks decent photos in daylight in both regular and portrait mode. However, edge detection is poor in the latter mode, as it doesn’t blur the background accurately. The front camera also struggles a lot in low light. There was a delay in the viewfinder when trying to frame subjects in low light, and images were quite noisy and lacked good detail.
Poco C51 low-light camera samples (tap to see full size)
Video recording performance was also average. Be it daylight, indoors or low light, the video recorded under all conditions was a bit blurry and lacked details. Both the rear and front cameras support recording up to 1080p at 30fps. The phone also comes with timelapse and short video shooting modes.
Poco C51: Should you buy it?
If you are looking for a budget phone with long battery life, bright display and good build quality, then you can consider Poco C51. Bear in mind that the performance is strictly average and the cameras too. If you need better cameras at this price, the Moto E13 should deliver better low-light image quality, along with decent system performance. It also has a USB Type-C port as a bonus.