Poco recently launched its entry-level smartphone called the Poco C51 in the Indian market, which costs around 100,000 rupees. 8,000. While there are many smartphones in this range, there are few that really offer a good mix of features and performance. The C51 competes in the market with smartphones like the Lava Yuva 2 Pro and the Moto E13. Is the Poco C51 a good buy in this price range? Find out in this review.
Poco C51 price in India
The Poco C51 was launched in a single variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage which is priced at Rs. 7,999. It comes in two color options: Power Black and Royal Blue, the latter of which we have to test.
Poco C51 design and software
As is so often the case with entry-level smartphones, the design is usually kept very simple and there is usually not much to say about the build quality. However, this is not the case with the Poco C51. Personally, I think the smartphone has a better design, grip and build quality compared to its competitors. The back is made of polycarbonate with a grainy texture that I find feels comfortable in the hand even with prolonged stretching. It offers good support and the weight is distributed in such a way that it is not heavy in the hand despite its weight of 192g.
On the back of the Poco C51 is a small camera module with negligible bulge that includes a dual camera setup and an LED flash. The phone features a waterdrop style notch on the front. Since this is an entry-level smartphone, the display has thick bezels around the display. The volume and power buttons are placed on the right side of the frame. The phone is relatively large, so you may have to struggle to reach the volume buttons when using it with one hand.
Housed in a circular recess on the back, the fingerprint sensor is easy to reach. There’s a micro-USB port on the underside of the Poco C51, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack, and there’s a single speaker on the top of the frame that gets pretty 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.
The Poco C51’s display is decent, but not great
As for the display, the Poco C51 sports a 6.52-inch LCD display with a standard 60Hz refresh rate and HD+ resolution. The display isn’t particularly sharp, but the quality is still above average for its segment. The colors appear a bit dull and there is no way to adjust them. Peak brightness is 400 nits, which might seem low on paper, but I had no trouble viewing content, even in direct sunlight.
The Poco C51 offers a clean software experience with Android 14 Go Edition. At the time of writing this review, I have received the March 2023 Android security patch update, but nothing new yet. There are some pre-installed apps that can be uninstalled. However, if you’re looking for advanced customization options, you won’t find it here. Overall, the user interface is plain and simple, and in some ways better than mid-range and premium Poco smartphones.
Performance and battery life of the Poco C51
The Poco C51 uses a MediaTek Helio G36 SoC and the phone runs Android 13 Go Edition, a lite version of Android 13. Unfortunately, even with this light version of Android, the software experience isn’t as smooth as I would have liked had . Even before any apps or data loaded, I found that the phone was very slow even with normal usage. Apps generally took a long time to load and there were visible lags when multitasking.
Since this is an entry-level device, you can’t expect much from the benchmark results, but here are some numbers anyway. The Poco C51 got a score of 101,771 in AnTuTu and in GFXbench it delivered 5.7 fps and 29 fps respectively in the Car Chase and T-Rex test suites. As for gaming, while the C51 can run Call of Duty: Mobile, loading times were very slow and there were occasional minor lags when gaming, even on the lowest graphics settings. Simpler games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Shadow Fight 4, etc. ran well on the smartphone.
The Poco C51 has a micro USB port for charging
The Poco C51 packs a 5,000mAh battery that supports charging at just 10W. With moderate to light usage (social media, instant messaging and calls, and a few hours of media streaming), the device easily lasts about two days. In our HD video loop test, the C51 lasted 15 hours and 13 minutes, which is above average. However, with only a 10W charge, you will have to wait hours for the device to be fully charged. I found the phone was only 21 percent charged in 30 minutes and fully charged in 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Poco C51 cameras
The Poco C51 features a dual rear camera setup that includes an 8-megapixel main camera and a VGA depth sensor (0.3-megapixel). The main camera takes average-looking photos in good light. In some shots, the colors often appear dull 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 doesn’t seem to do much like it does in portrait mode, either the images either had negligible bokeh or the background was overexposed. The background blur also seemed quite artificial.
Examples of Poco C51 daylight cameras (tap to view full size)
The main camera sensor struggled a lot in low light conditions. Most of the photos were a little blurry and lacked detail. The selfie camera has 5 megapixels and takes good photos in daylight in both normal and portrait modes. However, edge detection is poor in the latter mode as the background is not accurately blurred. The front camera also has major problems in poor lighting conditions. There was lag in the viewfinder when attempting to capture subjects in low light, and images were quite noisy and lacked good detail.
Examples of Poco C51 cameras in low light (tap to view full size)
Video recording performance was also average. Whether in daylight, indoors or in low light conditions, the videos recorded were slightly blurry and lacked detail in all conditions. Both the rear and front cameras support recording up to 1080p at 30 frames per second. The phone also has time-lapse and short video recording modes.
Poco C51: should you buy it?
If you are looking for a budget phone with a long battery life, bright display and good build quality, then you can consider the Poco C51. Bear in mind that the performance is strictly average, as are the cameras. If you need better cameras at this price point, the Moto E13 should offer better low-light image quality and decent system performance. As a bonus, it also has a USB Type-C port.
