Poco C51: Price in India
The Poco C51 has been launched in only 4GB RAM and 64GB storage configuration, priced at Rs 7,999. It has been introduced in two color options named Power Black and Royal Blue, out of which we had the Royal Blue color variant for review.
Poco C51: Design and display
It often happens with entry-level segment devices that their design is very simple and the build quality is also not very strong, but this is not the case with Poco C51. The smartphone comes with better design, grip and build quality than its competitors. It has a polycarbonate back panel, which has a grainy texture. My experience of holding it in the hand for a long time was good. It has a good grip and the weight is distributed in such a way that it does not feel heavy in the hand, even though it weighs 192 grams.
There is a small camera module at the back, which includes a dual camera setup and an LED flash. There is almost no bulge in the module. At the same time, a waterdrop style notch is given at the front. Being an entry-level smartphone, you will also get to see thick bezels all around. The volume and lock/unlock/power buttons are fitted on the right side of the frame. The phone is relatively a bit larger, due to which you may have to work a bit to reach the volume button while using the phone with one hand. The fingerprint sensor is fitted in the center at the top of the back and it is easy to reach there. The bottom has a microUSB port with a 3.5mm headphone jack and a single speaker is included on top of the frame, which is quite loud. At the same time, there is a SIM slot on the left, which also supports a microSD card along with two SIMs. Overall, the design of the Poco C51 is good being an entry-level smartphone.
Talking about the display, the Poco C51 has a 6.52-inch IPS LCD display, which is equipped with a standard refresh rate and HD+ resolution. The display is not very crisp, but the quality is above average. The colors appear a bit dull in it and you do not even get the option to adjust them. Its peak brightness is 400nits, which may be low on paper, but I did not face any difficulty in viewing the content even in direct sunlight. Overall, the display quality is above average for the price.
Poco C51: Performance
The Poco C51 gets a MediaTek Helio G36 SoC and has been launched in a single 4GB RAM variant. The company has given Android 13 Go Edition in the smartphone, which is a kind of light version of Android 13. I expected the chipset to work smoothly in combination with the light Android version, but this was not the case with my unit. With the first boot, I found the phone to be quite slow even in normal use. App loading time was high and lag was seen in transitions. Being an entry-level device, it was not right to expect much from the benchmark score, but still I tested it in AnTuTu and GFXBench. The device scored 101,771 in the AnTuTu benchmark, which was not normal according to the platform. At the same time, in GFXBench’s Car Chase test, the phone scored 338 frames, 865.9 frames in Manhattan 3.1 and 1,642 frames in T-Rex.
As far as gaming is concerned, with this hardware, it is not fair to expect good performance in graphics demanding games like Call of Duty: Mobile or Genshin Impact, but still, the phone was able to run Call of Duty: Mobile. However, the load time was very high and there were some minor lags while gaming even at the lowest graphics settings. But, the experience of games like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Shadow Fight 4 was smooth on the smartphone.
Poco C51: Battery and software
The Poco C51 gets a 5,000mAh battery, which supports 10W charging. The device can easily last about 2 days with some social media scrolling, some instant messaging and calling, and a few hours of media streaming. In our HD video loop test, the phone lasted about 15 hours and 13 minutes on a full charge, which is above average. However, with 10W charging you will have to wait for hours for it to be fully charged. I found that the phone charged from 0-21 percent in 30 minutes and 0-100 percent in 2 hours 40 minutes.
With boot, I got Android 13 Go Edition in the device and at the time of writing the review, I received the two-month-old March 2023 Android security patch update. The Poco C51 has a clean experience with Go Edition. There were a few pre-loaded apps that can be removed. However, if you want a lot of customization options, then you will not get it here at all. The settings have only useful options and in the notification bar too, you get some essential options in the form of big buttons, which you can replace or add new options to the panel. It is definitely good for older people. Overall, I found the software of the C51 quite good compared to the mid-range and premium Poco smartphones.
Poco C51: Camera
The Poco C51 has a dual rear camera setup, which includes an 8-megapixel main camera and a VGA depth sensor. The main camera works well in good light. At times, colors appear dull in some shots and the pictures were overexposed. HDR performance was also not consistent. The background was overexposed in some pictures. However, most of the pictures were good enough to post on social media without editing. The depth sensor does its job. In portrait mode, either the pictures had almost no bokeh effect, or the background was overexposed. The background was blurred in some pictures, but it looked quite artificial.
Top to Bottom: Primary Camera
The main camera sensor struggled a lot in low light. Most of the photos were a bit blurry and lacked detail.
Primary camera in low light
The selfie camera is 5-megapixel, which takes good pictures in daylight in both photo and portrait mode. However, the background is not blurred well in portrait mode due to poor edge detection. At the same time, like the rear main sensor, the front camera also struggles a lot in low light. As soon as the light decreased, there was a problem of lag in the viewfinder and there was a lot of noise in the pictures along with lack of details.
At the same time, the video performance was also average. In all conditions, be it daylight, indoor or low-light, the videos captured were slightly blurry and lacked details. Both the rear and front cameras support recording up to 1080p at 30fps. The phone comes with timelapse and short video features.
Poco C51: Should you buy it?
Poco C51 is currently available in the market at its price Poco C51 a direct collision of Lava Yuva 2 Pro And Moto E13 If you are looking for long battery life, bright display and loud speakers with good build quality, then you can buy Poco C51, but performance is one of the biggest parts where Poco C51 disappointed me. At the same time, the cameras also give average performance. On the other hand, Moto E13 gives you better low-light camera quality than Poco with good performance and it also comes with USB Type-C port. You can also take a look at this smartphone at a similar price.