Poco’s affordable C Series got a new addition to its lineup last year. The Poco C65 made its India debut last month at a starting price of Rs 8,499 (4GB RAM + 128GB storage). The 6GB RAM + 128GB storage variant costs Rs 9,499 while the 8GB RAM + 256GB storage variant fetches Rs 10,999. These prices place the smartphone very close to the M6 5G (which we reviewed earlier) in Poco’s India catalogue. If you’re thinking the Poco C65 looks similar to the Redmi 13C, you’d be correct. The C65 is essentially a rebadged version of its Redmi counterpart. We used the smartphone for a week and put it through rigorous testing. Check out our Poco C65 review to see how it fared.
Read Also: CES 2024: Intel 14th Gen mobile processors including the new HX-Series for Gaming announced
In This Article
Poco C65 review: Design and Display
Inside the signature yellow Poco box, you get the smartphone, a 10W power adapter, a USB Type-C charging cable, a SIM ejector tool, and a quick start guide. There is no plastic cover for the smartphone inside the retail package neither does it come with a protective covering for the screen. The smartphone is available in two colour variants – Pastel Blue and Matte Black.
Poco has stuck to the wide form factor on the C65. Its back panel and frame are made entirely out of plastic, which is pretty much the norm in this price segment. We are pretty happy with the quality of materials used on the smartphone. The plastic back panel does not feel flimsy, which often is the case with a lot of budget phones. It has a matte finish to it and does not attract any fingerprints or smudges. The top section of the back panel gets a glossy finish and houses the camera cutouts.
The two camera cutouts contain three rear lenses. The primary shooter is placed in the upper housing while the auxiliary lens and macro sensor are positioned in the bottom unit. A small LED flash is placed on the right side of the cutouts and further along the right, you will find the Poco branding.
The right side of the plastic frame houses the volume rocker keys and the side button. The side button also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner. The bottom edge gets the microphone, USB port, and the speaker grille. The hybrid SIM slot is positioned on the left edge of the frame, which is otherwise keyless. Up top, you get the 3.5mm headphone jack. No stereo speaker or IR blaster for the C65. The selfie camera on the display is housed in a waterdrop notch.
The 6.74-inch IPS LCD is one of the biggest highlights of this smartphone. This 90Hz display is great for content watching. The smartphone’s wide form factor makes it even more pleasant to watch videos on it. With Widevine L1 support, you can access HD content across most major streaming platforms. The 720 x 1660p resolution of the display is optimum in this price range and it does justice to the HD content that is played on it. We were satisfied with the viewing angles as well. The images produced on the screen were contrasty, vivid, and packed with a good amount of detail.
Poco C65 review: Performance and Cameras
Powering this nifty little device is the MediaTek Helio G85 SoC. We aren’t big fans of the Helio chipsets, but they find their way into a lot of budget and entry-level smartphones. The Helio G85 is a three-year-old processor which does not support 5G connectivity. And there lies our biggest issue with the smartphone. For lightning-fast internet connectivity, Poco’s M6 smartphones make a much better option, albeit costing a small premium.
The general performance of the Poco C65 is well above average. The display provides a decent touch response, making browsing through apps and switching between tasks effortless and breezy. 600 nits of peak brightness fares well outdoors, even under direct sunlight. During the review period, we used the Poco C65 to check emails, attend video calls and meetings, browse the web, play videos across different streaming platforms, navigation, instant messaging, and even a bit of gaming. We were pleased to see that the smartphone handled these tasks pretty well. In the Geekbench 6 benchmark test, the C65 returned a single-core score of 436 points and a multi-core score of 1,387 points.
We played Free Fire Max and Call of Duty Mobile on the Poco C65. The gameplay lacked fluidity and the touch response was less than ideal. The single speaker on the smartphone isn’t able to replicate the proper audio needed to elevate the gaming experience either. While holding the phone in landscape orientation, it is pretty easy to muffle the speaker grille with the palm. The phone did not overheat even after 40 minutes of gameplay, but it must be noted that we were testing the device in the thick of the winter season.
OS duties on the Poco C65 are handled by Android 13-based MIUI 14. Xiaomi’s OS skin for Poco looks pretty neat on the device. We like the categorisation of the app drawer into different genres, the colour-coded app arrangement, and the range of home screen customisations. Our favourite part of using this OS is the seamless way in which it executes the hidden folder feature. To access all your hidden apps, all you need to do is swipe right twice on the app drawer and enter the password. The only downside of this OS is the tremendous volume of bloatware it ships with. We highly recommend taking the time to delete every bloatware app from the device and managing the pesky notifications.
The 5,000 mAh battery pack easily powers the smartphone for an entire day. We were even able to push the battery backup to a day and a half with more conservative usage. Using the device as our daily driver, we were clocking a daily Screen On Time of 5-6 hours on the Poco C65 during the review period. The smartphone supports 18W fast charging but ships with a 10W power adapter, which is weird. This 10W adapter takes 2 hours and 30 minutes to fully charge the device. Spending some extra cash on an 18W adapter would make your experience much better.
In terms of camera performance, the Poco C65 puts up a decent display. The primary 50MP shooter takes good shots in outdoor daylight conditions. The colours are tuned nicely although they don’t truly ‘pop’. The contrast and HDR on the pictures is satisfactory as well. We took a couple of shots indoors and were happy with the results. The camera does a good job of lighting up the subject and capturing all the important details. However, when you zoom in by 2x, the lack of details and ‘softness’ in the final images becomes discernible.
We took some shots in limited lighting with the Night Mode turned on and were satisfied with the result. This is not to say that the pictures were ideal by any means, but for a smartphone priced under Rs 10,000, the Poco C65 did well to manage the grain in the images. The pictures still had some softness to them, but the biggest compliment we can give to the camera is that you won’t completely ignore it when you have to take a picture at night.
In Portrait Mode, the camera does a good job of separating the subject from the background. This is where the 0.08MP auxiliary lens comes into play. It gathers important data related to depth and helps the main sensor to take good portrait shots. The application of the blur effect is a little off, but the overall portrait shots were good. The 2MP macro lens, however, is something we could do without, since the final results lacked the colour richness we are used to.
The 8MP selfie camera up front takes good shots in optimum lighting. It also does a decent job on video calls. The artificial skin brightening and smoothening effects have been kept to a minimum by default, which we like. The front and rear cameras can record 1080p videos at 30fps.
Read Also: Poco X6 Pro powered by MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra SoC launched in India, Poco X6 tagged along
Verdict
The Poco C65 is a decent smartphone that can give you tremendous mileage as a daily driver. The Rs 8,500 price tag looks great considering the device’s physical quality, form factor, display, and camera performance. However, the biggest miss on this smartphone is the lack of 5G connectivity. If that is something you consider essential on a device, we would suggest having a look at the Poco M6 and M6 Pro 5G (check out the review here).
Poco C65: Pros
- Wide form factor is good for watching videos
- Good display
- Decent camera
Poco C65: Cons
- No 5G connectivity
