Poco, Xiaomi’s budget sub-brand has been doing rather well in India. It has been able to successfully pivot according to the ever-changing market preferences and the new C71 is proof. It packs in many incremental feature upgrades over last year’s C61. The C71 comes in three attractive colourways and we tested the base variant in the ‘Cool Blue’ colourway with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. The C71 ships with a 15W charging brick, a USB Type-A to Type-C charging cable and not much else, which is perfectly acceptable considering its price. It has grown in size from the C61 and now sports a 6.86mm IPS LCD screen with 120Hz refresh rate and HD+ (1640 x 720) resolution with 600 nits of peak brightness. It also comes TÜV Rheinland certified and together with the high refresh rate, ensures that extended usage doesn’t irritate the eyes. This is a big phone and as such, using it with one hand only is unadvisable. However, it is light enough to not be too overbearing.
The back panel is matte plastic with a shimmering 3D dual gradient colourblocked finish accompanied by a pattern of intersecting lines, which looks quite appealing. This brings me to a pet gripe; why do most smartphones have to look boring? If a budget brand can make a sub ₹7,000 device look this attractive, why do manufacturers of much more expensive devices just push out a meagre selection of uninspiring solid colours and call it a day? Apart from the styling, the plastic chassis with its rounded corners and soft edges feels sturdy and good to hold. The power button also doubles as a reasonably accurate fingerprint scanner. Oppo has bundled in a basic IP52 rating, which is always good to have in any smartphone.
A large yet slim camera bump houses the main 32MP rear camera, which is a substantial upgrade over the C61’s 8MP unit. The camera performs best under ideal lighting and the overall quality of the photos is good enough for the price point. Videos are also recorded with decent clarity. The front camera housed in a water-drop notch has also grown to 8MP from the C61’s 5MP snapper and does a better job of clicking selfies. Both cameras can record videos in 1080p at a maximum 30fps.
The base model C71’s 12nm octa-core Unisoc T7250 processor combined with a minimum of 4GB of RAM is a marginal improvement over the C61’s MediaTek Helio G36, which came with 3GB of RAM in the base model. The top-spec variant gets 6GB of RAM and 128 gigs of storage, which is the same as the older C61. It runs on Android 15 Go Edition and bloatware has been kept to a minimum. Interestingly, Oppo is promising two major software upgrades, and four years of security patches, which, considering the C71’s price, is definitely surprising.
Performance is adequate for daily usage including productivity tasks and media consumption. The sole loudspeaker is mounted on the top and can get quite loud without losing clarity and a 3.5mm audio jack has been provided at the bottom. The 5,200mAh battery easily lasts for more than a day and with moderate usage, might even last two. This characteristic makes the C71 a great secondary phone to have.
To conclude, the Poco C71 is quite a value-for-money option at its starting price of ₹6,499. It can be a good beginner smartphone as it covers all the basics, is well built and also looks quite appealing and can also serve as a backup smartphone for people who solely use more power-hungry devices as their primary smartphone.
