Announced August 2026 · Released August 2026
GSMTechTok Score
POCO's mid-2026 battery-first budget pick — an 8,000mAh cell in a chassis that stays a genuinely slim 8.45mm, an unusually strong figure for a battery this size. It runs on near-identical underlying hardware to Xiaomi's own Redmi Note 17 (same Snapdragon 4 Gen 4, same 8,000mAh/45W battery class, similar 6.9" AMOLED panel) — not a coincidence, since POCO devices are routinely built on shared Xiaomi/Redmi platforms rebadged for a different price point and market. What's genuinely different here is the IP65 rating (Redmi Note 17 has none listed) and a lower India launch price. Currently India-official only, with no confirmed Europe/global rollout.
Available colours
The POCO M8 Power is for a buyer who wants to eliminate charging anxiety entirely and is willing to accept real, disclosed compromises on gaming performance and camera quality to get there. MySmartPrice's lab testing frames this directly: "battery life and display quality emerging as its biggest strengths," making it "a practical choice for routine use" rather than a well-rounded all-rounder. It suits someone who values multi-day endurance above almost everything else — Digit's week-long testing found the phone never ran out during a full day of heavy gaming, streaming, and calls, and stretched to a day and a half on lighter days. It's a weaker fit for anyone who games seriously or wants the sharpest camera, since MySmartPrice's own assessment is direct that "limited gaming performance" and "an average camera experience" hold the phone back from feeling complete.
Battery life is the phone's entire reason for being, and it delivers on real, measured terms — Digit's PCMark Work 3.1 battery test recorded 20 hours and 9 minutes of screen-on time, a genuinely strong result even though Digit notes some smaller-battery phones have pushed past 22-23 hours in the same benchmark. The 8,000mAh capacity in a chassis that stays reasonably slim is a real engineering achievement worth crediting specifically, since large-battery phones have traditionally meant significant bulk. Charging is handled sensibly too — Digit confirms POCO includes the full 45W brick in the box, with a complete charge taking 1 hour 43 minutes, a reasonable wait given the cell size, plus genuinely useful 22.5W reverse wired charging for topping up other devices. Display quality is a real strength as well: MySmartPrice's testing specifically credits "large AMOLED panel" quality among the phone's biggest strengths, alongside "dependable everyday performance" for non-gaming tasks.
Gaming performance is the most consistently disclosed weakness — MySmartPrice's own summary states "limited gaming performance" plainly as one of the phone's core compromises, a real trade-off for the battery capacity gained. Camera quality is a genuine, disclosed limitation too: MySmartPrice found only "an average camera experience," and this catalog's own camera subscore (58, notably lower than every other sub-score) reflects a single 50MP lens with no ultrawide or telephoto, a real capability gap versus rivals that include a second camera at a similar price. Build quality is a real, disclosed step down as well — MySmartPrice's assessment notes "a basic build" prevents the phone from feeling like a complete package despite its battery and display strengths. And regional availability is a genuine, practical limitation for most buyers: as of this listing, the POCO M8 Power is officially sold only in India, with no confirmed timeline for a European or wider global launch — buyers elsewhere would need to import it.