Is This The Best Smartphone Under $100 of 2024? POCO C65 REVIEW

The last budget smartphone from POCO in 2023 was the POCO C65, and it is still one of the most popular ultra budget smartphones in 2024. Why is that so? Because of the price to specs ratio.

At only $100, the smartphone offers a large 6.74-inch display with 90Hz refresh rate, Helio G85 chipset, up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, 50MP camera and 5000mAh battery.

You know, I don’t expect miracles from this smartphone, but given its very affordable price, I think it will be one of the most popular models of the brand in 2024.

In this article, we will test the POCO C65 smartphone in detail, and talk about its pros and cons.

Unboxing

Like all POCO smartphones, the new POCO C65 comes in a bright yellow box.

The sticker shows that I have a model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. My smartphone is black, but it is also available in purple and blue.

Inside the box is the smartphone, SIM needle, user manual, USB Type-C charging cable and power adapter.

By the way, the power adapter is only 10W, but the smartphone supports 18W fast charging. If you want your smartphone to charge faster, you will need to buy a new power adapter.

I am also surprised that a protective case is not included. I know it is an ultra-budget smartphone, but a silicone case is a must-have.

Design

Talking about the design of the POCO C65, first, I should say that it is a pretty large smartphone, because it has a 6.74-inch display. We will come back to the screen a little later, but for now, let’s take a look at the rear panel of the smartphone.

Here we can see the familiar design for POCO smartphones, because we tested POCO M5 about one year ago, and it had a similar glossy panel.  However, it still looks very nice compared to mobile devices of other brands.

The rest of the back panel looks like it is rough, but it is actually smooth as well.

Maybe Xiaomi didn’t put a protective case in the package so we cannot hide this beauty? The back panel really looks nice.

However, I am confused by the camera sensors because they are huge. Although there are two circles here, the second one has two cameras. We will test the cameras a little later in this article.

There is also a flashlight next to the cameras.

You know, I cannot imagine a smartphone without a fingerprint scanner in 2024, and it is located in the power button on the right side of the POCO C65. The fingerprint reader works pretty fast.

There is also a volume rocker on this side of the smartphone.

The slot for Dual SIM and memory cards is on the other side.

Another feature of the POCO C65 is a 3.5mm headphone jack. You know, for some reason only ultra budget smartphones still have an audio jack, while mid-range and flagship smartphones have forgotten about it.

Finally, there is a USB Type-C charging port, speaker and microphone at the bottom.

I have already said that the POCO C65 smartphone is quite large, and its dimensions are 168 x 78 x 8.1 mm. The weight is 195 grams.

By the way, it is not advertised anywhere, but in the user manual, I found that the smartphone has IP52 water resistance. This guarantees protection from dust and splashes.

Display

Now let’s go back to the display.

First, there is a waterdrop notch above the screen with a front-facing camera. As I said before, the display diagonal is 6.74 inches.

The POCO C65 is an ultra-budget smartphone, so it has HD+ screen resolution, 720 x 1600 pixels. I cannot say it is a big problem or a problem at all, because the text reads fine, and the videos are watchable too.

However, the display supports a 90Hz refresh rate. That’s very good for an ultra-budget smartphone. Surfing social media is really smooth, and I think it will be good for gaming.

If we started talking about gaming, let’s move on to hardware.

Hardware

The POCO C65 is powered by a Helio G85 chipset. I have a model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of built-in memory, but the smartphone is also available in the version with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

By the way, the Chinese company says that the RAM is expandable. You can really increase it by another 6GB in the settings. In theory, my smartphone has 12GB of RAM now.

The POCO C65 also supports microSD memory cards up to 1TB.

Let’s take a look at the benchmark test results.

Benchmarks

First, I think you are interested in the AnTuTu score. The POCO C65 has 279,497 points in this benchmark.  That’s good for a $100 smartphone.

In the single core test of GeekBench 6, the POCO C65 has 438 points, and 1274 points in the multicore test.

After opening the 3DMark benchmark, we are prompted to run the Wild life test. The new POCO smartphone has 749 overall score.

So, we can see that POCO C65 is far from a gaming smartphone, but I think the benchmark results are good for an ultra-budget smartphone.

But let’s still play some games.

Games

So, I installed PUBG Mobile, Genshin Impact, Call of Duty and Asphalt 9 on the POCO C65 smartphone. Let’s just play them without my comments.

All games launch without problems, and it’s quite comfortable to play, although the graphics are quite low.

Software

Now, a little bit about the software. The POCO C65 runs on Android 13 operating system and MIUI 14 user interface. Unfortunately, this is not the latest Xiaomi HyperOS. I don’t think it will be available on this smartphone.

Like any Xiaomi phones, POCO C65 has a lot of pre-installed apps. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of MIUI, but some people may find these apps useful, for example, GetApps, Game Center, Themes, Security, and others.

Camera

You know, the camera looks like the highlight of the POCO C65, because there are three camera sensors on the rear panel, such as 50MP main camera, 2MP macro camera and auxiliary lens.

The front camera has an 8MP sensor.

Like other Xiaomi and POCO smartphones, the camera app of POCO C65 has many shooting modes and settings. There are Time-Lapse, Video, Photo, Portrait, Night and 50MP modes in the camera app.

You can also zoom in twice and use different filters in Photo mode.

The other functions are available by swiping down on the screen. Here we have flash, aspect ratio, HDR, gridlines, macro, timer and other functions.

In the camera settings, we can enable smart suggestions, picture quality, video encoder, etc.

By the way, in Video mode, we can see that the maximum video resolution is 1080P 30FPS.

Now let’s take a look at the photos and videos I took on the POCO C65.

So, the smartphone has a Photo mode in which it takes pictures at a resolution of 4080 x 3072 pixels.

If you want to take higher resolution photos, you need to select 50MP mode. They have 8160 x 6144 pixels.

The daytime photos look very decent, don’t you agree?

The front camera of the POCO C65 has an 8MP sensor, but you can take good selfies with it. There is even a portrait mode available for the front camera.

The POCO C65 smartphone has Night Mode, and I recommend using it when taking photos in low light conditions. The pictures in Night mode are much better than in Photo or 50MP modes.

As for video shooting, the new POCO smartphone has no electronic image stabilization, not to mention optical. Because of this, the video footage is quite shaky, but still clear.

Battery

The battery of the new POCO smartphone has a very good capacity of 5000mAh. I was expecting a very good battery life from POCO C65, but unfortunately, I was disappointed.

In my usual battery life test when running YouTube videos, the smartphone lasted for 8 hours and 53 minutes.

Why I’m disappointed? Because I was testing Realme C51 for the same price of about $105 some months ago, and it had 12 and a half hours of battery life in the same test.

In addition, the POCO C65 has 18W fast charging support, but the power adapter in the package only supports 10W. Using the power adapter and charging cable that come with the smartphone, a full battery charge takes 2 hours and 38 minutes.

In my opinion, that’s a very long time, even for an ultra-budget smartphone.

For comparison, the same Realme C51 supports 33W fast charging. Its battery fully charges in 1 hour and almost 10 minutes. Do you feel the difference?

Connectivity

Let’s talk a little bit about connectivity.

The POCO C65 has a dual SIM card slot, and both support 4G networks.

There is also dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.3 support.

However, the most important feature, at least for me, is NFC support. You can use the smartphone for contactless payments.

Conclusion

So, I have already mentioned the Realme C51, and now I want to compare it to the POCO C65, because they are very similar smartphones.

Both of them cost about $105, and they have the same 6.74-inch display with HD+ resolution, 50MP main camera, 5000mAh battery, up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The POCO smartphone has a little higher performance because of the Helio G85 chipset. The AnTuTu score of the POCO C65 is 279,000 points, while the Realme C51 has 252,000 points in the same benchmark.

However, in practice and in games, there is not much difference.

The main advantage of the Realme smartphone is its battery life and charging speed. I think the battery charging speed of the POCO C65 is a shame, because 2 and a half hours is a very long time.

Leaving that aside, the POCO C65 looks like a good ultra budget smartphone for 2024.

Perhaps some of you already have this smartphone? Write in the comments below what you think about it.