TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G review: The budget gaming king of 2024?

PHP 11,999
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The TECNO POVA Series has been making waves in the mid-range smartphone segment by offering feature-packed devices at compelling price points. The latest addition to the lineup, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G, aims to take things to the next level with its powerful hardware, gaming prowess, and stylish design elements – including a miniLED display on its rear panel.

Let’s dive in and see what this smartphone has to offer.

Flatlay back handheld – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G Unboxing

The unboxing experience of the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G is quite unique, thanks to its co-branding with Farlight 84, a popular multiplayer survival game akin to PUBG. The outer sleeve features a dark mode theme with orange accents, while the inner box showcases the phone’s sleek Comet Green color variant.

Packaging – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

Inside the box, you’ll find the usual accessories, including a 70W fast charger, USB-C cable, 3.5mm wired earbuds (a rarity these days), a transparent silicone case to showcase the rear panel design, stickers, and documentation. The inclusion of wired earbuds is a nice touch, as many smartphones have started omitting them from the package.

Dual SIM card tray – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G Display and Design

The TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G immediately grabs your attention with its striking design as soon as you take it out of the box. The rear panel features a unique miniLED lighting effect that TECNO calls “Dynamic Light Effect.” This effect creates eye-catching patterns and prints reminiscent of mecha designs from popular anime series like Gundam or Evangelion. The Comet Green variant, in particular, looks vibrant and refreshing.

Selfie notch – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

Flipping to the front, you’re greeted by a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, up to 1300 nits of peak brightness, and 2160Hz PWM dimming for reduced eye strain. The bezels are reasonably slim, giving the phone a modern and premium look despite its mid-range pricing.

Bottom USB-C port – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

The TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G has a solid build quality with a nice heft to it, thanks to the large 6000mAh battery inside. It features a USB-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack (becoming increasingly rare on modern smartphones), and even an IR blaster. TECNO has clearly paid great attention to design flair and features with this device.

Chin – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G Performance and Benchmarks

Under the hood, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G packs a powerful punch with the MediaTek Dimensity 6080 chipset built on a 6nm process. This octa-core CPU is paired with up to 12GB of LPDDR4x RAM and fast UFS storage, ensuring snappy and fluid performance for day-to-day tasks as well as more demanding workloads.

In synthetic benchmarks, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G performs admirably, scoring 446k points in AnTuTu and 9.9k in PCMark. These scores places the phone well within the median among mid-rangers for the past 12 months.

Storage speeds are fairly average, with 400MB/s read and 283MB/s write speeds. This should be sufficient for most productivity tasks. We found that apps loaded quickly and multitasking felt effortless thanks to its generous amount of RAM.

Fairlight 84 – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G Entertainment and Gaming

Entertainment and gaming are key focus areas for the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G, and the device delivers on both fronts. The large 6.78-inch AMOLED panel with its fast refresh rate and vibrant colors makes for an immersive visual experience, whether you’re streaming your favorite shows or playing the latest mobile games.

High boost gaming panel – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

For gaming enthusiasts, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G comes equipped with a dedicated Game Space hub that provides performance monitoring, customizable settings for CPU/GPU modes, touch sensitivity adjustments, and performance boosters. You can even enable “Esports Grade Touch Control,” which aims to reduce control latency for competitive gaming.

Power button, volume rocker – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

During our testing, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G handled graphically intensive games remarkably well, without any noticeable throttling issues. The stereo speakers, tuned with Dolby Atmos, further enhanced the overall gaming experience by delivering immersive audio.

Camera island MiniLED light effect – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G Camera and Content Creation

The TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G sports a triple camera setup on the rear, consisting of a high-resolution 108MP main sensor, a 2MP depth sensor, and a 0.08MP auxiliary lens. For selfies, it boasts an impressive 32MP front shooter with dual LED flash.

Both the rear and selfie cameras are capable of recording video at up to 2K 30fps resolution, with electronic image stabilization (EIS) to smoothen out hand movements. It’s worth noting that the stabilization does crop in slightly on the image to account for the stabilization process.

Initial camera samples from the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G look promising, with good detail, vibrant colors, and a fairly natural bokeh effect on portrait shots. Low-light performance seems decent as well, aided by the multi-LED flashes. However, we’ll reserve our final verdict until we conduct more extensive camera tests for the full review.

WATCH: TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G sample video (main)

WATCH: TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G sample video (selfie)

Dynamic Light MiniLED effect rear panel – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G Battery and Charging

With its massive 6000mAh battery capacity, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G should easily deliver multi-day battery life for most users, unless you’re a hardcore gamer. Even for power users, the device should provide a full day’s worth of usage without any issues.

When it’s time to recharge, the included 70W SUPERVOOC fast charger can juice up the phone rapidly, which is great for topping up during short bursts. Additionally, the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G supports 10W reverse wired charging, allowing you to charge other devices or accessories from the phone itself.

TECNO POVA logo – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

Conclusion

The TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G brings an impressive combination of stylish design flair, powerful hardware, gaming-centric features, and versatile camera capabilities – all at a very attractive price point of Php 11,999 in the Philippines.

While a thorough test of the cameras, battery life, thermal performance, and other aspects is still needed for the full review, initial impressions of the TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G are quite positive. It seems to deliver a premium big-screen multimedia experience with the gaming prowess to match, which could make it a smart choice for mobile gamers and power users on a budget.

Flatlay front – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO has certainly pushed the envelope further with this latest POVA iteration. The TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G looks geared to take on popular gaming/multimedia phones in its segment through an alluring combination of flashy style, solid hardware muscle, and smart software augmentations. Stay tuned for our complete review, where we’ll dive deeper into the device’s performance, camera capabilities, and overall user experience.

Hit the play button to watch our TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G or visit TechKuya on YouTube for more tech reviews!

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Top firing speakers – TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G

TECNO POVA 6 Pro 5G specs

  • Display: 6.78-inch AMOLED, 120Hz refresh rate, 1300 nits peak brightness, 2160Hz PWM dimming, TUV Rheinland low blue light certification
  • SIM: Dual SIM (Nano-SIM, dual stand-by)
  • OS: Android 14 with HIOS 14
  • Chipset (SoC): MediaTek Dimensity 6080 (6 nm)
  • CPU: Octa-core (2×2.4 GHz Cortex-A76 & 6×2.0 GHz Cortex-A55)
  • GPU: Mali-G57 MC2
  • Memory (RAM) + storage: 8/12GB RAM, 256GB storage, microSDXC
  • Expansion: MicroSDXC card slot
  • Main camera (rear): 108 MP wide lens with PDAF, 2 MP depth sensor, 0.08 MP auxiliary lens
  • Selfie camera (front): 32 MP wide lens
  • Connectivity: GSM / HSPA / LTE / 5G, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Bluetooth 5.3, A2DP, LE, GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, NFC, Infrared port, FM radio
  • I/O: USB Type-C 2.0, 3.5mm audio jack
  • Battery: 6000 mAh non-removable, 70W wired charging, 10W reverse wired charging
  • Features: Dual loud speakers, Dolby Atmos & Hi-Res Certified, AI noise reduction call, 4D vibration, eSportsPro game operation engine, dynamic-light miniLED effect rear panel, under-display fingerprint scanner
  • Colors: Comet Green, Meteorite Grey
  • Price (Philippines): PHP 11,999
  • Series: TECNO POVA 6 Series
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