Poco M4 Pro: Malaysia’s best new smartphone under RM1,000?

Besides the Poco X4 Pro 5G, Poco has also introduced the Poco M4 Pro during MWC 2022. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because Poco had a budget smartphone called the M4 Pro 5G that was launched last year. The brand new device is totally different and it isn’t the same phone without 5G. This could probably be one of the best value-for-money smartphones priced under RM1,000 in Malaysia.

Poco M4 Pro Malaysia Pricing and Availability

The Poco M4 Pro will go on sale in Malaysia starting this coming Thursday, 3rd March 2022 and here’s the official pricing:

• Poco M4 Pro 6GB RAM + 128GB storage – RM899
• Poco M4 Pro 8GB RAM + 256GB storage – RM1,099

As part of Poco’s early bird promo on 3.3, the 6GB RAM + 128GB storage variant is going for RM799, while the 8GB RAM +256GB storage version is going for RM949 via the Poco official store on Lazada Malaysia. The device is offered in 3 colours – Power Black, Cool Blue and Poco Yellow.

Poco M4 Pro Specs

The Poco M4 Pro is the brand’s lightest smartphone yet weighing just 179.5grams with a thickness of 8.09mm. Unlike the Poco M4 Pro 5G that uses an LCD IPS display, the new “non-5G” model gets a smaller 6.43″ Full HD+ AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate. The new AMOLED panel boasts a peak brightness of 1,000 nits and has a contrast ratio of 4,500,000:1.

Under the hood, it runs on a Mediatek Helio G96 chip that doesn’t support 5G. However, it offers a more generous RAM and storage configuration with up to 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and up to 256GB of storage which is still expandable via microSD card up to 1TB.

For taking pictures, the Poco M4 Pro gets a triple-camera setup which includes a 64MP main camera, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 2MP macro lens. Upfront, the tiny punch-hole on the display houses a 16MP selfie camera. The device still comes with a pair of speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack, IR blaster, and NFC. As usual, you still get a huge camera bump with a prominent “POCO” branding.

Powering the device is a 5,000mAh battery that supports 33W fast charging via USB-C. As usual, Poco is still including the 33W fast charging adapter in the box and it is rated to push a 100% charge in about an hour. Since there’s no “5G” in the name, this is a 4G LTE device and it also supports 802.11ac WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0. Out of the box, it runs on a rather dated Android 11 with MIUI 13 for Poco interface on top.

If you’ve been following Xiaomi’s recent phone launches, you should have noticed that the M4 Pro is essentially a rehashed Redmi Note 11S. The internal hardware is identical but the Redmi gets a more conservative rear design. The base Redmi Note 11S model also shares the same starting price of RM899 but it only gets 6GB RAM and a paltry 64GB of storage. The higher-spec Redmi Note 11S with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage is priced at RM999 which is the same price as the Poco M4 Pro 8GB RAM + 256GB storage model. Overall, the Poco M4 Pro offers greater value with double the storage and you can get it for less during online sales.