Looking for a new gaming phone?
POCO recently revealed the POCO X8 series, a new line of mobile gaming-focused phones that officially launched on 17 March, 2026. The X8 series consists of the POCO X8 Pro Max, POCO X8 Pro, and the POCO X8 Pro–Iron Man Edition. Yes, you read that right: this X8 Pro series comes with a flashy Iron Man-themed variant, suitable for every Marvel Comics fan looking for a new collectible.
We received a model of the POCO X8 Pro Max to review, which sadly means that we didn’t get to try out the POCO X8 Pro’s Iron Man variant. That might be for the best, given its somewhat gaudy design. We had a great time with the X8 Pro Max regardless, and found that it offers great gaming performance at a more reasonable price point than expected.
POCO X8 Pro Max
Price: US$559.99 for the 12GB/256GB variant.
Available colours: White, Black, and Blue.
Release date: 17 March, 2026.
POCO X8 Pro Max specifications
As always, we’ll pre-empt this review with a caveat: we’ll be reviewing the POCO X8 Pro Max on its gaming merits alone, which means that you’ll have to look elsewhere for more details on the phone’s camera, and its other merits. That being said, it should be noted that the POCO X8 Pro Max is very much positioned as a gaming powerhouse first and foremost, with a camera that falters in the face of the brand’s earlier flagship, the POCO F8 Ultra.
The POCO X8 Pro Max plays host to Dimensity 9500s, the newest Dimensity 9000 series flagship chipset with up to a 3.73GHz max clock speed and a 4+4 All Big Core CPU design. The phone also supports LPDDR5X 9600Mbps RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. The phone also features a 3D IceLoop Cooling System, designed to improve thermal efficiency and reduce SoC (system on a chip) temperatures by up to 3°C with a large 5,800mm1 liquid cooling area.
The POCO X8 Pro Max also supports hardware-level ray tracing, which means that supported games can run on the phone at optimal settings with little issue. The POCO X8 Pro Max has a suitably wide display to accommodate all these gorgeous ray-traced pixels too, measuring in at 6.83 inches.
Here’s the phone’s biggest selling point: it packs in a whopping 8,500mAh battery capacity, which allows it to deliver two days of battery life–theoretically, unless you’re actually using it as it was intended to be used, and play very demanding video games.
The worst thing I had to deal with while setting up this phone will come as no surprise to anyone who’s picked up a POCO phone recently: bloatware. I didn’t delete much of the phone’s pre-installed apps and games during the review period, seeing as I would eventually return the phone anyway, but even then–getting notifications for mobile football games that I didn’t want to play proved annoying enough for me to turn them off.
It's a pain having to deal with bloatware right off the bat with these new phones, but it is what it is.
Is the POCO X8 Pro Max good for gaming?
The POCO X8 Pro Max’s Dimensity 9500s chipset comes paired with an octa-core CPU and an Immortalis-G925 MC12 GPU. It’s built to hold its own against this generation of mobile gaming’s most power-intensive titles. During our review period, we took the phone through its paces with open-world games like Genshin Impact, action games like Zenless Zone Zero, and a variety of platforming and racing games.
I’m pretty amazed at how much this phone is able to handle, and at this price point, no less. I was able to run most, if not all, titles on this phone at their maximum graphical settings with seamless performance. When I saw performance dips or other notable graphical flaws pop up during gameplay, it was more likely that the games themselves weren’t well-optimised, as opposed to the phone being unable to run them properly.
Take, for example, Zenless Zone Zero–a game that has become the bane of my life on mobile devices. Until its most recent Version 2.7 patch, the game ran extremely poorly on mobile devices at medium-to-high settings. Thankfully, a recent patch turned things around–but I was able to play the game on the POCO X8 Pro Max pre-patch 2.7, and still managed to get better performance then.
This is the kind of phone you pick up if you’re looking for an inexpensive upgrade in gaming performance. Games like Genshin Impact look staggeringly good on the phone’s 120Hz AMOLED display, and better with HDR and WildBoost Optimisation enabled. Unlike the last Poco device we reviewed, the F8 Ultra, it also doesn’t run terribly hot, even when under heavy performance loads.
One of the phone’s biggest highlights, its massive 8,500 mAh battery, is no slouch either. Even while playing performance-intensive games, you’re likely to get a lot out of this phone before having to charge it. For example, we were able to play Zenless Zone Zero and Genshin Impact for hours without having to plug it in. The phone does take a little slower than expected to charge from zero to full, with roughly 50 minutes of charging required in total, but that’s a natural tradeoff of the battery’s size.
Verdict
The POCO X8 Pro Max is a killer mobile gaming device that offers great value for money, providing that gaming is all that you'll be using it for. The rest of the phone’s capabilities–ranging from the camera to software features–are perfectly adequate, but not quite up to par with recent POCO releases like the F8.
That being said, the phone’s gaming performance and battery size are undeniable. This is a phone that will run most modern games at their highest specifications for rather lengthy play sessions with little issue. It’s not as well-rounded as the F8, but it’s a great phone for anyone looking to max out their gaming performance at a lower price.
The Poco X8 Pro Max is now available for purchase, priced at US$559.99 for the 12GB/256GB variant. We received a review unit for this article.
What is Xiaomi's POCO X8 series?
The POCO X8 series consists of the POCO X8 Pro Max, POCO X8 Pro, and the POCO X8 Pro–Iron Man Edition.
What colours are available for the POCO X8 Pro Max?
You can get the phone in White, Black, and Blue.
When did the POCO X8 Pro Max come out?
17 March, 2026.
