A Powerhouse in Your Pocket – Review Geek

Mobile gaming has come a long way since those Java-powered flip phone games, and holding Xiaomi’s Black Shark 4 Pro in my hands is a fond memory. It retains the sleek design of a standard smartphone, but on closer inspection you’ll find a powerful machine for the gamer on the go.

Design and Display: Made for Gaming

With its 6.67-inch, 144Hz AMOLED display and Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G processor, the Android-powered Black Shark 4 Pro is powerful enough to handle whatever you want it to do.

That 144Hz refresh rate is perfect for gaming, as the image on the screen remains extremely sharp, even in fast-paced scenes. Normally with a phone at this price you would expect something like a 60Hz screen, meaning the image you see only updates 60 times per second. 144Hz is more than double, which can improve your responses by at least an extra frame.

The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 888 processor which makes the Black Shark 4 Pro blazing fast, enabling popular multiplayer games such as Fortnite, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Nova Legacy with ease.

Speaking of which, the Black Shark 4 Pro has handy pop-up triggers embedded in the sides of the phone. They’re placed right where your index fingers naturally rest when you’re holding the phone in landscape, which is great for high-intensity gaming. I found myself using them even in slower games because the buttons were just as comfortable.

There are small slides revealing the buttons, and these tend to slide open when you hold the phone vertically. Fortunately, I have never found their existence uncomfortable. There were only a few times when they made me go to the wrong tab. It was the kind of thing I got used to, but I could easily see it getting annoying over time.

The buttons and their switches take up a significant amount of space on a phone that really isn’t the largest. The back has a matte finish and a customizable glowing screen that’s usually covered by your hand, but it looks nice on a desk.

With a length of 163.93 mm, a width of 76.35 mm and a thickness of 9.9 mm, it is a thin phone that fits well in your hand and pocket. There are bigger gaming phones like the Asus ROG Phone 5, but if you don’t mind a more standard size, you really can’t go wrong with the Black Shark 4 Pro.

Suitable cameras

For cameras, the Black Shark 4 pro uses a 64MP for its primary camera, a 5MP for macro and an 8MP for ultra-wide angle, with the front-facing camera coming out at 20MP. The combination is reasonable for its price. Sure, it won’t beat something like the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, but that phone costs at least $1,200 to $579 from the Black Shark 4 Pro.

The cameras are all good enough. The images never surprised me, but they never disappointed me either. If you’re a fan of photo quality, use the primary camera. That 64 MP takes insanely detailed photos.

If you do a lot of long-range or night shooting, I’d look elsewhere, especially since the phone doesn’t have a MicroSD card slot for extra storage. High quality photo and video files often grow very large, very quickly. That’s why I think this is a good camera, but I wouldn’t use it to capture birds in mid-flight at night.

The second strongest snapdragon

With its 720Hz touch sampling rate and 144Hz refresh rate, the Black Shark Pro 4 is optimized for gaming. The last generation Snapdragon processor never gave me major problems with anything I tested, mainly multiplayer battle royales and the occasional card game. It’s way above the bar for a decent gaming phone, but while the Snapdragon 888 is a high-end processor, it’s already a year old.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 used in phones like the RedMagic 7 was announced a year after the Snapdragon 888 which uses the Black Shark 4 pro. When you stack the two chips against each other, the Gen 1 beats the Snapdragon, but not by much.

It’s a marginal increase, but that small boost could mean the Black Shark 4 Pro remains a viable option for gamers for much longer. As far as I know, the only thing the 888 has over the newer model is battery life, but honestly that feels like splitting hairs.

Battery life: keep a charger handy

With heavy use, the Black Shark 4 Pro lasted about five hours in my experience, but tended to have a lower lifespan. I left it on, played music, browsed social media pages, and of course, gaming. If I wasn’t intentionally trying to drain the battery, it lasted all day just fine.

In general, I’d say keep a charger handy. Even sporadic gaming during the day drained the battery quickly. It can handle smaller games like Super car pets good but if you have to go without a charger for a long time i would stay away from FortniteI

Audio: speakers and microphones

The Black Shark 4 Pro actually has some pretty solid speakers for a phone. It features speakers on both the top and bottom of the phone for stereo sound. They certainly get the job done, but the sound tends to get muddled here and there, as would be expected from a budget smartphone.

The speakers do their best to fill the room. Playing videos over the sounds of cooking was no problem for the Black Shark 4 Pro. The same feeling goes for the phone’s input devices. Thanks to three noise-cancelling microphones, I was able to talk to others in the same open space without any problem. Anyone who called could hear me clearly over the stove or sink, and I never had to yell.

Operating system and storage

The phone uses Android 11 as its operating system. It’s a little hard to spot at first because the phone uses some sort of faux-futuristic gaming aesthetic. The device’s AI assistant is an anime character that struck me as odd at first, but it never obscured anything significant. It might as well have been a Google Assistant reskin.

If anything, I’d say the Black Shark 4 Pro’s biggest weakness is the lack of a MicroSD card slot, as I mentioned above. As it appears at the time of release, the phone has been launched with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage or 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage.

Accessories: the optional extras

Along with the phone, I got a Black Shark FunCooler 2Pro (for $37.90), a Black Shark Magnetic Cooler ($49.90) and two sets of Black Shark Joy Buds (for $58.90). These are not normally supplied with the Pro 4. Of them, I found the FunCooler 2Pro to be the clunkiest with its two clamps that wrap around your phone, making it a pain to hold.

The magnetic option is more expensive, but it was by far the better of the two. That magnet works not only on your phone, but on any device, as long as you attach the plate to it. I used it on an older tablet in my house as I never had to worry about the Shark 4 Pro overheating.

However, the Black Shark Joy Buds were the standout accessory among the bunch. Noise cancellation, low latency, smart and comes with a charging case. Like everything else in the Black Shark suite of accessories, they have a quick connect feature to the phone itself. Their semi-in-ear design makes them a breeze, especially with the smooth, flat parts protruding from your ear.

I don’t usually use the touch sensors on wireless earbuds because of their typical inconveniences, but these felt nice on my ears. I took them on walks and used them comfortably in the studio. The earbuds themselves get about 6 hours of battery life alone and 28 hours with the charging case. So even if you’re not interested in a Black Shark 4 Pro, you should definitely check out the Black Shark Joy Buds.

A top gaming phone

The Black Shark 4 Pro is one of the best budget gaming phones on the market. It ranks highly in every category where you want a gaming phone and does so with a reasonable price tag. Although it has a one-year-old processor, the difference between the Snapdragon 888 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is so small that it probably doesn’t matter. If you like gaming on the go, you owe it to yourself to give the Black Shark Pro 4 a try.