Timber
Every Pono ukulele is stunning, featuring all solid woods, and a Macassar Ebony fretboard, bridge, faceplate & tail-piece. I personally love the pairing of the timbers they use on their tops with the one of a kind uniqueness of every ukulele's Macassar Ebony bridge and fretboard.
Action and Playability
Pono ukuleles have such an awesome feel due to the ability to obtain a low string action (height from the fretboard to the strings), due to having a dual-action truss rod: an important feature that enables players to customise their playing action.
A brief tweak of the truss rod a quarter of a turn (right-tighty, decreases neck relief, lowering the action; lefty-loosey increases the neck relief, increasing the action).
Intonation
Every Pono ukulele is mathematically built to ensure that the nut and saddle are the exact distance apart to ensure pitch consistency/correctness throughout the whole neck. Furthermore, every Pono ukulele has a custom hand-crafted bone nut and saddle. Every detail matters... as even a tenth of a millimetre variable is enough to have the ukulele sounding completely out of tune no matter how hard you try to tune it.
Tuning
All Pono ukuleles come with high-quality Grover machine heads. Quality appointments can save a lot of pain and frustration with tuning issues. Tell tail signs of poor quality machine heads to include: a ukulele constantly going out of tune, slipping machine heads (even when you turn it, nothing happens), wobbly machine heads (when there is a mismatch between the size of the worm wheel/cog and the worm drive/spindle).
Quarter-sawn timber
All Pono ukuleles are made of quarter-sawn timber, which gives their ukuleles unique structural integrity/strength. It also has the added advantage of reducing timber movement (expansion and shrinkage) as a result of humidity changes, which is an extremely valuable attribute for solid wood instruments. So if you're looking for a ukulele to last your a lifetime, Pono might be worth looking into.
Bracing
Pono ukuleles have the perfect balance between structural integrity and wonderfully uninhibited resonance. Essentially, the less bracing (or thinner the top), the more brilliant a ukulele will sound, but will inevitably warp to one's disappointment, whereas too much bracing (or a thicker top), will disappoint in its thinness of tone, but likely never warp. Pono has mastered this delicate balance. Never have I seen a Pono with a warped top, nor a thin tone.
Projection & Tone
Pono ukuleles speak for themselves when it comes to tone & projection. Every Pono ukulele has plenty of projection, and their large range of models gives plenty of freedom to choose your desired tone.
Mahogany: warm and mellow, with rich lows
Mango: warm with sparkly highs
Acacia: bold and bright (but not overpowering), with rich highs
Cedar: mellow with sweet highs
Check out the below video demonstrating an Acacia Tenor (satin).