Xiaomi Poco M3 full review
. Poco are known for their flagship, killing smartphones but they’reswitching gears now with the new Poco M3. It’s a phone with an entry level price, but it still brings some competitive. Mid range features like awesome battery life and stereo speakers.. Let’S see what it’s all about in our full review., The Poco M3 is an entry level smartphone, but you wouldn’t guess it at first glance. Sure the backis plastic and Poco doesn’t try to hide that and manages to look unique with the glassaccent and Poco logo.. Instead of pretendingto be a shiny glass, the back panel is matte with a rough, almost leathery texture., This addsplenty of grip.. The frame is made of plastic aswell and it’s, rather sharp and angular whichadds, even more grip.. The Poco M3 isn’t light almost 200 grams, partly because of its hugebattery pack, but it feels great in the hand. On the front is a large 6.53 inch. Ips LCD screen covered by Gorilla Glass 3 with a 1080p resolution and a droplet shaped notch at the top. For the selfie cam., This display is pretty nice. 1080P is great to have at this price. Point. And content on the screen looks plenty. Sharp. Contrast is good. Withdeep enough blacks and the brightness is decent. Wemeasured up to 440 nits maximum in auto mode when in bright conditions., Colors aren’t, too accurateout of the box. But we were able to achievesome great color accuracy through the color settings.. What surprised us about the Poco M3 is that itnot only has a 3.
5mm jack for headphones, but also a pair of dedicated stereo speakers, something you usually see on premium. Devices. They’re mounted on the top and bottom of the frame and sound pretty well balanced.. Overall, their performance is some of the best we’ve heard recently.. The Poco M3 scored a ”good” mark in our loudness test. Andyou get solid bass and superb mid tones too. Another striking feature of the Poco M3 isthe battery life, thanks to its huge 6000mAh power. Pack. You’d be hard. Pressedto find a phone with better battery endurance.. The Poco M3 was able to score an incredible rating of 154 hours in our battery life tests. Charging speed, on the other hand, isnt too impressive.. The M3 supports up to 18W charging, with its bundled adapter wewere, able to charge from zero to only 25 in half an hour., A full charge would take almost 3 hours. Waking up and unlocking the Poco M3 is done with a side mounted fingerprint reader. It’s, quite Responsive though it’s not as fast assome other readers we’ve seen lately, perhaps due tothe unlock animation.. As far as storage goes, youcan opt for 64 or 128GB onboard, and this isexpandable through microSD., The Poco M3 user interface, is MIUI 12 over Android 10.. It is the same aswhat you’ll find running on recent Xiaomi smartphones.. While many functions are provided by Google’sapps. There are some proprietary ones like the Gallery: Music or Security apps. In MIUI 12 youcan split the notification shade into 2 panels, the notification panel and thecontrol panel, like what you’d see on iOS.
. There is an app drawer enabled by default thatstores all of your apps and organizes them intocategories if you like.. Finally, even on ourunit, we saw occasional ads within certain apps or when the virus scanner fires up after installing something from the Play. Store. And some markets may have it even worsethan. That. Under the hood of the Poco M3 is a Snapdragon, 662 chipset whichis a recently released but low end silicon.. It does an okay job for this class, but performanceis one area in which the budget nature of the Poco M3shines through., Though you may encounter a stutterfrom time to time when swiping the home screenor switching between apps., You might encountersome issues when running heavier, apps or games. Unless you turn down graphic settings or even turn down the game’s resolution to 720p., Once you’ve done that you might be able to make a decent go of it. Now onto the Poco M3’s cameras., There are three cameras on the back butit’s a basic setup. There’s, a 48Mp Quad Bayer camera, a 2MP macro cam and a depth sensor. Photos from the main camera come out at 12MP and during the day these are superbfor. This class. There’s more than enough detailbalanced sharpness, good contrast and lively, colors. Dynamic range is average and there is a bit of corner softness and visible noise, but overallthese photos are much better than we expected.. The depth sensor is here to help out inPortrait mode, and these photos come out pretty nice.
There’s good detail, proficient separation and natural looking defocused backgrounds. Close up shots taken with the macrocam are okay. If there’s enough light., You can get enough detail for 2MP andlow noise, but contrast isn’t great. The troubleis. Since focus is fixed. It usually takes multipletries to get a macro shot to come out. Sharp. In low light photos from the main camera aremediocre in quality. There’s enough detail, but thepictures are dark and quite noisy with washed outcolors.. We did notice that if you switch on the AICamera mode at night, you get a brighter photo withsome restored, highlights. And there’s. Also supportfor a dedicated night mode., It brightens the wholescene, restores the clipped, highlights and wipes out the noise., Though this results in a loss of finedetail. The overall result: isn’t bad though. For selfies. The Poco M3 has an 8MP front facing camera.. These photos have ok, contrast, andcolors and a mediocre amount of detail. There’svisible noise and average dynamic range and weran into occasional issues with the exposuretoo. Videos can be recorded in up to only 1080presolution at 30fps.. This footage has okay, contrastand, colors average detail and a narrow, dynamic, range. There’s; no support for electronic stabilization here., So thats the Poco M3., This phone punches above its weight class by offering a large FullHD screen, incrediblebattery life, great sounding stereo speakers, a feature packed interface and A surprisingly good main camera. Plus, even though it’s plasticI, really like its textured back design. Ofcourse, there are compromises to be made.
. It is most noticeable with the performance which can run into hiccups here and there., Plus the camerasetup isn’t, very versatile and both selfies and video. Recording are nothing to write home about., But still the overall experience is a lot more than you’d expect for this price. And, if you’reshopping, for an entry level smartphone or want to save some money on a mid range smartphone. The Poco M3 deserves our recommendation..