The Poco M3 is the latest Poco smartphone on the Indian market. The company positioned it in the price range of fewer than 15,000 rupees to compete with Redmi 9 Power, Moto G9 Power, and others. It's the successor to the Poco M2, with some improvements in the form of a larger battery, more RAM, and an upgraded camera. Is it enough to outperform the competition? Check out our full review to find out.
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Poco M3 Design
Poco M3 is about the same size as Poco M2. You will see a 6.53-inch display with a dew drop notch at the top. The bezel is thick overall and is acceptable given the price of the smartphone. Poco uses a plastic body for the M3 and feels sturdy enough. The back has a textured surface that resists fingerprints and helps you grab the phone.
Poco has increased the battery capacity of the M3 and has a 6,000mAh battery compared to the Poco M2's 5,000mAh battery. As a result, the smartphone weighs 197g and you will notice that you have it. Poco has the back of the smartphone curved on the side, making it easy to hold.
The power and volume buttons are on the right and are arranged for easy tapping. The power button has a built-in fingerprint scanner. These buttons also provided excellent click feedback to prevent re-guessing. On the left side is the SIM tray, the top is the 3.5mm audio jack and an IR emitter, and the secondary speaker. The Poco M3 has a USB Type C port at the bottom of the frame, as well as a primary microphone and speakers.
The back of the Poco M3 is well designed, making your smartphone look more expensive than it really is. The raised camera module has a piano black design element and a large Poco logo on the back of the phone. This looks good, but picking up fingerprints is the only spot on the Poco M3. This also prevents the phone from shaking excessively when lying flat on the table.
A 22.5W charger comes in a box with a transparent case. Poco has pre-applied a screen protector to the M3. There are three color options: Poco Yellow, Cool Blue, and Power Black. This time I had a Poco Yellow unit, and its bright colors attracted attention.
Poco M3 Specifications and Operating System
Poco M3 is one of the few SubRs. 12,000 smartphones with FullHD + display. With the exception of the Xiaomi Redmi 9 Power (test report), most manufacturers offer HD + resolution in this price range. The Poco M3's 6.53-inch display has an aspect ratio of 19.5: 9, which is narrower in height and width. Poco provides Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. This is a nice touch.When it comes to hardware, the Poco M3 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor, which is a popular choice in this price range. It is also considered to be powering the Redmi 9 Power and Moto G9 Power. The M3 has 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and is paired with either 64GB of UFS 2.1 storage or 12GB of UFS 2.2 storage.
The higher variant costs 11,999 and the lower variant costs 10,999. It's a bit strange that there are two different standards for storage variants. Given the small price difference between the two, there is little incentive to choose a basic variant. Storage can be expanded up to 512GB via a dedicated microSD card slot.
When it comes to connectivity, the Poco M3 features Bluetooth 5, dual band WiFi, dual 4G, and five navigation systems. MIUI 12 is available in addition to Android 10 on the Poco M3.
The user interface is very similar to MIUI on Xiaomi devices, but with some subtle changes. This smartphone has run the Android security patch for December. This is recent enough. Unlike Redmi's cousin, the Poco M3 is said to have no ads in its UI and didn't notice anything during the review.
There were no spam notifications that would upset the balance by prioritizing Poco over Xiaomi. However, Poco M3 still has quite a few pre-installed apps, including Facebook, GetApps, Netflix, LinkedIn, Mi Credit, Mi Pay, and some games. I was able to uninstall everything except MiPay.
If you have used a Poco or Xiaomi smartphone in the past, the interface will be very familiar. Switching from another device doesn't cause any major problems here. The Poco M3 uses three navigation buttons by default, but you can switch to swipe-based navigation very easily. There are also other gestures like a three-finger swipe to take a screenshot.
Poco M3 Performance and Battery Life
The Poco M3 ran the entire week I used it without problems. The fingerprint scanner on the side is easy to reach and unlocks your smartphone quickly. There was also an option to set face recognition and it worked fine. I could easily switch between apps and with 6GB of RAM, I was able to switch between multiple apps before the phone killed the app in the background. The Poco M3's display is decent enough to read indoors, but it turns out to be a bit too bright outdoors. When watching a video, stereo speakers enhance the overall experience.
We ran regular benchmark tests to see where the Poco M3 is compared to our competitors. In AnTuTu, the Poco M3 has a score of 180,594, which is in the same range as the Redmi 9 Power. We also achieved 5883 points with PCMark Work 2.0. Geekbench 5's single-core and multi-core tests scored 312 and 1,340, respectively. The Poco M3 managed 31fps and 12fps in GFXBench's car chase and Manhattan 3.1 graphics tests, respectively.
I was playing Call Of Duty Mobile on my Poco M3 was set to high graphics quality and medium frame rate by default. The game played smoothly, but the back of the camera module got a little warmer. After playing the game for 10 minutes, I noticed a 3% battery drain. It consumes a bit of battery, but given the large battery, you should be able to play for quite some time before charging your phone.
In my usage, Poco M3 can easily last for more than a day and a half. In our HD video loop test, the phone worked for about 16 hours. When I charged the M3 with the included charger, it was 28 percent in 30 minutes and 54 percent in 1 hour. It took more than 2 hours to fully charge the phone.
When taking portraits, Poco M3 was able to recognize the edges well. It can recognize both people and objects, and you can set the level of blur before shooting. The macro camera allows you to get closer to the subject than the main camera. The output is low resolution and the level of detail is much lower.
The performance of the low light camera was below average and particles were seen in the output. With night mode enabled, it takes about 4 seconds to take a picture on the phone. The night mode output is finely detailed and has good particle control, but it looks too sharp.
The selfie taken with the Poco M3 was average and the shades were a bit off. You have the opportunity to take portrait shots with good edge detection. Low light selfies were also average and had excessive smoothing.
Video recording reaches 1080p resolution on both the main camera and selfie shooter. The footage becomes unstable because it is not stabilized.
Verdict
If that's important to you, the Poco M3 is a great-looking smartphone. Equipped with a powerful processor and 6GB of RAM, it provides excellent performance. Gaming and multitasking are comfortable, and the 6,000mAh battery provides excellent battery life. On the other hand, camera performance is not the strongest point. Looking at the Xiaomi Redmi9 Power (Amazon) on the market, the Poco M3 is in about the same package, with more RAM and no ads.