Jump to content
  • entries
    35,857
  • comments
    14
  • views
    420,587

Poco M3 Review: The Best Value For Money Budget Smartphone Available In India Right Now


ADMIN

56 views

Poco has been making some compelling smartphones even though some might be rehashed versions of other models. However, its latest M3 model is by far the most unique looking and value for money smartphone available in India right now. The Poco M3 launched in India for Rs 10,999 and when comparing the specifications on board to other phones in the same category, the Poco M3 is hard to ignore. We’ve been using the smartphone for the past 10 days and here’s what we think about the latest budget offering:

Design and Display 

Poco M3’s design is quite unique to its category as it comes with a distinct appearance that one can spot from afar. At the back, the smartphone has a massive rectangular camera module with elegant branding on the right side that somehow fits with the overall design of the phone. We’ve seen this before on the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk Edition and this looks almost identical. 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

The back of the phone also uses a plastic material that has a grainy texture to it. Had the phone used a plain plastic back, I wouldn't be much of a fan of the design, however the textured back does give the phone a slight premium feel. It's not on the same level as flagship phones, but the design is quite far ahead of other models in the same price category. 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

At the front, the smartphone uses a water-drop cutout for the selfie camera which feels like a design choice from 2018. Most phones now use a punch-hole design and it feels like Poco M3 decided to use the leftover inventory of the water-drop displays to keep the price low. Much like the M2, the M3 also comes with a side-mounted fingerprint scanner on the power button which works fairly well and faster than in-display scanners.

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

The phone is available in three colours i.e. black, blue and yellow where the yellow models look most attractive to me judging from the pictures. I’ve been using the blue variant which also looks awesome as it is quite subtle and is not jarring to look at. 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

The Poco M3 uses a 1080 x 2340 pixels FHD+ LCD panel which is good enough for a budget-friendly smartphone. The screen may not offer deep blacks as an sAMOLED display but it still gets the job done. The overall experience of viewing content on social media and OTT apps is largely similar to most budget phones with a peak brightness level of 400 nits. The screen does a great job indoors but can be hard to use under direct sunlight. Colours seem fairly accurate for an LCD panel but can give that highly saturated look in certain videos. Overall, the display is decent to use for daily video consumption as it does not have any colour bleeding or any tinting problems. 

Camera 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

The Poco M3 comes with a 48MP primary camera, a 2MP macro camera, and a 2MP Depth camera. I would have preferred an ultra-wide lens over a macro camera on the phone but for some reason, Poco decided to include the least used sensor on a smartphone instead. The camera app is fairly straightforward to use apart from a few modes that are buried between the menus such as Night Mode and Macro shots. 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

The Poco M3’s camera performance is quite standard as it can take some decent shots when there is enough natural light. However, once you are indoors and do not have enough light coming in, the overall picture tends to lose details. The camera also takes slightly longer to focus on objects which can be a bit frustrating as a smartphone’s camera should work as a point and shoot device. Portrait images are fairly accurate thanks to the depth sensor as it managed to apply the bokeh effect quite accurately. It can detect objects as well which is quite handy and you can even adjust the level of a blur after taking a shot. 

The macro lens lets you take close up shots of objects but in my experience, the final image was quite blurry and did not have enough details to justify the feature. The image also comes out in a lower resolution which defeats the purpose of having a macro lens in the first place. 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

Capturing images in low light can be a bit of a pain as the camera app does take its sweet time in charting images. While using Night Mode, it takes particularly long to capture an image where you can find yourself waiting 3-4 seconds for the entire process to finish. There is noticeable grain and sometimes over-saturation which makes the final image not worth sharing on social media.

Performance and Battery Life 

The Poco M3 for a budget phone runs exceptionally well when it comes to carrying out tasks like social media, internet browsing, navigation and instant messaging. You can easily multitask between apps even though it is slightly slower than what we expected. Having said that, the animations and overall scrolling experience do feel slower than previous Poco phones. 

Poco M3 Review: Value For Money With Great Looks © MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

In our benchmark tests, the Poco M3 scored 312 (single-core) and 1254 (multi-core) on Geekbench 5. While this may not seem much in comparison to flagship phones, the score is appropriate in regards to how much the phone costs. Since the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor coupled with 6GB of RAM; it’s quite impressive to see how the phone scored considering its price. 

For gamers, the Poco M3 may not be the ideal smartphone to use to play competitive online games and RPGs like Genshin Impact. There are some frame rate drops in high graphic settings and the only way to enjoy games is by lowering the graphic settings. Additionally, the phone does throttle a bit and gets slightly warm around the camera module area. If you are looking to game on this smartphone, the Poco M3 is more suited for casual games that do not require much GPU power. 

The Poco M3 comes with a 6,000mAh battery that can easily last you 1.5 days on a single charge depending on your usage. The battery can also be fast-charged as it supports 18W PD fast charging that can fully charge the battery in about 2 hours. 

The Final Say 

The Poco M3, as a budget phone, gets everything done that you need from a smartphone. While some features do need improvement, it is still a compelling device to consider for Rs 10,999. The Poco M3 may not be the best at gaming or taking low-light images, it is still good enough for power users who use a phone for most use cases. The Poco M3 is the most unique looking smartphone in its category and does not disappoint when it comes to battery life. The Poco M3 also does not serve any ads in its user interface which makes the overall experience far less annoying as compared to Redmi smartphones. 


View the full article

0 Comments


Recommended Comments

There are no comments to display.

Join the conversation

You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...