Poco has cemented itself as a sought-after smartphone brand with solid offerings across price points. The company recently launched the Poco M3, the successor to the Poco M2, which sits in the popular sub-15K price segment. The smartphone’s base 64GB variant is priced competitively at Rs 10,999 while the 128GB variant is priced at Rs 11,999 in India. The phone sports a large 6,000mAh battery and a new design.
The Poco M3 features a striking new design with a textured finish on the back panel that keeps it free of fingerprints and makes it easier to grip the phone. The phone feels pretty thick in the hand but the weight seems to be distributed pretty evenly. The power and the volume buttons are well-positioned and have a good tactile feedback. The power button also features an integrated fingerprint scanner that feels sufficiently speedy to us for now. At the bottom, there’s a USB-C port alongside the speaker and primary microphone. On the top, you have the 3.5mm audio jack, an IR blaster and another microphone, making this a stereo microphone setup which is excellent to have at this price point.
The display is a 6.53-inch FHD+ (2340×1080) display with a dewdrop notch for the selfie camera. For protection, there’s Gorilla Glass 3. The display is pretty sharp and has decent colour accuracy and viewing angles.
The Poco M3 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 SoC with an octa-core CPU alongside an Adreno 610 GPU. The Snapdragon 662 SoC is seen pretty commonly in this price bracket. We tested the Redmi 9 Power with the same SoC and the performance was decent for the price point. You can game on the smartphone at low graphics settings on games such as Call of Duty: Mobile, but it wasn’t a stutter-free experience, which is fine for the price point.
The phone also comes equipped with 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and is available in 64GB and 128GB storage variants. Fortunately, India gets the 6GB RAM variant of the Poco M3 even though the global variant which launched before was the 4GB RAM variant. This puts it ahead of the Redmi 9 Power in terms of RAM even though the phones cost the same. You can even expand the storage further via microSD card up to 512GB. The phone runs on MIUI 12 based on Android 10 with the Poco Launcher.
It features a triple camera setup on the back including the primary 48MP lens with an f/1.8 aperture, a 2MP macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. It’s disappointing to not see an ultrawide sensor in the mix. On the front, you have an 8MP selfie camera. The rear camera can record videos in 1080p at 30fps. Stay tuned for our full review to know how the cameras perform.
The Poco M3 comes equipped with a large 6,000mAh battery that supports 18W Fast Charging. We’re seeing this more and more now in the sub-15K segment where smartphone companies are incorporating massive batteries in budget devices to appeal to the masses. The charging adapter that comes in the box is a 22.5W adapter, even though the phone is only capable of 18W fast charging. We’re hopeful that the smartphone can last at least 2 days with light to moderate usage since that’s what we’ve been seeing with most of the budget smartphones with 6,000mAh batteries.
Priced competitively at Rs 10,999 for the 64GB variant and 11,999 for the 128GB one, the Poco M3 is yet another alluring smartphone in the budget segment that comes equipped with some eye-catching features. These include the massive 6,000mAh battery and 18W fast charging, dual stereo speakers, an FHD+ display, and the textured plastic back panel. The phone feels solid in the hand and is certainly a head-turner. The textured back panel is pretty grippy to hold as well, which could save you from accidental drops. The side-mounted fingerprint sensor feels pretty reliable and the dual stereo speakers are quite loud as well. The phone definitely makes a case for itself for users to consider it but we’re yet to test how it stacks up against competitors such as the Redmi 9 Power, Realme Narzo 20 and others when it comes to performance and camera quality. Stay tuned to find out in our full review