Poco M3 Pro 5G review summary
Expert rating: 3.35/5
Design & build
Display
Performance & Software
Camera
Battery & connectivity
Pros
- 90Hz screen
- Good Battery life
- Decent performance
Cons
- Camera performance
- Average gaming performance
Back in June, Poco India introduced its M3 Pro in India making it the young brand’s first 5G phone in the country. While the 5G services rollout in the country is still some distance away, the marketing groundwork has been laid and consumers don’t want to miss out on the fifth-generation cellular connectivity option as and when it materializes.
With MediaTek Dimensity chipset at its heart and a high refresh rate Display at the front, the Poco M3 Pro 5G is designed to entice young buyers. Will this 5G future-ready device succeed in the Indian market? Well, only time will tell. But, is it a worthy buy? Read on to find out.
Poco M3 Pro 5G unboxing
Poco M3 Pro 5G ships in a flashy yellow box and is not skipping any of the regular box contents. Here are all the things bundled in the box:
- Phone
- TPU case
- 22.5W Wall charger (though, the phone only supports 18W fast charging)
- Data cable
- SIM ejector tool
- User manual
Poco M3 Pro price in India, specifications
Price: ₹13,999/ ₹15,999
Display: 6.5-inch LCD, 1080 x 2400 resolution, 20:9 aspect ratio, 90Hz refresh rate
Processor: MediaTek Dimensity 700 5G (MT6833); Mali-G57 MC2
Memory: 4GB / 6GB RAM
Storage: 64GB / 128GB UFS 2.2
Rear camera: 48MP+2MP+2MP
Selfie camera: 8MP
Battery: 5000mAh battery, 18W fast charging
Connectivity: 5G, 4G, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.1, A-GPS
Poco M3 Pro 5G review: Design and build
The Poco M3 Pro 5G comes with a distinctive design despite sharing the same internals as the global version of Redmi Note 10 5G (aka Redmi Note 10T in India). The phone has a plastic back with a glossy finish. The unit we have is a combination of dark gray and black with large Poco branding just below the camera module.
While the design looks classy, it’s a fingerprint magnet and requires constant wiping. The rear panel has tapered edges which ensure excellent grip and in-hand feel.
Poco has integrated the fingerprint sensor with the power button. Both the power key and volume rocker are placed on the right edge. The hybrid SIM tray finds a place on the left edge. There’s a 3.5mm audio jack, IR blaster, and secondary mic placed on the top while the USB-C port, the primary microphone, and the loudspeaker find a spot at the bottom edge.
The front of the phone is mainly dominated by a large screen with a narrow bezel at the bottom. Poco has added Gorilla Glass 3 on top of the screen to protect it from accidental mishaps. Talking of mishaps, you will need to keep the Poco M3 Pro 5G away from water as it lacks any sort of splash resistance.
Poco M3 Pro 5G review: Display
The Poco M3 Pro 5G is graced by a 6.5-inch LCD panel. The display can refresh itself up to 90 times in a second. Of course, Poco offers an option to keep it at a more traditional 60Hz and conserve some battery. With the refresh rate set to 90Hz, everything feels smooth – especially scrolling through social feeds, web pages, and system UI.
Since this is an affordable LCD panel, it’s not at par with an AMOLED panel when it comes to contrast ratios and black levels. That said, it’s not a bad display and manages to offer a good viewing experience at most times.
The Screen manages to touch 400nits of peak brightness but in bright lighting conditions, I had to squint while reading on it. The display manages to reproduce most colors correctly. Viewing angles on the LCD panel were also satisfactory. The Auto-brightness feature doesn’t work properly.
With 180Hz touch sampling, the Poco M3 Pro registered my actions quickly during games so thumbs up for that. It is worth pointing out that, Poco M3 Pro 5G comes with a DRM L1 certificate which is essential for HD streaming on OTT platforms. We can confirm that Poco M3 Pro can play HD content on Netflix, Prime videos, and Disney+ Hotstar. All in all, the Poco M3 Pro 5G packs a decent panel considering what we usually see on phones priced under Rs 15,000.
Poco M3 Pro 5G review: Performance and Software
Let’s discuss the POCO M3 Pro 5G hardware first. The 5G phone from Poco is driven by MediaTek’s Dimensity 700 SoC which comes close to Snapdragon 700 series SoCs in terms of practical day-to-day usage experience. The Taiwanese chipmaker has paried the CPU cores with the Mali-G57 MC2 GPU.
What about RAM and ROM? Well, the phone comes with either 4GB or 6GB of LPDDR4X RAM and either 64GB or 128GB UFS 2.2 storage.
As for the software, like most of the recent Poco Phones, the M3 Pro 5G also comes running on the latest version of the MIUI operating system which is based on Android 11. Like Xiaomi phones, the Poco M3 Pro also comes preloaded with several Xiaomi bloatware apps
Mi Pay, Mi Credit, and GetApps. Some of them also push unwanted notifications. Thankfully, users are allowed to uninstall most of them. If not you can force-stop them or block notifications from specific apps for peace of mind.
The MIUI skin on Poco M3 Pro comes with several customization options including a theme store, and an option to download fonts. The UI also has a dark mode, app locker, battery saver mode, and a lot more.
Let’s now come to the performance part. During this review, we used the phone as a daily driver for 15-days. During this period we were quite content with the Poco M3 Pro performance.
The Poco M3 Pro manages to run most day-to-day tasks without much trouble. Yes, there was occasional lag or stutter but that happened when we pushed it too hard. We manage to experience decent multitasking and keep several apps running in the background.
What about Benchmarks? Well, we ran several synthetic tests such as Antutu, GeekBench, and AndroBench and here are the results:
- AnTuTu – 3,21,535
- Geekbench – 551 (single core); 1689 (multi-core)
- AndroBench – 149.12MB/s (Rendom read); 200.07 (Rendom write)
On the gaming front, we were able to play games like Call of Duty Mobile and battleground mobile India with medium graphics settings. During my gameplay, there were a few drops initially, but their frequency increased with our gameplay duration. The underpowered GPU started throttling after a few minutes, however the Poco M3 Pro managed to handle thermals really well as we didn’t feel any uncomfortable heating even after extensive gaming.
Poco M3 Pro 5G camera review
The Poco M3 Pro 5G packs a triple camera setup at the back led by a 48MP OmniVision OV48B primary sensor coupled with a 2MP macro shooter and a 2MP depth sensor. If you are into selfies, you get an 8MP snapper punch into the display. It’s basically the same setup that we saw with the original M3.
While reviewing this smartphone, we found that the 48MP primary sensor manages to capture decent images during the day with a good amount of detail. The exposure metering was spot on. The colors were mostly correct, and the dynamic range was also good. The algorithms did some oversharpening which was noticeable when we zoomed in the images.
There’s an AI option visible on the viewfinder. It recognizes scenes and tries to enhance images to make them more appealing. The images that we took with AI had boosted contrasts and colors which make them appear unnatural.
Image quality takes a major dip in low light. The Poco M3 Pro primary rear camera fails to capture adequate details in low light. There were noticeable grains too. Although the phone has a Night mode, it wasn’t of much help with regards to details.
The result delivered by the selfie camera didn’t show much promise either. It failed to capture correct skin tones and details were also average at best. In shots taken under artificial flights, the selfie camera struggled for details.
Clearly, the Poco M3 Pro 5G cameras are its weakest point. Poco has tried to save some bucks here which is also evident from the end results.
Poco M3 Pro review: Battery and connectivity
The Poco M3 Pro 5G packs a 5000mAh battery which should be sufficient for most users. At least we were quite satisfied with it. It lasted for more than a day for us with moderate usage.
Poco bundles its big battery phone with a 22.5W fast charger while the phone can handle only up to 18W. In our thirty-minute charging test, it managed to refill by 32 percent. It took us more than one and half hours to refill the 5000mAh battery in one stretch.
On the connectivity front, the Poco M3 Pro supports n77 & n78 5G bands in sub-6GHz technology. The phone also supports dual sim dual VoLTE and WiFi Calling, both of which worked well on both Jio and Airtel networks. There’s also dual-band Wi-Fi support.
Review verdict: Should you buy Poco M3 Pro 5G?
You should buy the Poco M3 Pro 5G if you are looking for a 5G phone and are on a limited budget. The performance was similar to Realme 8 5G on most counts, and that isn’t exactly surprising as both phones have similar hardware under their hoods. It can handle multitasking and casual gaming well.
One should also consider buying the Poco M3 Pro if they can’t manage to lay their hands on the Redmi Note 10T in the initial sales. The Redmi Note 10T and Poco M3 Pro are literally the same with the only difference being rear panel design.
One should avoid the Poco M3 Pro 5G if camera performance is the top priority. If you are a hardcore gamer, in that case, you would be better off with a tad pricier Poco phones.
Reasons to buy:
- 90Hz screen
- Good Battery life
- Decent performance
Reasons not to buy:
- Camera performance
- Average gaming performance
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