POCO has been very impressive brand over the past few years. Ever since the success of POCO F1, fans have been asking for it’s successor POCO F2 but it seems the company have other plans and launched POCO X2 on September,2020. Now it revamped this ‘X’ series with another member called POCO X3.
Does it fullfill our needs? is it worth buying? Let’s find out in this review.
What’s in the Box ?
The box have black yellow combo finish and looks great. Here are the things we received in the retail box.
- POCO X3 Smartphone ( Cobalt Blue) (non removable battery)
- User manual
- 33W charger (5V-3A/9V-2A/9V-3A/12V-1.5A/12V-2.25A/20V-1.32A/11V-3A)
- Type C cable
- Silicon Case
- Screen Protector Pre-installed
- Sim ejector tool
Quick Specifications:
- 6.67inch FullHD+ IPS LCD Display; 120Hz Refresh Rate; HDR 10+
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G 7nm Processor
- 64MP Sony IMX 682 Main Sensor + 13MP Ultrawide camera + 2MP Depth Sensor
- 6000mAh Battery With 33W Fast Charging Support
Design And Build:
Poco has created a fresh concept for the Poco X3, which does not look like a Redmi variant already available on the market. The latest X3 is losing two selfie cameras in contrast to the Poco X2 and is put right in the middle to the top of the smartphone. However, you still have a 6.67-inch panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. Poco has not changed anything with the display. High refresh rates are becoming increasingly popular in the budget segment and you should be interesting if you play a lot on your smartphone. The boundaries around the show are small but the camera hole can make some people distract.
Pick up the gadget and you’re going to find it’s incredibly big. Tipping at 225g on the scales. The Poco X3’s weight is well balanced and it’s not possible that the handset will tilt and slip out of your hands.
The structure and the back were made out of plastic. In my experience, as it kept picking up fingerprints, the back panel needed frequent cleaning. Unsurprisingly, in a thick and very visible module, the Poco X3 has a quad-camera setup on the rear. You also get an IR emitter on the end. I find a well-positioned side-mounted fingerprint scanner, but the volume buttons are not easy to hit.
Display:
POCO X3 packs a 6.67inch 2400 x 1080 pixels which is slightly higher that FHD resolution with the PPI (Pixels Per Inch) of 384. It has 20:9 aspect ratio and 400nits peak brightness. Elephant in the room is 120Hz refresh rate coupled with 240Hz touch sampling. It was buttery smooth to use the device.
Sunlight legibility was good but not great. POCO X3 has adaptive refresh rate feature which will automatically switch between 50Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz refresh rate to preserve battery using software algorithm. The panel is HDR 10 certified and protected by Gorilla Glass 5. Color reproduction was very good and viewing angles are good too. The single punch hole wasn’t disruptive while watching videos. POCO X3 display has satisfied me yet I love AMOLED displays more. If your looking for higher refresh rate display then you have no other go to cope up with LCD panel.
Performance:
This is the first phone to be powered by an Octa-Core Snapdragon 732G 8nm Mobile Platform with 2 x Kryo 470 Output CPUs (based on A76) clocked at up to 2.3 GHz and 6x Kryo 470 Efficiency CPUs (based on A55) at up to 1.8 GHz. It has an Adreno 618 GPU with Open GL ES 3.2, Open CL 2.0, and Vulkan 1.1 graphics support.
Based on the latest Cortex A76, this is faster than the Snapdragon 730G thanks to slightly faster larger Kryo 470 cores. Compared to Snapdragon 730G, the overclocked Adreno 618 GPU promises 15 percent boost in graphics rendering and it also has Snapdragon Elite Gaming features.
Theories apart, Overall gaming experience on Poco X3 was pleasant. I tested with Call Of Duty Mobile (CODM) and Real Cricket 20. In handled gaming smoothly on CODM, which was resources intensive game. I didn’t face any slutters or heating issue, it get worm in long sessions but not too hot. POCO X3 also have a liquid cooling technology which can reduce heat by 6°C. It comes with minimum 6GB/8GB of RAM coupled with 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. Out of that 128GB, 104GB is user available.
Software Experience:
It comes with Android 10 out of the box, On top of it comes with Xiaomi’s custom skin MIUI 12. With MIUI 12, Xiaomi bought some great features like Dark Mode 2.0, Enhanced Animations and lot more. There are inbuilt Dual Apps, App Lock, Quick Ball and more for improved user experience.
There is an inbuilt game booster app called ‘Game Turbo’ for better overall gaming experience. There isn’t any ads I noticed unlike Redmi devices. Mi Remote app was very useful which uses IR sensor to control electronic devices. It came with bloatwares like Amazon, Facebook and WPS Office apps which were uninstallable. It has dedicated FM Radio app.
Overall Software experience was good.
Camera:
PHOTOGRAPHY:
The phone is equipped with quad rear cameras, including a main 64-megapixel primary rear camera with a single LED flash, Sony IMX682 sensor (1/1.73″), 0.8μm pixel size, f/1.89 aperture, 6P lens, EIS support, along with a secondary 13-megapixel camera with 119° f/2.2 aperture ultra-wide angle lens, 1.12μm pixel size and a 2-megapixel portrait depth sensor, as well as a 2-megapixel camera. It has a front-facing 20-megapixel camera with a pixel size of 0.8μm and an f/2.2 aperture.
Thanks to the new Sony sensor, daylight shots came out well with decent dynamic range when it came to image quality. You achieve 16MP output after pixel binning. With enhanced dynamic range, HDR shots are better and macro shots are fine, but 2x zoom from the main camera has better details compared to the 2MP macro sensor, although you can go as near as 2 cms.
Thanks to the latest 13MP sensor, wide-angle shots are good as well, and the portrait shots have good edge detection. The 64MP mode provides a lot of information, but some images can be up to 30MB in size. Although there is no telephoto lens, the software is used to offer 2x zoom.
Thanks to 4-in-1 Super Pixel technology, low-light shots are fine, which helps the sensor hardware of the camera to combine 4 pixels into a single 1.6μm wide pixel, and the night mode makes the images even brighter with more information, but there is noise. There are nice daylight front camera shots.The output has a resolution of 20MP, but the image size is about 4MB. Owing to a lack of an external sensor, portrait front camera shots have good edge detection.
VIDEOGRAPHY:
It can capture videos at 30 fps at 4k resolution, 1080p at up to 60 fps, and it also has video recording at up to 960fps at 720p slow motion resolution, but this should be converted to 960fps at 240fps as the Snapdragon 732G officially supports only up to 240fps slow motion recording. Using the macro mode, you can also take 720p images, and 1080p 60 fps or 4K 30 fps videos using the ultra-wide camera.
Here are the camera samples:
Note: Touch the desired image to view in full size.
Battery:
The 6000mAh (typical) built-in battery is larger than the POCO X2’s 4500mAh battery in terms of battery life. Even with heavy use with 120Hz refresh rate allowed, it lasts for more than a day and with average use it lasts for two days, thanks to optimization in the MIUI 12. I got over 7 hours of screen time with a 120Hz refresh rate for a day of use.
Even though it does not mention 120Hz as adaptive, when you do not need it, it automatically switches to 60Hz, mostly to maximise battery life. 33W fast charging support is available for the handset. It takes just an hour to fuel from 0 to 100% which is quite useful in urban life. So to sum up POCO X3 will actually give more juice than expected.
Conclusion:
So far we have seen POCO X3 in every aspect of day to day usage. Since POCO X3 is available in many regions it’s your decision about the money your going to spend. Here in india it starts from INR 14,999 ( after price cut). For the price it thoroughly satisfies almost all users’ needs. Some might miss AMOLED if your already using AMOLED display phones and Glass body but other wise it’s a value for money device for sure.
Pros :
- 120Hz smooth display with HDR 10
- Stereo speakers
- 13MP Ultrawide camera unlike 8MP from other OEMs
- Very Good Battery Life
- Improved 64MP main sensor
Cons:
- Might feel heavy for handling (depends on user)
- Lack of additional microSD card slot
- Plastic body (depends on user)
