Price & Colours:
The Poco X3, like most of its competitors at this price point, is a plastic phone, which is fine. Sure, the top-of-the-line Redmi Notes have glass on the back (with a plastic frame), and people tend to think that makes them feel "luxury," but honestly, the difference in feel between the materials is negligible. This model is priced at Rs. 40,999.However, several of Poco's competitors have recently released even louder screaming backs, combining large letters with sparkling hues. At least in terms of color, the X3 is a very standard offering: you may choose between Cobalt Blue and Shadow Gray, the latter being the color of our review unit.
Camera:
The Poco X3 Pro delivers good imaging experience compared to its peers. It boasts a quad-camera set-up on the back a 48 megapixel primary sensor of an f/1.79 aperture, an 8MP ultra-wide sensor of an f/2.2 aperture and a 118-degree field of view (FoV), a 2MP macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. 48 MP would be an average camera but considering the price of this model it is a fine option.
RAM & Storage:
The smart phone comes in two variants of memory storage; 64 or 128GB with a built-in RAM of 8GB. This device also supports SD card. 128 GB variant would be a better option to choose between the two options because built in storage should be enogh to support all the system files and apps in the phone. However, an 8GB RAM is good enough to be in this price.
Display:
The fingerprint reader is integrated into the power button, as is customary for Xiaomi LCD-screen smartphones, and the capacitive sensor is adequate. Although the inclusion of an LCD screen at this price point isn't surprising, the Poco X3's panel has a standout feature that we've only seen in indirect competitors: a 120 Hz refresh rate.
Although you may need to adjust things manually from time to time, the auto-brightness curve is excellent, and the minimum brightness (if you use the confusingly named Night Mode slider in Settings and turn it all the way down) is exceptionally low, making for very comfortable night-time reading sessions. Even high-end OLEDs rarely go this low, which is something to applaud.
Battery:
As usual for Xiaomi phones, battery life has been very good. We easily got more than 6 hours of screen on time in a day, with our absolute record being 5 hours of screen on time with 50% of the battery left. Realistically, with usage similar to ours, we would expect you to easily hit 6-7 hours of screen time every day, with some days even exceeding 8. Those are some great numbers, even if there was a bit more variability in our results than we are generally comfortable with. Usually, Xiaomi phones result in long-lasting usage hours and users do not have to charge the phone every now and then.
Processor/Chipset:
While the Snapdragon 732G chipset powering the Poco X3 doesn't seem very different, on paper, compared to the Snapdragon 720G inside the Redmi Note 9 Pro we long-term reviewed last year, in actual day-to-day use, there's a much more pronounced difference in feel. We aren't sure whether the SoC is the only contributing factor, or if there are some additional software optimizations at play too, but the Poco X3 has been the fastest and smoothest smartphone that we've ever used in this price class.
Extra Features:
As with all Xiaomi and Xiaomi sub-brand smartphones, the phone comes with a case in the box. While not as strong as the Mi 10T Pro's, this case is still better than your normal cheap jelly case, however, it does have one 'feature' that may or may not drive you insane.
There's a flap that goes into the USB-C charging connector for whatever reason. We'd assume this is to increase the phone's splash resistance, but the 3.5mm headphone jack remains visible, so that doesn't make sense.
Whatever the rationale for its presence, it irritated this reviewer every time he tried to plug in late at night, because the normally easy action became very tedious due to that fidgety flap. If we were buying this phone and planning to use the included case (which we don't see why not), we'd cut off the flap and live happily ever after.