Poco M3: The new entry-level king?

Poco has just launched a brand new entry-level smartphone, the Poco M3. Building on the popularity of the Poco X3 NFC, the M3 is designed to be even more affordable but come with a massive battery.

Probably the first thing you’d notice about the Poco M3 is its bold design choice. Credit where credit is due, it definitely doesn’t look like a lot of other smartphones, in fact the most similar looking one would probably be the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 limited edition device. Of course, the design isn’t quite as intricate, but the general design definitely reminds me of that phone.

That said, despite the leather-looking back, the Poco M3 actually has a plastic back that curves and hugs the sides of the smartphone. It has what the company calls an an “anti-fingerprint texture back” which is accurate, to say the least, but doesn’t feel particularly premium in the hand.

Up front, Poco has equipped the Poco M3 with a 6.53″ Full HD+ display with a tiny notch for the selfie camera. This display has a max brightness of 400 nits, a contrast ratio of 1500:1, Sunlight Mode, TUV Rheinland Low Blue Light certification as well as L1 Widevine certification.

Inside, the smartphone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor that’s mated to 4GB of RAM. The Snapdragon 662 processor is a mid-range processor, but it occupies the lower end of that spectrum. The 4GB of RAM is of the LPDDR4X variety, and you can match that with either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage.

Interestingly both of those are UFS 2.1 and UFS 2.2 storage respectively, which is nice to see. Of course you can also expand that further with a microSD card via the dedicated slot on the dual SIM tray.

Keeping the lights on, is one of the Poco M3’s key features: a 6,000mAh battery. That’s pretty massive even by 2020 standards, and this battery can be charged via a USB-C port. It supports 18W fast-charging, though Poco includes a 22.5W fast-charging adapter in the box.

For photos, the Poco M3 features a 48MP triple camera setup at the back and an 8MP selfie shooter. That means you get a 48MP wide angle main camera with an f/1.79 aperture lens, a 2MP macro camera and a 2MP depth sensor. There’s no mention of any optical image stabilisation, but there’s night mode and it’s capable of shooting 120fps slow motion video.

Other nice features to see on the smartphone include a set of dual speakers (earpiece + bottom firing) which sound pretty good, a 3.5mm headphone jack, Hi-Res Audio certification, an IR blaster, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and Face Unlock. On the connectivity side of things, this device supports 4G LTE (TDD & FDD), 5GHz WiFi as well as Bluetooth 5.0.

The Poco M3 is priced at USD 149 (about RM609) for the 4GB RAM + 64GB storage and USD 169 (about RM690) for the 4GB RAM + 128GB storage variant. During the Black Friday sale on 27th November, the devices will be offered with a promo price of USD 129 (about RM527) for the 64GB model and USD 149 (about RM609) for the 128GB version.

In Malaysia, the base model with 64GB storage is officially priced at RM599 while the 128GB version is priced at RM699. It will be available starting this Friday, 27th November on Lazada Malaysia and they are offering an early bird promo of RM499 for the Poco M3 4GB RAM + 64GB storage model.

In the meantime, you can check out our hands-on with the M3 below: