POCO X3 Pro Review: Is it worth buying only for the performance with just other basic things in the mid-range segment?

POCO X3 Pro impresses with great performance on a budget!!

The mid-range segment of smartphones has seen many new smartphones from brands like Xiaomi, Realme, and POCO in the past and nowadays also. When it comes to a flagship performance in mid-range smartphones, the first smartphone which comes to mind is the POCO F1 which was launched in 2018 and had the powerful Snapdragon 845 chipset which was seen on mang flagships of 2018.

But the design and styling, cameras, and battery life were pretty average and if you wanted a true gaming smartphone, it was and still a great choice. While for the past two years POCO has been bringing out some exciting smartphones with good features, the POCO X3 Pro is one such smartphone that follows the footsteps of the older POCO F1 as it packs in a flagship Snapdragon 860 chipset.

The POCO X3 (Review) launched last year is a great mid-range smartphone as it packs in a nice large 120Hz display, a quite powerful Snapdragon 732G chipset, a good set of cameras, a 6000mAh battery, and much more at a good price, and the new POCO X3 Pro improves upon it in terms of performance and gaming thus getting some downgrades also.

Should you just buy this smartphone only for performance and gaming considering the other sacrifices made in other aspects? Is it worth buying over its competitors considering the vast range of smartphones in the mid-range segment? Let's find out in the full review.

POCO X3 Pro Design:

In terms of design, the POCO X3 Pro resembles the look almost similar to the POCO X3 with the same polycarbonate back with a textured finish and a larger circular camera module that houses the quad cameras with a LED flash. The two sides of the back have a glossy finish whereas the center has a matte finish. There are two color variants - Steel Blue and Graphite Black.

The back of the Poco X3 Pro has a huge POCO logo that shines while viewing from different angles. It does catch some fingerprints and smudges at the back but feels chunkier as the weight is 215 grams and is also thicker at 9.4mm. However, it is lighter than the POCO X3 which weighs at 225grams. But do note that the POCO X3 has a 6000mAh battery compared to the 5160mAh battery on the POCO X3 Pro.

The back also has an IP53 rating which means it is water and dust resistant up to some extent but not like flagship smartphones that have IP67/68 rating. To the sides, on the right, there are the volume buttons and a power button which also doubles up as a fingerprint scanner, and on the left side is a SIM card tray which is a hybrid slot that accepts two SIM cards or one SIM card with a microSD card.

At the bottom, there is the loudspeaker grille, primary microphone, a USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On to the top, is a secondary noise-canceling microphone with an IR Blaster and a small hole which together with the loudspeaker at the bottom doubles up as a stereo speaker. On the front, like the POCO X3, there is a huge 6.67 inches display with a punch-hole at the top.

The design is good but not something unique when compared to the POCO X3 and if you have larger hands then handling it would not be a problem due to that massive weight but still, it is good on its own.

POCO X3 Pro Display:

Like the POCO X3, the smartphone boasts a larger 6.67 inches Full HD+ (1080x2400 pixels) IPS LCD display with a screen-to-body ratio of 20:9. POCO was one of the first manufacturers to get high refresh rate displays in the mid-range segment as we first saw the 120Hz display on the POCO X2. The POCO X3 continues and the same 120Hz refresh rate is present on the POCO X3 Pro.

This refresh rate is the dynamic refresh rate that can switch to 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz depending on the applications running in the background. Combined with the 120Hz display, there is a 240Hz touch sampling rate which enables quick touches during gameplay and also helps with smoother animations. While gaming, the display switches to 120Hz but while scrolling through images in the gallery, it switches to 40Hz.

This is better than the standard 60Hz which you can set to reduce power consumption. The brightness of the display is average as it can go up to 534nits which is slightly lower than the POCO X3 that can go up to 630nits but still the display easily visible under direct sunlight and in dark, display can go low but not as low as AMOLED panels.

The color reproduction is good with punchier colors but like AMOLED, the blues and blacks do not look deeper and richer. However, for viewing contents on the display, POCO has provided all the necessities like support for Widevine L1 which lets you stream HD contents from OTT platforms like Prime, Netflix, etc. and there is also support for HDR10 and HDR10+.

You can also choose from different color temperatures - Standard, Saturated, and Auto which is set by default. The Auto option allows setting the color temperature according to your liking whereas Saturated shows more colors giving it a warmer tone. POCO has provided a good IPS LCD panel as there is no bleeding noticed which is associated with many IPS LCD panels in the past.

However, it may not be as good as an AMOLED panel on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max but still great to use for gaming or watching content on the display.

POCO X3 Pro Performance:

This is one area where the POCO X3 Pro trumps all the smartphones in the mid-range segment as it packs a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 chipset which is the rebranded Snapdragon 855+ seen in flagships of 2019. The Snapdragon 860 is an octa-core chipset that has a 1x2.96 GHz Kryo 485 Prime core with a 1x2.42 GHz Kryo 485 Cortex A76 core and another 4x1.8GHz Kryo 485 Cortex-A55 cores and is coupled with Adreno 640 GPU.

This chipset brings flagship-level performance and gaming as all heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile, Asphalt 9 Legends without any stutters or frame drops noticed when the graphics are set to highest and the frame rates set to high. Genshin Impact showed some slight stutters but it was negligible and the 240Hz touch sampling rate provides quicker touches and response while gaming.

All tasks like multitasking between applications, scrolling through webpages, etc. were smooth due to the 120Hz refresh rate and the smartphone flies through any tasks without breaking a sweat. After a long time of gaming, the back of the smartphone felt slightly warmer but not by much especially due to the LiquidCool Technology implemented by POCO to dissipate heat while gaming.

The GameTurbo further enhances the gaming performance by tweaking the CPU and GPU slightly and blocks any incoming notifications or calls. The POCO X3 Pro is available in two variants- 6GB/8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB storage with speeds of UFS 3.1 which is the best considering the competition which offers UFS 2.1 speeds for read-write memory. However, this chipset only supports 4G and not 5G which is a slight letdown considering this is a flagship chipset.

In terms of benchmarks, the POCO X3 Pro scored 760 and 2675 in single and multi-core tests on Geekbench 5.1 and 562040 in Antutu v8 which are the highest scores for a mid-range smartphone. So in terms of performance and gaming, the POCO X3 Pro is an absolute beast that can through anything thrown at it.

POCO X3 Pro Software:

The POCO X3 Pro like all other POCO smartphones runs on MIUI 12 with Android 11 out of the box and has the POCO launcher. As there is the POCO launcher there are no ads noticed in the user interface but still, there is a lot of bloatware present and the GetApps throws in a lot of notifications and asks to install some applications which unfortunately cannot be uninstalled.

There are a quite bunch of pre-installed applications present and MIUI like all other Xiaomi smartphones. Other Android 11 features include Device controls. enhanced privacy while sharing data from a particular location, Bubbles for conversations, etc. and as usual there is a system-wide dark mode, Digital Wellbeing, and navigation gestures.

There are a lot of customizations provided from themes, font sizes, wallpapers, icons, home screen layout, app grid size, and also you can do a double-tap for locking/unlocking the smartphone. Other features include Quick Ball, Game Turbo mode, one-handed mode, and also a video toolbox. Like earlier said, if MIUI could reduce the animations while installing/uninstalling or during security scans in the background, the user interface could have been faster.

POCO has promised to give an MIUI 12.5 update very soon which may allow removing some applications from the user interface. But still, the MIUI experience is good on the POCO X3 Pro with no ads but does feel annoying and could have been better with RAM management and less bloatware.

POCO X3 Pro Cameras:

In terms of cameras, the POCO X3 Pro looks like a downgrade over the POCO X3 as it packs a 48MP main camera instead of the 64MP camera on the POCO X3. The POCO X3 Pro gets a quad-camera setup which includes a 48MP f/1.8 Sony IMX582 sensor for the main camera, an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera, a 2MP f/2.4 macro camera, and a 2MP depth sensor for portraits. On the front, there is a 20MP f/2.2 camera.

The images from the 48MP camera have good details and the dynamic range is good also. The color reproduction is slightly inconsistent and the noise is quite present. The white balance is good with higher ISO levels but when you compare it with the POCO X3's 64MP camera, the images do look slightly sharper but the dynamic range and color saturation are better on the POCO X3.

We could expect some better images as the smartphone packs in a flagship Snapdragon 860 chipset to help with image processing when compared to the mid-range Snapdragon 732G on the POCO X3. The images shot at night have a good amount of details with a good dynamic range. But noise levels are slightly on the higher side and there are some areas where the highlights are blown out.

Without Night Mode:

Turning on the Night Mode does help with slightly improved dynamic range and reduces noise to a larger extent. The colors look slightly saturated and the details in shadows that had been crushed are restored. Using the 48MP resolution, the images have good details with low noise but it does crop in some details when compared to the default 12MP resolution images.

With Night Mode:

The 8MP ultrawide camera does a decent job in terms of color saturation as it has good details and dynamic range. There is edge distortion around the edges and quite an amount of noise is present in the images. The details look average here when compared against the ultrawide images from the POCO X3. The POCO X3 had a slightly larger field of view with better color saturation.

The images taken during the night from the ultrawide camera come with good details with a lot of noise in the background. The dynamic range remains above average with slight inconsistency in colors. Turning on the Night Mode helps improve the dynamic range and contrast in the images thus reducing the noise level to some extent. 

The 2MP macro camera is just for adding up the numbers as it is just a fixed focus camera that takes images with average details and the dynamic range is just average. The colors look washed out and it is always recommended to use the main camera for a 2x zoom to get a clear image with better color saturation and dynamic range.

The 2MP depth sensor does good in terms of portraits. The dynamic range is good with good color saturation with good edge detection and good background blur. When you zoom into the portraits, there is quite some amount of noise present.

On the front, the 20MP camera does a good job in terms of details with good dynamic range but a lot of skin smoothening is applied by default. The color saturation could have been better and noise levels are slightly on the higher side. The portrait selfies come out with a good dynamic range but the edge detection needs some improvement.

On the video side, the rear main camera can shoot 4K videos at 60fps. However, there is no support for 8K as it a Snapdragon 860 chipset. The videos have good details and dynamic range with slightly oversaturated colors and the stabilization on the video is very good though lacking an OIS. The 1080p videos at 60fps have good details and you can use the Super Steady Mode that results in heavy cropping for a better-stabilized output on the main camera.

The ultrawide camera takes videos with good details and decent dynamic range. The noise levels are slightly higher but EIS does help in better-stabilized videos but still, there is a lot of edge distortion present around the corners in the videos. The same is the case at night, where there is a lot of noise and the dynamic range is just average.

On the front, you are restricted to 1080p at 30fps which is just average in terms of dynamic range and the skin tones do not look natural. The videos are well stabilized with decent contrast but the noise is quite prominent and at night, the colors look inconsistent with more noise.

Other camera features include a Pro Mode, Night HyperLapse, Slow-Mo, Vlog mode, and a Dual Video mode where you can record videos both from the front as well as the rear cameras simultaneously. The cameras are good for the mid-range segment and if you want slightly better camera performance, the POCO X3 and the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max (Review) do a better job.

POCO X3 Pro Battery Life:

The POCO X3 Pro houses a 5610mAh battery which is smaller than the 6000mAh battery on the POCO X3. With normal usage and the display is set to 120Hz, the POCO X3 Pro could easily last for two days without any charge and when used heavily which includes playing heavy games like Call Of Duty Mobile for 3-4 hours or watching videos for longer hours, the smartphone easily lasted for one single day.

The standard screen-on time was around 6-7 hours which is good considering the POCO X3 Pro has a Snapdragon 860 chipset built on a 7nm process. The standard screen on time is almost close to that of the POCO X3 and there are different power saving modes present to help conserve battery and on top of it, MIUI provides good battery optimizations, the battery life is good.

Like the POCO X3, the POCO X3 Pro is also bundled with a 33W fast charger inside the box which takes the smartphone from 0 to 100 percent within 65 to 70 minutes, and if you charge the smartphone for around 30 minutes, it charges up to 59 percent which is pretty quick but not the segment-best as many smartphones like the Realme 7 Pro (Review) and the Realme X7 (Review) comes with faster 50/65W charging speeds. 

Overall, the battery life is good with faster-charging speeds and will easily last longer.

POCO X3 Pro Audio Quality:

The POCO X3 Pro comes with dual stereo speakers that enrich the sound level whether it is listening to music or watching a video or playing games. The sound feels immersive and the depth of feeling is felt. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack present which most of the manufacturers are removing and the sound output through it is loud and clear.

Verdict:

Overall the POCO X3 Pro is a well-balanced smartphone that has the right hardware with decent software. The build and design may not excite much as it has the same polycarbonate back as the POCO X3 with that circular camera module and when it comes to cameras, they are pretty good and takes good images but they are not the segment-best as other smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro Max and the Realme 8 Pro have 108MP camera.

That does not mean that the cameras are bad as the image processing of the Snapdragon 860 chipset is better compared to other mid-range Snapdragon 700-series chipset but still, the POCO X3 is better than the POCO X3 Pro as it has that 64MP Sony IMX582 sensor for the main camera. MIUI is good with POCO smartphones as there are no ads present in the user interface but the presence of bloatware lets it down when compared to something like Stock Android or OxygenOS.

If Xiaomi could remove the GetApps that throws in a lot of notifications, then it would provide a cleaner software experience. POCO could have provided a 256GB storage option since it is more focused on gaming. Talking about gaming, this smartphone destroys the competition in terms of performance and gaming.

The Snapdragon 860 chipset runs through every task thrown at it and with the powerful Adreno 640 GPU and liquid cooling, you can achieve the best gaming experience on any mid-range smartphone to date. There is also faster UFS 3.1 speeds for storage which is a segment-first also. The battery life is good considering the larger display and the inclusion of a fast charger gives the peace of fast charging.

So to sum it up, if you are a person who considers performance and gaming over all other criteria of a smartphone, this is the best one you can buy as it has a nice 120Hz display, excellent hardware, and good battery life making it a true gaming smartphone though with those minor compromises.