Poco X3 NFC long-term review

Introduction

The Poco X3 NFC is called Poco X3 NFC even though it should probably have been named Poco X3 120Hz. That's a much more important feature to list in a phone's name, especially at this price point, than the presence of NFC - for most people, at least.

Alas, NFC made the cut into the name, and this is the last time we're mentioning it. It's there, it works; there's no need for it to be affixed to the smartphone's name. None at all. That said, the Poco X3 does, in fact, also have a 120 Hz refresh rate for its display, which is still incredibly intriguing in its price range, and not something often seen from its competitors.

We'll tell you all about how that headline feature actually behaves in normal day-to-day use since for this long-term review, we've had the Poco X3 as our one and only smartphone. We wanted to get to know it better, much better than we were able to in our normal review, and see what it's like to live with day in and day out.

Will the experience turn out as good as the specs imply? Will we be raving about what amazing value for money this phone is, by the end of the review? Well, there's only one way to find out - join us over the next few pages where we'll tell you our thoughts about our prolonged affair with the Poco X3 - what the ups and downs were, what we liked, and what we didn't. So grab a drink and a bowl of popcorn, and let's go.

Design, build quality, handling

The Poco X3 has a design language that we'll just call interesting, for lack of a better word. The back of the phone is definitely not understated in any way, with the huge logo plastered onto it and the oddly shaped camera island. This definitely isn't a phone for those who are fans of designs on the quieter end of the spectrum. Then again, we've seen even louder screaming backs from some of Poco's competitors lately, pairing big letters with sparkly colorways. At least when it comes to colors, the X3 is a reasonably pedestrian offering - you get your pick from Cobalt Blue and Shadow Gray - the latter being the hue our review unit is adorned with.

We think it's a love it or hate it design, and only you know which camp you're in. All of this applies only to the back, of course, as the front looks basically like that of any other smartphone, with the screen occupying most of it and a small centered hole-punch cutout for the selfie camera. This reviewer isn't a fan of the back's design, but here's the thing you might want to ask yourself: how many times do you actually look at your handset's rear end? Especially if you have a case on. We're willing to wager a bet that, for most people, it's not very often.

The phone comes with a bundled case in the box, as do all Xiaomi and Xiaomi sub-brand devices usually. This case, while not feeling as sturdy as the one that the Mi 10T Pro got, is still better than your average cheap jelly affair, but it does have one 'feature' that may or may not drive you crazy. For some reason, there's a flap that goes into the USB-C charging port. We'd think this has something to do with further splash proofing the phone, but then the 3.5mm headphone jack remains exposed, so that doesn't make much sense.

Whatever the reason for its existence, it did manage to constantly annoy this reviewer when plugging in at night, because that otherwise simple operation becomes incredibly fiddly thanks to that fidgety flap. If we were buying this handset and intending on using the bundled case (and we don't see why not), then we'd definitely cut off the flap and live a happy life without it.

The camera island isn't the nicest looking around to our eyes, and the fact that the included case's cutout is circular means you have some space above and beyond the island where dust will be collected on a regular basis. We're not sure what prompted this particular design decision, but it's not great.

The Poco X3 is a plastic phone, as are most of its competitors at this price point, and that's... fine. Sure, the top-of-the-line Redmi Notes have glass on the back (while retaining a plastic frame), and people seem to think that would feel "more premium", but honestly, while there is a difference in feel between the materials, it's tiny. Considering that most people seem to put their phone in a case anyway - you'd probably be touching the case material, regardless of what the phone is actually made of.

This is a chunky monkey for sure, with its 215g of weight and 9.4mm thickness (which grows even more where the camera island is). That makes it very easy to tell whether you have it in your pocket or not. Seriously, you will never be confused.

Despite its heft, handling has been great for this reviewer, but the usual caveat for most phones these days applies: if you have small hands, you will probably find that you need to use both of them to safely operate the X3.

The glossy finish back does collect a ton of fingerprints very quickly, but that makes the device less slippery than it would've been with a matte finish, so it's as they say - you win some, you lose some. The plastic frame is also glossy, and while the screen element does sit 'on top of the frame (as happens with all affordable devices nowadays), the transition is smooth, there are no jagged edges or anything like that.

The feeling of heft may actually be to some people's liking, those who find "heavier" suggests "more premium" or something like that. Sure, the phone could have been lighter, but we didn't find its weight to be an issue in day-to-day use. We're pretty much used to such numbers from a lot of flagship devices, and the feeling you get in handling is different but doesn't differ as much as the price.

Speakers, biometrics, vibration motor

The Poco X3 has dual speakers, with one bottom-firing unit and the earpiece pulling double duty as the other channel. They aren't the loudest or the best sounding speakers we've ever heard, not by a long shot, but they get the job done much better than if we only had one of them to rely on. Consuming media on the phone is fine unless you're in a loud environment, where even at the maximum level, you'll still need to bring the phone closer to your ears to hear what's going on. That said, this is perfectly passable for the price point, don't worry about it.

The fingerprint scanner is built into the power button, as has become a tradition for Xiaomi's LCD screened devices, and the capacitive sensor is decent enough. While some reviewers have issues with under-display readers, preferring such a side-mounted solution, this particular reviewer constantly runs into issues with the latter.

Without knowing exactly what the issue is, we're assuming it has to do with how narrow that button is, and thus how little surface area of your finger it can capture. Regardless of the cause, we found that the reader worked from the first try only about 75% of the time. That's not a great track record, but your own mileage may vary.

Compared to the Mi 10T Pro that we recently long-term reviewed, which also has such a fingerprint sensor, the Poco X3's felt slightly less reliable. And before you ask - yes, we took extra care when enrolling the fingerprint to touch upon all parts of the finger.

As usual for Xiaomi devices, you can pick between unlocking with a touch of the sensor or a press. We went for the latter because it just feels more natural as it blends into the pressing the power button to wake the screen action. It also removes any accidental unlocks when taking the phone out of a pocket, for example, while inadvertently touching the sensor.

Biometrics settings

Face unlocking is present too, although its utility is severely undermined by the presence of the fingerprint reader built into the power button. To use face unlock, you can either double-tap the screen for it to wake up and trigger the mechanism, or press the power button - but in that case, the fingerprint unlocking would be at work too. There are no additional sensors for face identification aside from the selfie camera, so the security isn't great either. That said, face unlock doesn't work when you have your eyes closed. Although there is no specific setting for this, we checked.

The vibration motor is perfectly adequate for the Poco X3's price point, while not being near the top in our personal preference list. We've definitely seen (or rather - felt) worse, and it gets the job done nicely, aided by the gentle vibrations splattered across MIUI when you interact with the screen. That said, unlike what we get in more expensive models running MIUI 12, here you can't adjust the intensity of the haptic vibrations, it's just a binary on/off switch.

Display quality, brightness

The presence of an LCD screen at this price point isn't surprising at all, but the Poco X3's panel has a headline feature that we've rarely (if ever) seen indirect competitors: a 120 Hz refresh rate. We'll get back to that in a bit.

First, let's talk about screen quality. This one isn't on par with the panel inside the Mi 10T Pro, which was among the best LCDs we've ever seen in the Android world. That's understandable if you consider the price delta between these two phones, though. And in fairness, the X3's display isn't bad at all. It's perfectly decent for day-to-day use, as long as you don't expect OLED-like pure blacks and don't mind some backlight bleed - both of these rather typical aspects of an LCD panel.

The only time it really struggles is in bright direct sunlight, where, unfortunately, it's barely legible. Everywhere else, though, it performs really well. The auto-brightness curve is very good, although you might still need to adjust things manually from time to time, and the minimum brightness (if you use the confusingly called Night Mode slider in Settings and turn it all the way down) is exceptionally low, making for very comfortable nighttime reading sessions. We rarely see even high-end OLEDs go so low, and that's something to commend.

Display settings

There are some color space settings, but less than you'd find in the same version of MIUI for an OLED screen. As usual, we chose to stick with the Auto preset, as that supposedly employs some algorithmic magic to automatically adjust the color temperature based on that of the ambient lighting around you, like Apple's True Tone. Also, as usual, we did switch to the Warm color profile, because the default one has whites that are way too blue for our taste.

Refresh rate

Okay, now back to that refresh rate. If you set it to 120 Hz, it won't stay there forever no matter what, it's dynamic, and there is some amount of adjustment going on depending on what's on-screen. It switches to 60 Hz, for example, when there's just a static thing depicted. The touch sampling rate is 240 Hz, which is very good for this price point, and overall the experience at 120 Hz is very smooth.

There's just one issue, which you may or may not even be able to spot, and if you do, you might not actually care about that much. And that is ghosting.

When you are in 120 Hz mode and scroll quickly on the screen, some ghosting / smearing will appear. This reviewer has spotted it happening every single time, but it didn't really feel very annoying. That may be different for you personally, so if you have a chance to "try before you buy" that would be advised. That is, if you care about 120 Hz in the first place. Or perhaps order an X3 from a store with a decent returns policy, just in case you find yourself not being able to stand the ghosting issue.

Refresh rate selector

We assume it happens because the pixel response of the panel isn't great, but whatever the reason, it's definitely there, and it's definitely not something that we've seen on higher-end 120 Hz screens. Just in case the question has crossed your mind - yet, we'd still definitely prefer this over a 60 Hz panel every day. Not only that, but this particular reviewer would even take the Poco X3's screen over a 60 Hz OLED at a similar price point without thinking twice about it, despite very much being enamored with OLED blacks. Those are great, but if it was a choice, smoothness comes first.

Display settings

MIUI 12 has a revamped and expanded Reading Mode (which is what Xiaomi calls its blue light filter), where you can pick between a Classic mode and a Paper mode which adds texture to the screen too in order to emulate the look of... you guessed it, paper. Or at least try its best to. This is also where you can choose how extreme you want the effect to be, how much texture you feel comfortable with, and whether to have "full colors", "light colors", or a black and white display while Reading Mode is on.

Reading Mode settings

This is probably the most comprehensive blue light filter we've ever seen, in terms of customization options. There's something for everyone here, and no matter what your preferences are, you'll find a way to feel happy. Oh, and of course, the Reading Mode is schedulable too, you can either have it come on automatically after sunset (and turn itself off come sunrise) or pick your own custom interval.

Since this is an LCD panel, there's no chance of an Always-on Display, as it would drain the battery too fast. You do however get a tiny white notification LED, which is better than nothing, we guess. Like the one in the Mi 10T Pro, this one isn't very customizable at all.

Notification light settings

You just get to choose whether you want it to be working or not - when charging, and when a new notification is received. That's it, there's only one color (white), and you can't customize it any further. Also, similarly to the one in the Mi 10T Pro, this LED is barely visible from a lot of angles, so while we appreciate its inclusion, we have to note that its utility in day-to-day life isn't as high as you might expect.

Performance, smoothness

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.

It easily beat both the aforementioned Redmi Note 9 Pro as well as the Redmi Note 8 Pro. Not by a lot when it comes to speed, but it was still definitely noticeable for normal day to day operations.

When it comes to smoothness, the difference was much more obvious, and that's thanks in no small part to the 120 Hz screen refresh rate and 240 Hz touch sampling rate. Obviously this phone didn't feel as smooth as a flagship with a 120 Hz screen, or even one with a 90 Hz refresh rate, but that's irrelevant because you're not choosing between the Poco X3 or one of those. You're choosing between this one and another midranger, and so far this is the smoothest mid-range phone we've ever tested for a long-term review.

The software helps that feeling too with the way its animations work, and overall the Poco X3 was an incredibly pleasant to use package, in terms of both speed and smoothness. It surprised us on both fronts, as we were expecting it to be much more similar to the Redmi Note 9 Pro in these areas. Thankfully, it's not. It's better, and we're happy that that's the case.

You still won't mistake this for a flagship in use, but it gets much closer to one than its price might have you believe.

Battery life

As usual for Xiaomi phones (or ones from its various sub-brands), 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 on 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. You can see this in the screenshots below.

Battery life

So it feels like the Poco X3 definitely has the potential to reach amazing heights in terms of longevity, but it doesn't always realize that potential and on some days sticks with being very good and not anything more. Still, one thing is clear - if you charge your device every night, you are very unlikely to ever need a midday top-up for this one.

As always, our usage involves about 12-16 hours off the charger in any given day, with primarily Wi-Fi connectivity but around an hour or more of mobile data, Bluetooth always on, about an hour of music listening via Bluetooth and an hour or two of calls, and about half an hour or so of GPS navigation with Waze (and rarely Google Maps). We should also note that the display refresh rate was always set to 120 Hz.

Charging from zero to hero takes about an hour and 15 minutes, which is not very fast, but not very slow either, and for this price point it's actually a good result in our book. It's funny that a cheap phone like this still comes with a charger in the box (and one that's capable of the fastest charging the phone can take), whereas expensive flagships are now starting to forgo the brick in the name of extra profits (sorry - we meant saving the environment or some such thing).

Software version and updates

The Poco X3 runs MIUI 12 with Android 10 underneath, and that fact is a dead giveaway for how Xiaomi treats its phones in terms of software support. While all recent devices do get reasonably timely MIUI updates, which are the ones that add new features, when it comes to Android versions the affordable models are often stuck on older iterations for a very long time. Such is the case too for the X3, still on Android 10 even though Android 11 has been out for more than half a year.

An update to Android 11 will probably reach the Poco X3 at some point, but it's very unclear when. As for Android 12, who knows if that will ever make it to this device. That said, as mentioned above, most of the new features are delivered via MIUI updates, and Xiaomi is good at issuing those even for old phones.

Current software

Security updates are another matter entirely, and one in which Xiaomi seriously needs to up its game. Competitors such as Samsung have been constantly upping the ante by working on delivering these in a timely fashion even to midrangers, whereas the Poco X3 is still on the February 2021 security patch level. That's three months old at this point, and hopefully we'll see at least trimestrial security patches for this phone.

Launcher, Recents

MIUI 12 is pretty much a known entity by this point, for us as well as, we assume, for you. It's been out for a long time, and we've long-term reviewed a bunch of phones running it already. On the Poco X3 the experience is incredibly similar to that found on any other device running this version of Xiaomi's Android skin, with a few small differences here and there.

As all Poco devices, the X3 has the Poco Launcher built into the software, and not Xiaomi's nameless option - although that one has started to become very similar to the Poco Launcher in recent months, with the addition of an app drawer and auto-categorization of your apps. Those features obviously also exist in the MIUI for Poco version found on our X3 review unit. The Poco Launcher also defaults to round icons (which we much prefer), like Google, and not to the almost square-ish ones that MIUI comes with on other devices. There is support for third party icon packs, though, if you don't like the defaults.

Another thing that's been new to MIUI lately is the presence of Google's Feed to the left of the leftmost homescreen, replacing the Vault feature that was, at least for us, much less useful. Your opinion may differ, however, and unfortunately you can't get the Vault back. You can turn off the Google Feed, though, if it's not to your liking.

As usual in MIUI you can't simply tap on the brightness slider that shows up below the Quick Settings row and above the notifications, you have to swipe across it for whatever adjustment you intend to make. This is a minor usability niggle, but one that still doesn't make any sense to us.

Home screen, App drawer, Google Feed, Home screen settings

The Recents view is traditional MIUI fare, with two vertically-scrolling columns of apps presented side-by-side, albeit with an offset. On the Mi 10T Pro, as well as on other newer Xiaomi devices, you can now finally pick a horizontally scrolling list for Recents, but this unfortunately hasn't made it to the Poco X3 yet.

Hopefully it will, for those of us who, let's not say hate, but definitely don't love the way things are presented at the moment. Every other Android maker has opted for the horizontally scrolling list, and that looks better to us, so the option for it can't arrive soon enough.

Settings, Dark mode

The Settings menu is big and convoluted as always, and we're constantly thankful for the Search bar at the top. The System apps updater is still present, and it still only updates some of the system apps, while others get their new versions through the Play Store, and in all honesty we're done trying to understand this weird random behavior. Idiosyncratic? For sure. But hey, at least it's not an entire duplicate app store (cough... Samsung... cough).

Settings, System apps updater

There is of course a Dark mode, we'd be surprised if it was missing on a phone in 2021. Since the Poco X3 has an LCD screen, you're not really getting any of the battery savings that gives OLEDs (which have their pixels turn off entirely to 'show' black), but this theme still looks better to us than the default light one, so we set it and forgot it.

As is par for the course at this point in time, you can schedule the Dark mode to go live (and then turn off) when you want it to. And as Xiaomi has gotten us used to, you can force it onto apps that still don't have a dark theme of their own. We have done that for Facebook, while shuddering in disbelief at the fact that it still doesn't have a widely rolled out dark mode built-in, years after dark modes became a thing in the mobile world. That's just so... Facebook.

Dark mode settings

Little word of caution here, though - the forcing of the Dark mode onto third party apps is on by default for all of them, which is very bad behavior in our book from MIUI. Since this may result in weird visuals (especially for those apps which do have a dark theme to begin with), it should have been an opt-in thing, not opt-out. Oh, and you can't batch disable, you have to go through the list of apps one by one and disable it for the ones you want individually. Thankfully there's at least a search box at the top to make finding a specific app more convenient.

Control Center, gestures

Something that is opt-in is the new Control Center, which - just think of it as the iOS Control Center. It's... that. But on Android. So if that's the one iOS feature you've always wanted on your Android device, well, here you go. We like Android to feel like Android in use and not iOS, so we kept it off and went with the traditional route of Quick Settings toggles instead.

Xiaomi's gesture navigation system is still among the best out there. It works very well, we've had absolutely no issues with swipes whatsoever. As always, you swipe up for home, swipe up and pause for Recents, and swipe from the sides (on the bottom two thirds of the screen) to go back. Swiping from the side in the top third of the screen triggers an app's slide-out navigation drawer, if it happens to still have one.

Control center and gesture navigation settings

It's perfectly thought through and perfectly implemented. The Poco X3 even still has the quick app switching function - you do that by swiping from a side more than you would for the Back gesture. This is probably going to be replaced when (or if) Android 11 hits, if other Xiaomi phones running that version of the OS are any indication. You'll then need to swipe across the bottom of the screen to achieve the same purpose, but that's always been less reliable in our experience.

Software bugs

While we wouldn't call the current MIUI version that the Poco X3 runs riddled by bugs, there still are some weird behaviors we've spotted that we hope are bugs and not 'features'.

For example, if you get a notification, swipe down the notification pane and simply ignore said notification (not tapping on it, not dismissing it), and then swipe down the notification pane again, the aforementioned notification will be gone, and yet the icon of the corresponding app will still be seen in the status bar. This doesn't happen for all apps, but it happens for WhatsApp every single time and that did manage to annoy us a lot.

Next up, the DND mode simply doesn't work at all, in our experience. We usually set a specific time period for DND (for when we're asleep), and allow all calls to come through but no notification sounds. Despite that, every single notification sound was allowed to come through without a hitch. DND mode literally had one job, and it failed at it miserably.

Speaking of DND, the entire Settings section dedicated to it is incredibly confusingly laid out and even more confusing to use. We've had a ton of experience with MIUI lately so we know our way around it, but some new users may not. The fact that DND and Silent mode share some toggles, but then when you select one the settings become different - this is the type of thing we haven't seen on any other Android skin, and Xiaomi's engineers really need to work on the presentation here. We've never been confused by what a Silent/DND setting would do on any other Android skin, and yet with MIUI it always takes us a few minutes to remember the very unintuitve way in which everything is presented.

Next up, background process killing - a recurring topic whenever we discuss MIUI, unfortunately. The weirdest thing is that this is not tuned to the same level of aggressiveness for all Xiaomi / Poco / Redmi phones, in fact we're starting to feel like the cheaper the device, the more aggressive the system is at obliterating any background tasks. That's fine for battery life, we assume, but then the cheaper models tend to have the bigger battery capacities on average, so this feels incredibly unnecessary.

We ran into this issue a lot, with previously open apps constantly needing to refresh when we switch back to them. The most frustrating was trying to keep our smartwatch (a Fitbit Sense) connected and showing notifications. In short, this was almost impossible. Despite turning on Autostart and turning off the MIUI battery optimization feature for the Fitbit app, the watch constantly disconnected.

Worse still, despite allowing Notification access for it, this would only work for a few hours before the watch simply stopped getting access to notifications. The only way to fix this, multiple times a day? Go to the phone's Settings, search for Notification access, turn it off for Fitbit, and then turn it on again. Rinse and repeat in a few hours. We haven't tested with other smartwatches so the situation may not be as dire for those, but we do have to mention that we haven't seen such behavior on any other phone we've long-term reviewed recently, and we have had the exact same smartwatch connected. Nor was this a bug in the Fitbit app, because we tried it on other phones while we were using the Poco X3, and everything worked fine.

To round off the connectivity issues, we were once again frustrated with Waze's behavior, which we also assume is because of the aggressive background task management in MIUI. The same thing happened here as it did on the Mi 10T Pro when we long-term reviewed that phone. Almost every time we start up Waze it initially fails to connect to the mobile network, requiring a restart. And while it's in use, if we switch to another app and then back to it, the same issue pops up. We've tried this on other phones too and none of this happens, so it's not the app's fault.

We understand these may be niche issues that you may not run into yourself, but wanted to share them even so, because they are part of our frustrations in our experience of using the Poco X3 day to day. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that all of these things are easily fixable in software and have nothing to do with the hardware on offer here.

Camera app

The Poco X3's camera app is the usual Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco fare, which means that for the most part it's intuitive and easy to use. There's just one thing that has consistently irked us. And that's the fact that the touch targets for the 0.6x / 1x / 2x buttons on the viewfinder are way too small. This means that if you don't perfectly hit them, and your finger is off by just a very small amount, then you won't in fact switch to your desired magnification level, and instead you'll end up forcing focus onto that area for the camera you were already using.

It's hard to describe how annoying this has been in day to day use, because we'd get it right only about 20% of the time from the first try. Then again, if you capture less photos than us, or rarely switch between magnification levels, this will obviously not impact you almost at all, but we felt the need to mention it anyway because there's simply no logical reason why those touch targets wouldn't be bigger than the actual buttons you're trying to hit. Hardly anyone ever wants to force focus onto the far right side of a shot.

Aside from this slight niggle, our experience with using the Poco X3's camera app has been problem-free. It's always fast and reliable, and never crashed on us once. You can set the phone to quickly jump to the camera app when you double press the volume down button, and/or when you double press the power button (although the settings are in different parts of the UI, searching for them will be quickest). That's a lot of flexibility right there, and we like it.

Camera samples

Now jumping onto the actual images that the phone's camera system produces, we obviously weren't expecting anything near range-topping performance here given how cheap it is. If you keep the price in mind, what you get are mostly very good results, but in some cases you do need to keep your expectations in check - a lot.

The daytime shots from the main 64 MP sensor are pixel binned and come out as 16 MP images, and they are indeed great for the X3's class. You get nice amounts of detail and contrast, and very good dynamic range. The colors are livelier than real life, but at this point that's par for the course for any phone. Speaking of colors, they're a tad warmer than what most other devices are doing these days, but for some people that may actually be a plus. There is some purple fringing around high contrast areas and some shots do look oversharpened, but for this price we can't really complain too much.

Daytime samples from the main camera

As always in long-term reviews,

we chose to skip shooting in the main sensor's native resolution, because these pixel binned units aren't really supposed to be used like that. There is a 64 MP mode if you want to use it, but there's a time penalty in capturing every shot (because of the huge file size), and it's not worth it, quality-wise.

The daytime ultrawide shots are perfectly passable, especially for a mid-ranger, with decent levels of detail, nice colors, and okay dynamic range (even if it won't be shockingly good or anything like that). The distortion correction isn't very good though, and if you pixel peep you may find some purple fringing in the corners, though.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

2x zoom shots are "advertised" by the viewfinder UI but since there's no dedicated telephoto snapper here you'll get a digitally zoomed shot from the main sensor. These pictures are lacking in detail compared to the 1x images, and a lot of times simply cropping from a 1x shot will yield a better result, if you have the time and ability to do that.

Daytime 2x zoom samples

The Poco X3's macro camera is weird to use (as you need to get into a special mode in the camera app, which isn't very easily accessible), and since it has only 2 MP resolution and no autofocus, it's best ignored. That's what we did.

At night, if you use the main camera you are getting decent shots, but these are definitely not earth-shatteringly good, even for the mid-range phone class. While for daytime the Poco X3 produces perfectly adequate shots most of the time, when the ambient light levels go down, things do change and this is one of those areas we mentioned where your expectations need to be doubly in check. You do get decent detail levels, but there's a ton of noise reduction going on which smears things, and the contrast overall isn't great either. Colors are still a tad warmer than we're used to.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

If you turn on Night Mode, then things do visibly improve. The scenes get brighter, the blown highlights are mostly restored, but the noise reduction gets even stronger which means you can say bye bye to any fine detail. Still, these look better to our eyes than the Auto mode shots at night, even so. They will be perfectly adequate for social media and viewing on a phone.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

Switching to the ultrawide at night is an exercise in frustration, as most times when viewing a picture after the fact, you'll struggle to remember what you wanted to capture. Very few of these shots turn out usable in any way - even for a quick social share (what you see below are our best results, we've had far worse). Add to that the fact that this camera doesn't support Night Mode, and we'd say you should try to avoid the ultrawide when the sun goes down.

Nighttime ultrawide samples

The 2x shots at night are still lesser than the 1x ones, and since those aren't amazing to begin with, you can see why we wouldn't recommend shooting in this mode either, unless you really need to go closer without using your feet.

Nighttime 2x zoom samples

The Night Mode does improve things somewhat, if you can hold your phone steady for long enough, but it also tends to give the pictures a painting-like look. In some cases, it's almost like having a filter applied, and it can create some interesting artsy shots, but might disappoint you if you're after a more photographic vibe.

Night Mode 2x zoom samples

Selfies are generally detailed enough during the day, with nice colors and good contrast. Portrait Mode shots are not this camera's strong suit for whatever reason, with subject separation struggling a lot of times. At night, understandably things turn noisier and mushier, and that happens more as you have less ambient lighting around (if you don't you use the screen flash). Take a selfie in a dark enough area and it's pretty much useless.

Selfie samples, some with Portrait Mode

Overall the Poco X3 comes with a decent camera system for its price point, one which generally doesn't disappoint during the day, but which struggles at night, unless you use Night Mode on the main sensor, in which case shots come out good enough for a quick social media share. It's not that we expected anything more from the phone considering how cheap it is, but we definitely weren't wowed by its camera prowess. In short - it has cameras, they're decent, and the ultrawide helps with framing flexibility during the day. That's about it.

Conclusion

The Poco X3 is the best mid-range device at its price, despite obviously not being perfect. That's what we think after having spent a lot of time with it as our one and only smartphone, but even if we did use it for an extended period, you shouldn't necessarily take our word as gospel. That's because what we value in a phone and what you value in a phone may turn out to be different things, however slightly. And even minor differences there could make for an experience that feels very different to you than it did to us.

That said, of course we can't speak for you, so we'll do what we usually do, and give you the most overused caveat of them all. The Poco X3 is the one to buy if your budget isn't bigger than its price, provided you can live with its downsides. That's the key right there.

Even flagships have downsides (and seem to be adding new ones every year for some reason), no phone is actually perfect, so when you're making a buying decision you need to figure out what's most important to you, and what you can overlook. We aim to help with that, by listing some pros and cons.

All of the pros here take the pricing into account, because we really can't not do that. There are better phones than the Poco X3 out there on the market, much better ones too - it's just that none of them are as cheap. So, for its price point, the Poco X3 has very good performance, unexpectedly good smoothness, a decent set of cameras, and great but not amazing battery life in 120 Hz mode.

The screen is good but not great, and the ghosting when scrolling might put you off. It didn't deter us from enjoying our time with the phone, but your mileage may vary. There are software bugs, as has unfortunately become traditional for MIUI, especially MIUI on anything but the numbered Mi series of flagships. The software updates are few and far between, which means that you'll have to live with a given set of bugs for at least a few months and then hope the update you're getting quashes all of them without introducing any new ones.

That's wishful thinking most times. Because of this update cadence, the security patch level of the phone will probably always be older than you might be comfortable with, but then again that's something not a lot of companies care to be more timely about for mid-range handsets. Speaking of software, MIUI is fine overall, but the general design language is getting a bit old, and some of the functional quirks have been in need of ironing out for a very long time. Hopefully that will all happen at some point this year with either MIUI 12.5 or MIUI 13.

Okay, that's about it for the pros and cons. If you don't mind getting nighttime shots that aren't the best in this price class, and are mainly happy to shoot during the day, especially from the main sensor, but don't mind the ultrawide being there for some framing flexibility, you'll like the images that the Poco X3 produces.

And if that's okay and you want a phone that performs very well and is incredibly smooth for the price, then you found your match. That is, of course, if you can stand the design (especially of the back), and the heft, and the weight, and the use of plastic all-round. Oh, and if you're not one of those people who scoffs at an LCD screen.

Only you know how many of these things accurately describe you. For what it's worth, we enjoyed our time with the Poco X3 much more than we were expecting to, informed in our expectations by our time with the Redmi Note 9 Pro that we long-term reviewed last year.

The Poco X3 is a much friendlier and nicer to use phone day in, day out, than that one was. It's also faster and smoother, so comparatively the only thing it loses at is the rear end - both the way it looks, and the fact that it's plastic. We're comparing to that Redmi because we consider the new Redmi Note 10 Pro with its 108 MP main camera and high refresh rate OLED screen to be playing in a different league (including price-wise), although if we will decide to long-term review that one, we're interested to see how the Snapdragon 732G will feel in a Redmi compared to this Poco, if at all different.

We'll end by saying that Xiaomi has created a very intriguing Poco lineup in the past few months, with this X3 at the ~200 euro level, followed by the X3 Pro at ~50-100 more, and then the F3 at ~50-100 more than that. All three seem like very good options for their respective aggressive prices, and we assume a lot of people had been waiting for the Poco brand to feel 'alive' again in this way. We're excitedly looking forward to its next offering. Will that slot in above the F3, ~50-100 euro more expensive? Only time will tell.

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