Poco M3 Pro 5G review

Display

The Poco M3 Pro 5G features a 6.5" IPS LCD screen with a small punch hole around the top. The panel has the usual extended 1080p resolution - 2,400 x 1,080 pixels - resulting in 400ppi density and 20:9 aspect ratio. A flat Gorilla Glass 3 piece is shielding the display.

The Poco M3 Pro 5G display supports a dynamic 90Hz refresh rate, just like the Redmi Note 10 5G. There is no HDR support.

MIUI is offering two Refresh Rate options - High (90Hz) and Standard (60Hz). The High setting is supposed to be dynamic - it should auto-switch between 30Hz, 50Hz, 60Hz and 90Hz depending on the shown content. The 30Hz support will be arriving at a later date, though.

Xiaomi says that UI should be drawn at 90fps for scrolling and kept at 50fps when static. The same goes for other static content across compatible apps. 60Hz should be used in games and streaming/local video playback, while 30Hz should be possible for compatible 30fps videos. Unfortunately, we cannot confirm this as the integrated Refresh Rate indicator always shows 90Hz, even when static picture is shown. The only exceptions are 60Hz for the file manager, games, and some video apps (Mi Video, Netflix).

Having said that - we cannot be sure that the screen is not working as promised. There is a chance that MIUI and Android are miscommunicating things. If we are to bet - we think Xiaomi is or will be offering the promised dynamic refresh rate support, and the issue we are seeing is because of an error or an early firmware build and will be eventually fixed.

Xiaomi has listed the screen's expected contrast ratio as 1500:1. The promised typical brightness is 400 nits, while the maximum - 500 nits. We've completed our display measurements, and we can confirm all of these numbers.

The Poco M3 Pro 5G screen has a maximum brightness of 413 nits in manual mode, but it can light up as bright as 536 nits when the outdoor mode kicks in. These, coupled with the impressively deep black level, make for an excellent contrast of 1475:1.

The minimum brightness we captured at point white was just 1.3 nit - impressive!

MIUI supports three different Contrast settings for the Poco M3 Pro 5G display, and they all correspond to the sRGB color space. With the Automatic contrast set to on, there is a noticeable blue tinge, and the colors aren't that accurate, though punchy. The same goes for the Saturated option.

The Standard Contrast setting has superb accuracy within the sRGB color space, and we captured an average deltaE of 1.9 for color accuracy.

Display options

Finally, the Poco M3 Pro 5G supports Widevine L1 DRM out of the box, and you will be able to enjoy streaming content at the maximum Full HD resolution.

Battery life

The Poco M3 Pro is powered by a large 5,000 mAh battery, and it supports reasonably fast charging at 18W.

The Poco M3 Pro 5G posted an excellent result in our battery test with a 121-hours Endurance rating - the same as the Redmi Note 10 5G, and close to the Realme 8 5G and Realme 7 5G. It did an excellent job across all test scenarios - calls, web browsing, video playback and demonstrated decent standby performance.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Charging speed

Xiaomi is shipping the Poco M3 Pro 5G with the same 22.5W charger we saw bundled with the Redmi Note 10 5G. The Poco M3 Pro fast charging maxes out at 18W, which means it is over-qualified for the job. But if you have other compatible devices, you'd be able to fast charge those with this adapter, too, and you'll need to carry one or a couple of chargers less.

The bundled charger takes the Poco M3 Pro 5G 5,000mAh battery from 0% to 33% in half an hour. That's not exactly fast, but it's enough to last you at least a day.

30min charging test (from 0%)

• Realme 7 Pro
  94%
• Realme 8 Pro
  88%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  65%
• OnePlus Nord N10 5G
  65%
• Realme 7 5G
  57%
• Realme 8
  56%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  50%
• Poco X3 Pro
  50%
• Poco M3 Pro 5G
  33%
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G
  33%
• Realme 8 5G
  29%
• Samsung Galaxy A42 5G
  27%
• Poco M3
  25%

A full charge is achieved in precisely 2 hours - the same as the Redmi Note 10 5G and 20 minutes faster than the Realme 8 5G.

Time to full charge (from 0%)

• Realme 7 Pro
  0:37h
• Realme 8 Pro
  0:38h
• OnePlus Nord N10 5G
  0:52h
• Realme 7 5G
  1:06h
• Poco X3 Pro
  1:08h
• Realme 8
  1:09h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  1:13h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  1:21h
• Poco M3 Pro 5G
  2:00h
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 5G
  2:00h
• Samsung Galaxy A42 5G
  2:01h
• Realme 8 5G
  2:20h
• Poco M3
  2:30h

Note that the Poco M3 Pro starts charging fast only when it's booted. If it's dead and you forget to turn it on once you plugged it in, it will charge at the slowest speed possible.

Speaker quality

The Poco M3 Pro 5G offers one loudspeaker, and it's at the bottom of the phone. It scored a Good mark in our loudness test, in line with its 5G competition.

The sound quality is good, too, a match to the Redmi Note 10 5G. The output is richer than most of the budget phones we've tested. It has well-presented mid-tones and high-tones, unlike the Realme 8 5G that was good only for mid-tones, though the Redmi still lacks bass.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.