Poco X3 GT review

Your typical mid-range triple camera

The Poco X3 GT features a triple-camera that's placed on a rather large island on the back. There is a 64MP primary camera, an 8MP ultrawide shooter, and a 2MP macro camera. A dual-LED dual-tone flash is around, too.

The Poco X3 GT relies on a 64MP 1/2" OmniVision OV64B sensor with a Quad-Bayer filter. The sensor has 0.7µm pixels, and after the 4-in-1 binning, you'd be getting a 16MP photo with 1.4µm equivalent performance. This sensor sits behind a 26mm f/1.79 lens, it supports PDAF, but there is no OIS. A high-res 64MP mode, Pro Mode, as well as Night mode are available for this camera.

Second is an 8MP 1/4" Sony IMX355 sensor with an ultrawide-angle 16mm f/2.2 lens. The focus is fixed at infinity.

The macro camera has a 2MP GalaxyCore GC02M1 sensor with f/2.4 aperture lens and the focus is fixed at about 4cm distance.

The Poco X3 GT has a 16MP selfie camera that uses a 1/3.06" OmniVision OV16A1 sensor with 1.0µm pixels and a Quad-Bayer filter. The sensor is behind an f/2.45 aperture lens that has a fixed focus.

The default camera app is a typical MIUI affair - switching between modes is done by swiping left and right, and all available modes but Macro are on this rolodex. There are no zoom shortcuts here.

On the opposite end of the viewfinder, you have a flash mode switch, an HDR switch, an AI toggle, and a magic wand with beauty effects and filters. You'll find some more options behind a hamburger menu, including the Macro mode, plus the shortcut to the settings. What you won't find is an option to set the output resolution.

There is a Pro mode for all rear cameras. Manual 64MP pictures and RAW are available for the main camera from here. You can use up to 30s shutter speed (0.4s for macro) and ISO up to 6400.

Camera app

Photo quality

The default 16MP photos from the main camera are great for this class. The resolved detail is plenty, the colors accurate and the processing while a bit agressive causes very few issues.

The rendition is balanced and natural looking, and we liked the foliage presentation. The applied sharpening is somewhat on the high side, but not too drastic.

Overall, these are some of the better photos from a smartphone's primary camera we've seen lately, and not only within the mid-range bracket.

Main camera, 16MP

There is an AI button, but, as usual, it mostly boosts the contrast and colors depending on the scene - whether its Skies, Grass, Buildings or else. But if you like the more saturated colors and the occasional over-the-board contrast, you should probably keep that on.

Main camera with AI, 16MP

The 2x toggle on the viewfinder uses digital zoom by cropping and upscaling. The photos are okay on the phone's screen, but not good when viewed in full resolution.

Main camera 2x zoom, 16MP

There is a dedicated 64MP mode, and it produces excellent high-res photos. This is one of the few cases we can wholeheartedly recommend the high-res mode for two reasons - more resolved detail and better 2x zoom.

First, the 64MP images exhibit good levels of detail and capture otherwise invisible or lost to the processing intricate details. Sure, these images aren't impressively sharp on a per-pixel level, but they have more total detail than the 16MP snaps. And they still have great colors and contrast.

Main camera, 64MP

To illustrate our point we downsized one of these images to 16MP and compared the two side by side below.

The 64MP photos also do better with the 2x zoom due to their higher initial detail. See, you can crop the 16MP center of any 64MP photo and get much better 2x zoomed picture than the default digital zoom you get from the viewfinder.

So, if you need more detail or better 2x zoom and you are willing to spare some 20MB for each photo, then we can suggest using the 64MP mode. Note that these benefits are available only in good lighting conditions.

The main camera can shoot commendable portrait shots, once again proving that dedicated depth sensors (which the Poco X3 GT lacks) barely contribute anything to the shooting prowess of a phone. The subjects are incredibly detailed with excellent colors, the separation seems proficient and dependable, and the simulated blur looks good, too.

Main camera portraits, 16MP

The Poco X3 GT shoots some decent 8MP ultrawide photos. The resolved detail is fine considering the tiny sensor, the contrast is good, the noise is lower than we expected low, and the dynamic range is wide even if no HDR was used.

The colors are not that accurate though - the photos are a bit warmer than they should be and the colors are somewhat duller. That's hardly an issue per se, but the color difference between the main and ultrawide camera is noticeable.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

The 2MP macro camera is as basic as they come. Its focus is fixed at 4cm, which means there is a learning curve for taking a sharp photo. Once you get the gist of it, you can capture some good closeup shots like the ones we did.

The 2MP images below are detailed, with accurate colors and high contrast. Because of their small size, we'd guess they will be used mostly on Instagram or similar services, and they will surely do for a bunch of likes.

Macro camera, 2MP

The Poco X3 GT supports Auto Night Mode - a feature that premiered with the Mi 11 flagship. It was not turned on by default on our unit, but we still gave it a shot. It is rather similar to what Apple does with its Night Mode - the camera app decides when and where to use Night Mode and its exposure time. You have no say in any of this (you don't even get a say about the exposure time even in the Manual Night Mode though).

Only the main camera uses Auto Night Mode even if the option suggests it's available for all snappers. When shooting with the main camera, it doesn't look like it is using Night Mode at all. When Auto Night mode is activated the image processing is instantaneous. In contrast Manual Night Mode takes about 3-4 seconds per shot, so clearly they are not applying the same processing.

When comparing photos between Auto and Manual, we discovered that the main camera uses Night Mode rarely and relies mostly on its standard capabilities.

Now, it's time to look through some low-light photos.

The 16MP photos (no Night Mode) are exemplary. There is a ton of resolved detail, top-notch sharpness and yet low noise levels. The color saturation is kept true to life and the contrast is good, too.

The dynamic range is nothing impressive and blown highlights are frequent, but still - these are some solid night photos.

And we want to praise one more thing about this camera - even if it doesn't offer OIS, we still had zero blurred photos, which is surely part luck, but also part good selection of shooting settings by the X3 GT.

Main camera, 16MP

The manual Night Mode takes about three seconds and restores the blown highlights and provides better development in some shadows. The color saturation is noticeably improved, too.

But these improvements will cost you some fine detail and sharpness. You can notice smeared grass, building decorations, blinds, among other things.

Still, if you need a bit better exposed picture with good highlights, this is the way.

Main camera with Night Mode

The Auto Night Mode triggers on the first, fourth and the last scene. These Night Mode images look a bit sharper than the manual Night Mode ones, but this could be due to less handshake - these Night Modes aren't that reliable after all.

The rest of the photos are identical with the default (no Night Mode) images we've shown you first.

Main camera Auto Night Mode

The default 8MP ultrawide images are only okay - they may be noisy, but you can clearly see what's on them. The colors are preserved well, too.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

The Night Mode is recommendable for the ultrawide camera as it drastically improves the quality. As usual - it restores the blown highlights and may reveal some more detail in the shadows. Here, it also cleans noise, but instead of smearing detail, it actually extracts more.

So, if you need to snap an ultrawide photo at night, do that with the Night Mode.

Ultrawide Night Mode

And here are photos of our usual posters taken with the Poco X3 GT. Here's how it stacks up against the competition. Feel free to browse around and pit it against other phones from our extensive database.

Poco X3 GT against the Poco X3 Pro and the Realme X7 Max 5G in our Photo compare tool

The Poco X3 GT has a 16MP front camera. It snaps natural-looking and balanced selfies, when there is enough light. The subjects details are only averrage but the contrast and colors are very good, while the dynamic range was above average.

Since this is a Quad-Bayer shooter, the photos should have been 4MP, but they seem to be proficiently upscaled back to 16MP. That's the reason the samples aren't the sharpest around, but few people zoom in on selfies, so we'd say these are excellent for most occasions. And you can also always resize these down to 4MP and get some sharp images.

If the light isn't ideal, the photos will come out rather soft, the tiny sensor showing its limitations.

Selfies, 16MP

The selfie camera can do portraits, too, but the subject separation is far from ideal. We can only imagine how this would look for a person with more complex hairstyle. We suggest using the portrait mode only in extreme cases.

Portrait selfies, 16MP

Video recording

The main camera of the Poco X3 GT can do 4K recording at 30fps, as well as 1080p at 30fps and 60fps. The ultrawide snapper maxes out at 1080p at 30fps, while the macro shooter - at 720p at 30fps.

Note that switching to any of the non-primary cameras will lower the resolution of the main camera and you will need to manually adjust it every single time.

There is optional electronic stabilization available for all resolution, frame rates across all cameras but the macro. It comes at the expense of minor FoV loss and a tiny bit of added softness.

Then there's the Super steady Mode shot with the main camera - it focuses more on stabilization rather than quality, as an action camera would do.

The video bitrate is 50Mbps for 4K and 20Mbps for 1080p clips, while audio is always recorded in stereo at high 256kbps bitrate.

The 4K videos from the main camera look amazing - the resolved detail is plenty and the sharpness is great considering this rather budget class. There is no noise in these 4K videos, the white balance is good and the colors are accurate, the contrast is great, too.

The dynamic range is praiseworthy, too. Overall, we really liked the Poco X3 GT 4K videos.

The 1080p footage from the ultrawide camera is good, too. The clips are sharp and detailed, the noise levels are low, and the colors seem accurate enough. The dynamic range is above average, too. The contrast and isn't that great, but that's to be expected from this type of camera.

Finally, here is the Poco X3 GT in our video comparison database.

2160p: Poco X3 GT against the Poco X3 Pro and the Realme X7 Max 5G in our Video compare tool