POCO F3 Review — Attractive Hardware For A Value Price

We take a look at POCO’s latest smartphone in this POCO F3 Review, a smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 870 chipset featuring an AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate, and a 48MP triple camera setup at the back. Before we start the review, we’d like to mention that we only received the phone by itself so we’ll have to skip on several parts that would normally be in the review such as unboxing and charging speed.

Appearance

On the front, it sports a 6.67-inch AMOLED display. As you can see, there’s a small DotDisplay camera in the middle of it. There are small bezels around but it’s nothing excessive.

At the bottom is where you’ll find the SIM tray, USB-C port, microphone, and the speaker grille.

Switching to the right hand side is where you’ll find the usual volume rockers and power button, which also acts as a fingerprint sensor. The opposite side is completely naked however.

Over on the top, you can find the secondary speaker of the device and IR blaster. Both top and bottom edges are straight and provides a nice finish to it.

Swapping over to the back, you can see that we’ve got our hands on the Night Black variant of the POCO F3. It comes with a glossy finish that easily shows reflection. The POCO branding can be located on the bottom left and on the top right is where the triple camera setup is found.

POCO F3 Specifications

CPU	Snapdragon 870 Octa-core (1 x 3.2GHz Kryo 585 & 3 x 2.42GHz Kryo 585 & 4 x 1.80GHz Kryo 585) 7nm
GPU	Adreno 650
Memory	6GB/8GB LPDDR5
Storage	128GB/256GB UFS 3.1
Display	6.67-inch (2400×1080) FHD+ AMOLED, 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+
Camera	48MP f/1.8 main camera, PDAF 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide 5MP f/2.4 macro, AF LED, Night Mode, HDR, AI, Panorama 4K/30fps, 1080/960fps
Selfie camera	20MP f/2.5 1080/30fps video recording, Portrait mode, AI camera
Connectivity	5G Band n1/n3/n5/n7/n8/n20/n28/n38/n41/n77/n78 LTE Band 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/17/20/28/38/40/41/66 WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz + 5GHz), WiFi 6 Bluetooth 5.1 USB Type-C
Battery	Li-Po 4520mAh (non removable) 33W fast charging
Dimensions	163.7 x 76.4 x 7.8mm
Weight	196g
Ingress protection	No

Performance

Before we begin with the benchmarks, there are some of the benchmarks that we usually run on our reviews that aren’t working properly for the device (Geekbench 5 and 3DMark). Should they become available, we will update them accordingly for the POCO F3.

The POCO F3 is not the first Snapdragon 870 smartphone that we’ve tested, where previously we’ve reviewed the vivo X60 Pro so we have a rough idea on the performance that it brings. Surprisingly, the device’s score here on Antutu is quite far from the latter.

Over at PCMark Work 2.0, we can see that it doesn’t rank too well on the list, where it falls short behind its own predecessor, the POCO F2 Pro.

As for the battery benchmark, it’s a different case as it sits high on the list, only being beaten by the POCO F2 Pro. The battery lasted longer than the vivo X60 Pro which uses the same chip but it’s worth mentioning that the POCO F3 has a slightly bigger battery capacity.

When it comes to real-life usage, the smartphone performed as good as it showed over at the benchmark. With my typical usage, it would last me up to one and a half day before I’d need to juice it back up again, which is decent.

User Experience

Holding the POCO F3 in my hands, it doesn’t give you a feeling of a RM1,400 device, it feels premium. It’s light on the hands and feels solid. Though I hate punch holes at the center of the display, I can forgive the F3 here as the camera cut out is actually quite small and not disruptive.

If I had to complain, I didn’t like the glass back of the device as it’s a fingerprint magnet. You’d definitely would want to put on a case to prevent those. Watching videos is enjoyable thanks to the AMOLED panel that comes with 120Hz refresh rate plus the dual speakers on hand. Other than that, it’s a shame that the phone doesn’t come with a 3.5mm headphone jack.

We decided to test the phone on Genshin Impact and after 10 minutes on the game, we can definitely feel the warmth as it is a very taxing game for smartphones. One weird thing that we’ve noticed is that after we quit the game, the moving background wallpaper suddenly became sluggish so POCO might want to do something about that.

The skin for the device is similar to the POCO X3 Pro that we’ve recently reviewed and there’s nothing much to be added about it. In terms of user experience, it was pretty smooth and I had no issues whatsoever. I usually find the POCO launcher to be heavy for devices that has 4GB RAM but you should be fine with the POCO F3 coming with at least 6GB RAM.

The camera UI offers a similar experience where I have nothing to complain about. It’s direct and if you’re not satisfied with the layout, you can customize it to your liking, which is a nice thing to have.

Based on on the spec sheet itself, it seems like POCO has downgraded the cameras on hand as it only comes with a 48MP main camera, 8MP ultra-wide lens, and a 5MP macro shooter. We all know that pixel count isn’t everything when it comes to quality so let’s see the results.

While using the phone to capture several shots, it’s not bad, but then again, it’s nothing too impressive to talk about. In good lighting, it does a reasonable job as you’d expect. We can see there some color shifting going on when you switch between the lenses.

Overall, it offers a fair dynamic range in broad daylight. When it comes to night time however, it’s a mixed feeling for me as shots were often a hit or miss kind of thing. Sometimes, images get too soft and the Night Mode doesn’t do much.

Check out the full sized images by clicking the link right here.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the POCO F3 seems and feel like a solid device, especially if you’re upgrading from older smartphones. For the price, it’s a decent offering considering that you will get a high-end chipset, AMOLED display with 144Hz, 33W fast charging to name a few.

It is far from being a perfect device however but starting from the price of RM1,399, it is an ideal smartphone for those who want the performance without the need to splurge much of your money. For that, I award the POCO F3 with our Silver Pokdeward.

Our thanks to POCO Malaysia for providing the POCO F3 that was used in this review.