The Poco M3 Pro 5G is here and it is faster. It has faster Internet thanks to 5G, it has a faster 90Hz screen and a faster chipset. And it has a cool new design too. Poco picked the 7nm Dimensity 700 chip to power its new creation. It has peak download speeds of up to 2.77 Gbps and a pair of Cortex-A76 cores, plus a Mali G57 GPU. For comparison, the Snapdragon 662 inside the vanilla M3 is an 11nm chip with four Cortex-A73 based cores and an Adreno 610. The newer CPU cores are much faster individually and noticeably faster together, despite there being only two of them. The new GPU promises a great performance advantage too.
Enough to run games at 90 fps? Perhaps not
many, but the 90Hz display does make the UI smoother and can match video
content at 30/50/60 fps as well. It’s a 6.5” 1080p+ LCD with 400 nits typical
brightness and Gorilla Glass 3, so about the same as the regular M3 display,
save for the refresh rate.(note: the 30 fps mode will be enabled after launch
via an update)
The Poco M3 Pro 5G has the same camera
setup as its sibling, starting with the 48MP camera on the rear (1/2.0” sensor
with 0.8µm pixels, f/1.8 lens). It is joined by two 2MP cameras (macro and
depth) and an 8MP unit on the front. That one can do face unlock if you prefer
it over the side-mounted fingerprint reader.
One area where the Pro is behind the
vanilla model is battery – it comes with a 5,000mAh battery, which is smaller
than the 6,000mAh power cell in the M3. It charges at the same rate, 18W, and
comes bundled with the same 22.5W charger. Of course, the new chipset will have
an impact on battery life (and so will the 90Hz screen). The M3 Pro has a
microSD slot, 3.5mm headphone jack (with FM radio), an infrared blaster and
this one will even have NFC in some regions.
This leaves you with 64GB or 128GB of UFS
2.2 storage, which is paired with 4GB or 6GB of RAM (LPDDR4X), respectively, so
the Pro doesn’t have a memory advantage over its sibling. It does come with a
newer Android version out of the box, Android 11, with MIUI 12 on top. The Poco
M3 Pro 5G will be available tomorrow at Poco's official website or through
Amazon, AliExpress and Goboo. The 4/64 GB model starts at € 180, the 6/128 GB
version is € 200. However, Poco is offering early bird deals, which drop the
price to € 160 and € 180, respectively.
You will be able to pick one up in one of
three colors, including the trademark Poco Yellow.
