The $129 Poco M3 is Xiaomi’s latest budget big battery king

Xiaomi’s Poco sub-brand has launched its latest entry-level phone, the Poco M3. like most other Poco phones, the M3 has a strong spec sheet for its comparatively low price.

The Poco M3 features a 6.53-inch 1080p LCD screen with a waterdrop notch for the 8-megapixel selfie camera. The display is pretty basic: the chin at rock bottom is sort of big, the fingerprint sensor is integrated into the facility button on the side instead of the screen, and therefore the panel is merely 60Hz, but it’s sharp enough and perfectly serviceable.

The phone’s design certainly stands out from behind, with an outsized glossy camera bump emblazoned with a bright white “POCO” logo. the most camera is 48 megapixels, but the opposite two cameras are just 2-megapixel sensors for depth and macro, so this isn’t really a meaningful triple-camera setup. While the phone’s chassis is made out of plastic, it uses a leather-ish finish that feels much nicer to the touch than most other plastic phones. It’s available in black, yellow, and blue.

The M3’s processor may be a Qualcomm Snapdragon 662, which is paired with 4GB of RAM. It runs MIUI 12 atop Android 10. The battery is a powerful 6,000mAh, and therefore the phone may be a hefty but fairly manageable 9.6mm thick and 198g in weight. There are options for 64GB or 128GB of storage, and therefore the phone has two SIM card slots added to a separate microSD slot. There’s also a headphone jack also as a USB-C port.

Xiaomi is putting the Poco M3 on sale online on Black Friday, November 27th, with early US pricing starting at $129 for the 64GB model and $149 for 128GB. The regular price is $149 for 64GB and $169 for 128GB.

Even at those higher prices, the M3 seems like it’ll be excellent value by US market standards. you'll compare it to the present year’s Moto E, for instance, starts at an equivalent $149 price point but features a 720p screen, a Snapdragon 632 processor, a Micro USB port, 32GB of storage, and just 2GB of RAM.