The $129 Smartphone?! By Marques Brownlee

All right: hey, what's up MHD here! So what? If I told you this new 2020 smartphone is just 129 dollars, sometimes for some people, maybe also it kind of does look like an among us character, but this new Poco m3 is popping up on a lot of radars right now, it's a fascinating phone from a fascinating company. So this Poco company just went independent uh from the brand Xiaomi. It was originally the Xiaomi homophone, now polo's independent by themselves, but I wouldn't put as much stock in this new independence as they probably want us to. I feel like they're about as independent as the mustang is from ford. You know there's no forward logos on any mustangs, but we all know that they're getting some expertise and manufacturing and financial support from that bigger company still so Poco by themselves is not a small company, but they definitely want to look like and act like one. But that being said, this Poco m3 is insane value as a full-fledged smartphone.

I've talked about this in the past. How budget phones are getting better around 400 bucks, 300 bucks, even 200 bucks, but to get something like this and not even crack 150 bucks shipped landed, arrived at your door in certain regions anyway, is incredibly impressive. The design, if you start there is actually quite nice, I would say we already know every premium phone tries to go shiny, glass or at least look like glass, but this is more of a faux leather made of plastic, and I always say if you're going to go plastic embrace the plastic, don't pull a Samsung for example, and look me dead in the eyes and call it plastic, but no plastic can be good lean into it. This I already know, will never show fingerprints the same way. Glass.

Does its less likely to shatter? You can do whatever you want with color? Its nice plastic is fine on cheap phones. Then there is, of course, that cutout at the top, with the bold Poco branding on it. That kind of looks like it glows. Sometimes, even though it's not, they're really leaning into this. It looks kind of like that.

Cyberpunk OnePlus phone window now and there's a triple camera system up here: 48 megapixel main sensor, 2 megapixel macro and 2 megapixel depth sensor. So I feel, like you already know where I'm going with this one. The best budget, smartphone cameras are single camera systems, Pixel 4a, iPhone SE, maybe two cameras at best if they toss an ultrawide in there, but this doesn't have an ultra-wide yet adds two more 2 megapixel sensors for macro and depth, not what I would have done. I will say the polo's main camera is acceptable in pretty much average and normal shooting conditions. It does, of course, struggle in low light or in difficult shooting conditions, but we just came off the heels of the blind, smartphone camera test, where we realized that it's really a matter of taste in a lot of these cases, and what I can say is this phone, despite its poor, dynamic range, can spit out some pretty decent looking photos.

The macro camera, maybe you could argue, is useful because it has a much shorter minimum focus distance than the main camera. But you can't convince me this 2 megapixel depth sensor is useful. Sorry, I still would have much preferred over both of these to scene and ultrawide. Then around the front, there's a very average 1080p 6.53 inch display with a teardrop notch at the top perfectly acceptable bezels. You know a little of chin and sure there's no great viewing angles or maximum brightness.

But again it is totally fine for this price point we're talking about here and then the best part easily, the best part, the best spec of them all. This phone has a 6 000 William hour battery 6 000 William hours, and it's not even that thick or massive, the only other phone I've tested with a battery. That's actually this big is the ROG phone 3 and look at the size of that phone. So this is a gigantic battery pack in here that should last anybody all day and then some honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some people saw two days of use at 60hz here on the regular plus, there is 18 watt fast charging. This phone has a headphone jack up.

Here too, you love to see it. It also has a large front-facing earpiece speaker, and it has a fingerprint reader in the power button, another great combo for a budget phone right now, in my opinion- and it comes with a clear case and a screen protector in case- you want to protect that precious plastic, and they even built in reverse wired charging. So there's no wireless charging, but you can top up and use this phone's huge battery as a battery bank. So you can charge other things like your headphones or even another phone. If you're into that, the one thing I'd tell you to be aware of, though this phone is not fast.

So if you're coming from a higher speed, higher performance phone or if you just have a need for high speed or performance you're not going to find it here, this phone's rocking a snapdragon 662 and four gigs of ram, and with that spec, I found myself waiting for everything waiting for the camera to open waiting to snap the picture waiting for all the apps really to open waiting for apps to close waiting for multitasking waiting for animations. To finish, it's just a slow phone, and it's impossible not to notice that now I know you can't be overly picky about performance for less than 200 bucks, but I kind of worry on a phone like this just about how it will age over time because of course, it's not getting faster. But overall, if I'm just evaluating this, what you get for the money, especially with the hardware package, this is a really complete impressive phone for 129 bucks so seems like that's it that's what you should print as the headline right: amazing, 129, dollar phone! Well, let's talk about that. I've wanted to talk about this concept for a while there's a lot of different versions of ways to talk about price in phones, especially in this ultra low budget category, never really put them all in one place. So this particular phone has made a lot of headlines as a 129 phone, which is impressive, like in this race to the bottom, where we're trying to make the best like ultra low budget thing you possibly can and undercut everyone that is a nice headline to grab, but that 129 price, as you may have heard, is what's called their early bird pricing, which means that for a limited time or a limited volume, you can get the base version of this at the lower price and there's lower early bird prices, then, once that volume is up once that time is up, the price goes back up to the regular prices permanently forever.

But all those articles and all those headlines about the 129 dollar phone stay up. So, okay, you might be thinking well. How long does this early bird thing last couple months couple weeks a couple of days? Well, they'll never say they don't want you to know, but there's plenty of science and studies behind this whole early bird pricing model. The idea is, it's very brief. They want you to not think too hard, and they just want you to buy fast and then as soon as that's all over it'll just rise back up to the normal price and that's how they get you.

The early bird version tends to be sold out very quickly, but with this phone returning to its normal price shortly after and all those headlines remain so now, if you get this phone, if you're, if you're a YouTuber, or you're writing an article, do you write as your headline that this is technically a 129 phone, even though most people reading the article or watching the video will not be able to get it at that price? Tough to say, but then the other version of this uh, this little price trick that they like to play is basically the concept of a base version that is cheapest and has a number that's really appealing, but that you probably shouldn't buy, probably because there's some obvious upgrades kind of the same thing again like you see in cars where they'll all say, starting at 199.99, which is great, but that version doesn't have air conditioners or radio or something like that. You obviously don't get many people paying that price for the car there's a higher end version. Most people should get you see that, with storage on the iPhone, you see that with phones like this all the time. I remember not that long ago the first homophone came out, and they made a lot of headlines as a 300 phone, but they sent reviewers, including myself. They sent almost everyone, the 400 carbon fiber, back version of the phone that had double the storage and more ram.

So we're all reviewing this version of this amazing new 300 phones, and it's weird we're like trying to give it the benefit of the doubt that it's probably about the same experience. But then again you have to assume it's probably not the same experience if they made the choice to send us all the more expensive version. So with this Poco m3, it's actually not all that bad honestly at 129 or 149 bucks. This phone is still a hell of a deal, and it's an achievement that phones are getting this good at this price. Like I said you got to know what you're getting into here.

This phone obviously runs polo's, my UI over android 10, and it doesn't have 5g, doesn't have wireless charging or water resistance, you're, of course, limiting yourself in some ways as far as future proofing, but again anytime, I see a full-fledged smartphone get this low in price. I have to hand it to them. I have to applaud that level of accessibility. So just a word to those who keep loving, to say: oh smartphones have gotten so boring now, they're all the same thing now. That is one of the benefits of the commoditization of the smartphone is now you can mass produce something pretty decent at an amazingly low price um and then leave the innovation and crazy fun stuff to the high end, with all the flipping and twisting and folding and rolling, but yeah my take on the Poco m3.

Is it? Is a net positive, it's good to see this kind of stuff exist and uh. Let me know what you think: could you rock a phone daily that is this cheap and also for my enthusiasts out there? What are your feelings on what feels like polo, like filling in the shoes that OnePlus is leaving? Let me know if you have, if you have thoughts on that, it might be worth an entire separate video anyway. That's it for now, thanks for watching shout out to honey for sponsoring this video, so you guys have heard about honey by now right, but if you somehow haven't, you definitely should, if you do any sort of online shopping which is kind of what we're all doing now. So honey is a free browser extension that finds promo codes across the internet and automatically tests them for you at checkout. So you can get honey on your computer for free in two easy clicks.

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Source : Marques Brownlee