Xiaomi POCO X3 - Best Budget Smartphone Camera? (Under USD200) By Robin Wong

Hi, my name is robin Wong, and this is the Xiaomi's Poco x3 in this video. I want to talk about the camera performance of this smartphone. Let's do this before we go any further. Here are some important disclaimers. This is not a sponsored video. I have no affiliation with Xiaomi or polo.

I bought this smartphone with my own money. Furthermore, I bought it during launch, so I've been using this every single day for about a month. Therefore, all the opinion in this video, it from my own, I am a professional photographer. I will only be discussing the camera's performance from a photographer's perspective. I will not talk about video.

Furthermore, I believe there are other YouTubers or reviewers who are more qualified to review the video performance of this smartphone. Furthermore, I will also not be talking about a selfie camera, because I believe that we don't need selfie cameras for smartphones. Repeat after me, we don't need selfie cameras, do not use the selfie cameras very good, Poco s3 bully claims that it has a quad camera set up. I disagree. Technically.

There are four separate camera modules at the back of the smartphone. The main camera, the ultra-wide angle, camera the macro camera and the depth sensor. Well, we can ignore the macro camera because it's only 2 megapixels who shoot with 2 megapixel camera in 2020 anyway, and the depth sensor. We can't use it to do anything so safely. We can just neglect the depth sensor and the macro camera that leaves us with two cameras: the main camera and the ultra winger camera, which we will take a deeper look.

Next, the hero of the spoke s3 camera setup is the main camera which has a 64 megapixels image sensor. It also features an equivalent 25, millimeters, f 1.9 lens. Unfortunately, it doesn't have built-in image stabilization, but for a budget smartphone that barely costs 200 us dollars having the latest 64 megapixel image sensor from Sony. I think this is something worth looking at by default. You will only get 16 megapixels out from the camera.

If you want the 64 megapixel full resolution, you need to go into the pro mode and enable the 64 megapixel resolution. However, I highly encourage that you stay with 16 megapixels. It delivers a more optimized result by down sampling from the 64 megapixel resolution and 16 megapixels is more than sufficient for most of this, today's use on social media or any online applications. Looking at the results that acquired from the main camera, I was quite impressed with the sharpness and fine detail retention that the camera was able to capture. The images came out really sharp with plenty of good contrast.

This is in good lighting condition. Of course. However, I wasn't particularly happy with the color rendering from this smartphone's camera. There is something off with the colors. I can't quite put my finger on it.

There's the blue in the sky, it's not perfectly natural blue. There is something wrong with the reds. Nevertheless, this is a consumer's product, and I do like that. The colors that come up from this uh straight out of the smartphone, it's not overly saturated or overly contrast. I do have to boost the contrast and saturation a little to get to the taste that I want in my photographs.

That is quite the opposite strategy in comparison to other smartphone manufacturers who will overtake or overcook their images straight out of the phone now the more neutral the flatter look was quite pleasing and that actually helps in toning down the unnatural look of the color rendering uh. This is just nitpicking. I am a photographer. I do care about colors if they don't look natural, it does annoy me, but I do admit that for most people they can't even tell the difference, and it should not be an issue for consumer level. Photography.

Furthermore, I did spend a bit of time playing with the 64 megapixel full resolution capture just to see if you can gain any advantage or squeeze as much as we can from the image sensor in the smartphone. Unfortunately, as impressive as a 64 megapixel resolution can give us, it is dubbed down by the image processing. The image processing has super aggressive noise reduction and sharpening, which effectively kills off any useful fine details or good contrast. The 64 megapixel images look more like 20 or 24 megapixels in resolution in comparison to a professional camera. This can actually be rectified if Xiaomi or Poco improved the image processing algorithm in the future.

However, don't just say that the 64 megapixel is completely useless. It is not. The extras' resolution were useful in helping to down sample and fully optimize the 16 megapixel image output, which you get by default from the camera. Moving on to the ultra-wide angle, camera of the Poco s3, it features a 13 megapixel image sensor. It has an equivalent lens of 14 millimeters coverage at f, 2.2 aperture. Unfortunately, it doesn't have image stabilization.

I highly recommend that you only use this ultra-wide angle camera when you absolutely have to fit as much as you can within a frame for most other shots. Please stay with the main camera. The main camera will still give you much better results overall. Now, if you use the ultra-wide angle, camera the images will come out a little softer. It doesn't have as good sharpness or resolution as the main camera.

The contrast isn't as good the color isn't as good and, more importantly, the dynamic range will suffer. I find that the dynamic range of the ultra angle, camera for Poco s3, is quite poor. I did get some highlight clippings in certain regions, the bright regions of my images, so it is best avoid it if you can, when it comes to low light, shooting or shooting in dark environment. There is nothing to write home about for Poco x3. Now I don't know why, but the Poco s3 is so willing to go up to extreme numbers.

When it comes to ISO in low light situations, it will ramp up the ISO to 6400 or beyond, and sometimes more than ten thousand, I don't even shoot with such high ISO numbers with my professional gear, not surprising, coming home with such crazy high ISO numbers on the Poco s3, the images came out. Mushy there are smears over due to aggressive noise reduction. There is noise and the images just look terrible. Now. I think it is okay.

If Poco s3 somehow managed to suppress the ISO numbers below 1000 or maybe at 1006, it is still forgivable for a smartphone camera. I just don't see how a smartphone camera can give good results. Going up to ISO 400 or beyond and using the night mode does not necessarily improve situations. Sometimes it just gives even higher ISO numbers. Yes, you get a little better dynamic range overall.

If you look at the night shot using the night mode, but the image still looks bad. I just don't see how I'm willing to use the Poco s3 to shoot in low light. It's just not something that I would encourage anyone to do if you are shooting in low light. I would suggest that you avoid using the ultra-wide angle, camera just stay with the main camera. The high ISO performance, the low light shooting of the ultra-wide camera is terrible.

It is nowhere near as good as the main camera and the main camera isn't doing a great job by itself. You'll get worse results, more noise softer, looking image is just worse, so just don't use ultraviolet camera if you can for low-light shooting. Let's talk about the camera, responsiveness and autofocus performance of the Poco x3 generally, I'm very happy with the autofocus. It is fast, accurate. The shot-to-shot delay is minimal, and the display lag is manageable.

I'm quite happy with how the Poco s3 performs. However, the Poco s3 is not the fastest smartphone camera in the market, and it's also not fair to compare the Poco s3 versus the best of the best, because the price tag is only 200 us dollars for a budget category. I do think that the Poco s3's camera delivers some of the best in the market. Having said that, I must also warn you that the Poco s3 is one of the buggiest smartphone camera I've ever used now in one morning's outing. The shooting duration is probably two to three hours.

I have encountered about five crashes. The camera just stopped working. There is the error message, there's nothing I can do. I have to restart the camera app to enable myself to take photos again. This has never happened to any other smartphones that I've encountered, maybe once or twice during my review of shooting for days, which I can safely ignore, because crashes do happen due to a lot of other reasons, but having it happen about five times in one morning.

That is a serious problem. I really hope Poco takes note of this and will improve the software reliability for the camera in the future. That's all I have to share about the Poco s3 smartphone camera performance. I did enjoy myself tremendously reviewing this camera in good lighting conditions. The image quality from the Poco s3 is fantastic.

Of course, when the light level drops, the images do suffer and the ultraviolet camera isn't really that impressive, some software. Bugs aside, I do think that for 200 price tag, this is one of the best cameras that you can find in the market for any smartphones. Do you agree with my assessment? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below. I would love to hear from you or do you own a Poco x3 yourself. Please share your experience.

If you found this sharing beneficial, please consider buying me a cup of coffee, or you can contribute directly to my PayPal, account I'll put the links in the description below on how I can do that. Any small contribution can go a long way and help me to continue making videos like this and publish them right here. If you like this video, please give me a thumbs up, please consider, subscribing, and I'll definitely see you again in the next one. Until then, please go out and take more photographs bye. You.

Source : Robin Wong