Xiaomi Mi Max 3 Smartphone Review
Xiaomi Mi Max 3 has a 6.9-inch, a bigger display than its predecessor from the Mi Max series, the Mi Max, and Mi Max 2, which both have just a 6.44” display.
With this device, they have achieved a sleek and compact design; thanks to the slim bezels and the 18:9 aspect ratio.
With this smartphone, Xiaomi freshens up the design a little, while keeping it in line with the trend.
Design and display
The smartphone is made of a metal unibody with a matte surface and a glass front. Its dimensions are 176.2×87.4 and its thickness is just 8mm. The manufacturer designed it with a very light frame, so it weighs just 221g. It has a 6.9″ IPS LCD display, no notch, with a 2,160×1,080px resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. The edges are curved at the rear of the device, and this makes it feel nice in the hand.
Even if there is a little confusion over the screen protection, the device looks and feels very well made. You better take a little more careful about the phone, to avoid the drops.
The screen is an IPS panel, this one goes well for realistic colors and good viewing angles. Surprisingly, it is incredibly bright, and that makes it easier to use the device in sunlight; which makes it a great outdoor-friendly phone. However, in direct sunlight, it becomes very difficult to read the display content.
Hardware and performance
The Mi Max 3 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636, and an integrated graphic unit – an Adreno 509. This performance gets a boost from the octa-core CPU. As an operating system, it runs on Android 8.1 Oreo.
The storage is generous and there are two options – 64GB or 128GB internal storage. It can be expanded with a removable microSD storage. Although the micro SD slot is hybrid, it has dual-SIM functionality. This allows users to run many everyday applications and offers balanced results.
The Xiaomi Mi Max 3 is good for gaming too. The internal graphics unit from Qualcomm can display most of the games smoothly. The vast screen shows the games to their best and the operation will not suffer from the large format.
The touchscreen responds quickly and offers a slight resistance to fingertips; so that there won’t be problems even after lengthy gaming sessions. The position sensor transmits the movements directly to the smartphone, they are translated into the game without delays.
Camera
The Mi Max 3 smartphone features a double-lens rear camera of 12MP and 5MP. They can create blurred background photos, or the bokeh – effect. The primary camera has f/1.9 aperture, dual-pixel autofocus and can shoot in 4K. The camera app lets us play with some modes like a few manual settings, real-time filters, or HDR which can be turned on or off.
The smartphone takes excellent pictures even in low light and does a superb job lighting up the scenes and can make a difference between shades of black.
There is also another enjoyable thing about this camera, the colors, which are incredibly close to natural ones.
The main camera of this smartphone is well-suited, especially for panorama pictures.
The large brightness differences cause only limited problems for the Xiaomi’s new phablet. In low light or darker areas of the photos, details remain recognizable and can easily be distinguished.
The image offers many details, but they become a little blurry when zooming in and there is some lack of details when you zoom in; the HDR mode, unfortunately, doesn’t make a huge difference to the overall results.
Regarding the close-ups, the blurriness can occur with objects that remain outside the focalized area. Even the effect is light enough, it is noticeable, and there can be users who won’t accept this, especially if you want this phone for the camera.
The colors appear saturated in normal lighting conditions but faded in the dark areas, but still delineated. All the details remain recognizable in every picture. In low light conditions, objects barely remain recognizable. There are sizeable areas in the image becoming black.
All of this is not so bad because you can adjust these values for white balance, ISO, or focus, or just playing with the manual settings of the photo mode to influence the image quality.
The front camera has just 8MP with f/2.0 aperture. We can choose between Al portrait mode and Al beautify mode; which comes accompanied by a selfie- light. It makes common photos, nothing special, but for day by day use it’s good, it does well the job.
Video-recordings with this smartphone definitely need the image stabilizer, which compensates for the smaller movements. The camera app won’t offer any professional mode for videos, but we can find out there is a time-lapse mode and a time shift one.
Conclusions
Besides the most important features of the phone which I talked about before, this has as well other nice and welcomed features. Considering the big display and that some of us say that this smartphone is a phablet, why not use it as an e-book reader if it still has the reading mode?
It has a sunlight and night display, and you can adjust the color temperature.
Talking about how safe this phone is, well, it is equipped with a fingerprint sensor on the back as well there is a face recognition function too.
It is a dual SIM capable device and supports nano – Sim and micro SD; which can be up to 256 GB.
Looking at the price first it tempts us to not expect a lot from this phone, but the big display, the capable camera, and useful features are worth it.
To not search for it too long, you can buy it from Banggood or Gearbest at a good price!
