Xiaomi Mi Max 3 Review

Xiaomi recently launched the all-new iteration to the Max series of the lineup. They have been expanding the lineup and models from quite a few whiles, to target as many people as possible. Xiaomi’s Max lineup have been targeting the people who need a large display to watch multimedia and more. The first device of the line up the Mi Max has been an instant success and sold like hot cakes. Today we are going to see if the newly launched Mi Max 3 is to the taste of the audience, and people are going to treat this piece also as the same vanilla cake or not.

Design & Build

The phone is made up of glass and metal design. On the back, we have the traditional Xiaomi style back which houses the dual camera setup with the flash unit, on the top left side. In the center, we have the fingerprint scanner, towards the bottom we have the Mi branding. On to the front we have the display and the traditional earpiece, camera, sensors, and flash setup to the top bezel, while the bottom bezel is blank.

The phone being a unibody metal build one has close to no flex making it a durable piece to hold in hand. The device feels good in the hand and doesn’t have any kind cheap feel with any of the material. Being a big device the Mi Max 3 does translate to a bit of heavy device, and your hands can get strained in continuous usage.

Display

On the front, we have a 6.9” display unit which is capped at just FHD+ resolution. This makes the PPI of the display quite low at just 350ppi. The phone is large and the display is an 18:9 ratio one falling with the latest trend, makes the video have bars towards the sides. Xiaomi has done a fix for the same by giving gestures to convert the video to full screen by scaling the same. The panel used is an IPS LCD one and comes with Gorilla Glass 3 protection, which might sound old as the all-new gorilla Glass 6 is around the corner. Still, it works the same in protecting the display with scratches.

Do note that as the device is heavy we have to keep it safe from falling, as it can directly break the screen. Overall the color reproduction from the unit is quite great with no color shifting issues, especially in the corners. Even the contrast ratio of the panel is good enough and the adaptive display gives the phone a nice amount of legibility in the daylight.

Performance

The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 636 SoC, this chipset is made with the Kryo cores which makes it the most battery efficient chipset in the 600 – lineup. The phone is paired with 4GB or 6GB of RAM options, although the RAM is sufficient to run any game, the GPU which is an Adreno 509, will do bottleneck both the CPU and RAM due to its performance. This is a thing to note that there will be no issue regarding the working of an app which is CPU demanding, but GPU demanding games will be on a toss.

In regards to daily performance the phone is going to have a good time in repeating all the social media, calling, camera, and other related tasks. Even multitasking on the phone is going to be buttery smooth. The main problem will be in regards to the gaming especially in heavy games like the PubG, Asphalt 8, Modern Combat, etc. all other games which are not so graphics intensive will work without any issue.

Camera

On the rear, we get a 12MP unit which is further supported by a 5MP depth sensor. The device will also have dual pixel PDAF which makes the camera unit a strong point of the device. On the front, we have an 8MP sensor, and it makes the phone a good selfie centric device.

Both the units are assisted via a flash which makes clicking the pictures in the dark an easy task. Both the camera unit are trained to produce sharp images, and all the pictures have a good amount of saturation to them. Colors produced by the phone are natural but are at times over sharpened when we use the HDR mode.

The main issue comes at the night when both the cameras produce bad results. The rear camera tends to produce underexposed pictures while the front camera at times produces overexposed pictures which are grainy and of no use. Do note that both the front camera and the rear camera perform a good job of using the AI feature to blur the background in portrait pictures.

Battery

The device comes attached with a 5500mAH battery which is a really large one, especially for the phone. The battery makes the phone heavy and tough to hold, while it also makes the phone run for around 2 & ½ day based on the usage just being calling, and normal WhatsApp. It is good to charge the phone every second day if you are a nominal user.

Do note if you are a heavy user you will have to charge the phone daily at the end of the day, but it can easily move you to the end from early morning show.

Verdict

Mi Max 3 is a great device for the hardware it is featuring. The phone is great for daily use and can suffice the multimedia need of a person. It is even a good speed device for nominal gaming, do note that heavy gaming cannot be done at high frame rates, the graphics level have to be set on low. Overall the phone is good for any kind of user, especially the one who needs a really large device.

What do you think about the Mi Max 3? Do let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. Also what according to you should be the pricing of the phone?