Meizu has produced quite a few smartphones this year and the M3 is one of the most affordable ones. Learn more in our full review.

Thanks to Gearbest for sending Meizu M3 for a review.

Meizu M3 Review: VIDEO REVIEW

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_IR8Ck6QYY[/embedyt]

Meizu M3 Review: UNBOXING

In the box, you can find a wall charger, USB cable, SIM ejector pin and some paperwork.

Meizu M3 Review: SPECS

Meizu M3 Review: DESIGN and DISPLAY

Meizu M3 is a very compact phone due to its 5” display and it looks like a shrunk down Meizu M2 Note.

Speaking of the display, it sports just a 720p resolution but it still quite sharp and good display for a budget phone like this. The only complaint would be that it could be slightly brighter for outdoor use.

We have a 5MP shooter along with a notification LED light on the top.

On the bottom, there is just a physical home button and you can either physically press to take you home or just tap it and it acts as a back button. Unfortunately, the phone lacks a fingerprint scanner.

Although the device uses glossy plastic in its construction, the phone is well-built and it feels solid. In fact, it is really comfortable to hold it in the hand due to rounded corners on the back. We have a 13MP camera with f/2.2 aperture on the back coupled with a dual-tone dual LED flash.

The loudspeaker sits on the bottom and the sound quality is actually pretty good for the phone this cheap.

The buttons are on the right, they are clicky and tactile.

We have a hybrid SIM card slot, which can take either 2 SIM cards or a combo of 1 SIM and the microSD card.

Overall, the Meizu M3 is a well-constructed phone and it feels great in the hand.

Meizu M3 Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

Meizu M3 has some pretty decent specs for the price. My review unit sports an octa-core Mediatek 6750 chip with the clock speeds of 1.5GHz, 2 GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.

The day-to-day performance of the UI is fast but the gaming performance is kind of a letdown. The phone lags quite a bit when playing Asphalt 8 even at the lowest graphics.

Meizu M3 Review: BENCHMARKS

Meizu M3 Review: USER INTERFACE

My Meizu M3 unit has FlyMe OS 5.1, which is built on top of Android 5.1. My review unit has a fully de-bloated ROM with multi-languages and Google Play services pre-installed.

If you are familiar with the FlyMe OS, you will feel right at home. There is no app tray but there are some neat features. For example, you can swipe down anywhere on the screen to open up the notification shade. If you swipe from the bottom, you will open up your recent apps and this is one of my favourite features.

We have a bunch of other features, plenty of customization options, various tweaks and settings to play with. Just to name a few, you can use choose from a variety of themes, use gesture controls, which work fine and so on.

Overall, the FlymeOS runs fast and fluid, I didn’t have a single hiccup on a daily basis.

Meizu M3 Review: IMAGE QUALITY

The 13MP camera is far from perfect but it can produce one of the better-looking images in a sub-$120 phone.

Most of the daylight shots will look good but one of the shortcomings is a poor dynamic range adjustment. Luckily, the HDR mode does a pretty good job solving this issue.

The low-light camera performance is okay for the phone this cheap but keep in mind that cheap phones usually don’t take great night shots.

The 1080p video looks pretty good and the footage is one of the best in class. See a video review for a video sample.

A 5MP selfie shooter can take some nice photos that will definitely do the trick for social media.

Meizu M3 Review: CONNECTIVITY

As for connectivity, you should not expect any issues with neither of the options that include wifi, Bluetooth, GPS or call quality.

Meizu M3 Review: BATTERY LIFE

The phone has an embedded 2870mAh battery that performs well. I could constantly get over 5 hours of SOT on a mixed use, which is a good result.

Meizu M3 Review: CONCLUSIONS

Meizu M3 is one of the better phones in this price range.

Sure, some may say that it lacks some common features like a fingerprint scanner and fast charging but the phone has a good display and great build quality.

Also, the device is fast on a daily basis, it has a good battery and one of the better cameras in its price range.

However, you have to keep in mind that the phone will struggle handling the 3D games and it lacks premium materials like metal in its build.

Overall, Meizu M3 is a great phone for the price of just $116 despite a few shortcomings.

The post Meizu M3 Review – A Great Cheap Smartphone! appeared first on Gizmochina.

We were really happy about the Xiaomi Redmi 3 and we even called it the best cheap phone at the time of our review and we suggest you checking it out. 

The device had a lot to offer for a very low price. It seems that Xiaomi wants to take cheap phones to a new level with the Redmi 3 Pro. We have all the great features of the Redmi 3 but the company added some significant upgrades to the device. Learn more in our Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro review.

Thanks to Giztop for providing us with the Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro for a review.

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro VIDEO REVIEW:

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u6xpKmhde0[/embedyt]

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaIUNQqlpxc[/embedyt]

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: UNBOXING

The packaging is the same as the one that came with the Redmi 3. The contents of the box include a power plug, USB cable, instruction manuals and SIM ejector pin.

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: SPECS

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: DESIGN

As for design, nothing really changed except for the fact that Xiaomi added a fingerprint scanner on the back. It is very accurate and it works straight from the standby mode. 

Once I first picked the phone up I noticed that the build quality is slightly better than the Redmi 3.

There is no major difference but the buttons have a slightly better tactile feedback and there are absolutely no moving parts on the device (the Redmi 3’s back cover moved a little bit if pressed harder).

Other than that, we have the same button placement, the same ports, camera and it is the same phone in terms of the design as the Redmi 3 except for a fingerprint reader.

One thing is that the gold model looks much better to me than the silver model of the Redmi 3 we reviewed previously. 

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

A hardware department is where the Redmi 3 Pro has improved. Well, it uses the same octa-core Snapdragon 616 chip with the maximum clock speeds of 1.5GHz. However, now we are getting 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage via the microSD card slot. 

As expected, gaming performance is good. Asphalt 8 runs perfectly on medium graphics and there were just a few minor skipped frames on the highest graphics settings, so you may enjoy playing even the most demanding games on the Redmi 3 Pro.

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: BENCHMARKS

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: UI

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro comes with MIUI 7.2, which is built on top of Android 5.1. Hopefully, Xiaomi updates this phone to Marshmallow soon.

The UI looks the same as on any other Xiaomi phone. As usual, there is no app tray and all apps sit on the home-screens.

If you are not yet familiar with the MIUI, it has tons of customization options, which include a wide choice of themes, wallpapers, fonts and so on. 

Also, you can highly customise the LED light, assign different tasks to capacitive buttons, do various tweaks and personalise the phone in a lot of different ways. 

All in all, MIUI 7.2 runs fast and fluid most of the times and I didn’t really have any hiccups or lags. 

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: MULTIMEDIA 

Watching full-HD content is a blast as videos in different formats play smoothly. The sound via earphones is pretty good with a loud volume output and clear sound for a budget device.  

As far as the loudspeaker, it is pretty good too. While it is definitely not the best but it has a reasonable amount of depth and it does not sound tinny like a lot of cheap phones. 

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: IMAGE QUALITY

The 13MP camera takes pictures very fast thanks to PDAF system.  Also, I see a slight improvement over the Redmi 3 and that is thanks to the updated software.

The camera has become more consistent with the daylight shots and it does not struggle with focusing. If you take pictures in good lighting, you can achieve some great results. The images are sharp and detailed almost every time you take a photo.

The only downsides are that sometimes there is a softer focus on the corners and the dynamic range was off in a few shots.

The indoor and low-light shots have less detail and more noise but they are still not bad for the phone this cheap if we compare the Redmi 3 Pro to other devices in this price range. 

The selfie camera is pretty good for social media needs.

Download a 1080p video sample

The video quality is good but not great. The level of detail is decent but there is some noise in the video, the footage could have more sharpness and the lack of OIS leads to a kind of shaky footage. Well, I believe it is too much to ask for OIS in a budget phone anyway. See a video review for a video sample. 

Download full resolution camera samples

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: CONNECTIVITY

All the connectivity options work great. Call quality is okay and signal reception is excellent. Also, Wifi, GPS and Bluetooth are working fine. However, I was disappointed as the phone does not support 5GHz Wifi connection.

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: BATTERY LIFE 

The Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro has a huge 4100mAh non-removable battery and it performs just like the regular Redmi 3. 

In short, battery life is fantastic. I could not squeeze the battery out in one day even on heavy usage that involved gaming, installing lots of apps, watching a lot of videos, taking pictures, browsing the web and so on. 

I was able to achieve over 7 hours of screen-on time with max. auto brightness setting of the screen. That means that you can achieve even more impressive results if you reduce the brightness or don’t use the phone that heavily like I did during my testing period. 

Finally, Xiaomi claims that the Redmi 3 Pro has a fast charging feature. However, it took me just over 3.5h to charge the phone with the original charger. That means that you would need to buy a fast charger separately to charge your phone fast. 

Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review: CONCLUSIONS

So here it is, the Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro, an upgraded model over the Redmi 3. 

It has preserved great looks of the Redmi 3 and it even sports a better build quality. Right now the phone feels more solid in the hand. Also, the addition of a fingerprint scanner, which is fast and accurate, is a great feature to have in a compact phone. 

You are not going to see a major difference in terms of UI or gaming performance with the additional 1GB of RAM or more storage space but these specs make the Redmi 3 Pro a more solid and future-proof phone.

The daylight image quality seems to have become more consistent  and that is thanks to software optimisation. However, don’t expect any stellar results in low-light scenarios.

Some may agree, some may not but if you asked me, I would have loved to see backlit capacitive buttons on the Pro model. Also, while the 720p display is pretty good, the 1080p panel would have better justified the Pro moniker. 

All in all, the Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro is a very solid device and it is very hard to beat it in this price range. It brought some welcome features and slight improvements over the Redmi 3 and it is highly recommended to buy if you are in the market of great affordable smartphones. 

The post Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Review appeared first on Gizmochina.