If bezelless phones weren’t a thing, the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 would be impressively compact. However, bezelless phones turn the Mi Note 3 into a rather unsightly affair just by virtue of comparison.
Standing in the shadow of a MIX is never an easy thing, and couple that with the expectation of a flagship level processor in a Note phone, the Mi Note 3 is turning out to be one controversial beast indeed.
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Review
Xiaomi’s processor choices in many of their phones have been less than… desirable, with many of their higher end devices utilizing the low powered Snapdragon 625 processors, and now the Mi Note 3 is following suit, taking a step down from a high end chip to a midrange one. I have no doubt that Xiaomi has crafted an excellent and refined device, but public perception (from enthusiasts at least) due to the processor stepdown has been rather biting. Let’s get into what Xiaomi got right and what they got wrong.
A step down from the previous generation
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Specifications
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 Processor |
| Display | 5.5″ 1920×1080 IPS LCD |
| RAM | 6GB |
| Storage | 64 ROM |
| Operating System | Android 7.0 Nougat with MIUI8 |
| Cameras | 12MP, 5MP Camera |
| Battery | 3500mAh |
| Physical Dimensions | 163g, 152.6 x 74 x 7.6 mm |
Big thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Hardware
Xiaomi made no mention of water resistance and we are quite certain this phone is not water resistant either. The biggest complaint I’ve heard is the removal of the headphone jack. It seems like everybody and their mother is taking this out, with Motorola and Apple leading the charge. To be honest, this does not affect me personally as I’ve moved completely to Bluetooth headphones, but a physical jack would definitely be handy if (and when) I do forget the 3.5mm to USB-C dongle. We find a microSD card slot conspicuously missing.
Solid & Generic
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Display
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Audio
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Battery
Great battery life
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Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Software
The fingerprint sensor on the front is blazing fast, bordering on instant. It matches the Xiaomi Mi6 and the Oneplus 5 in terms of speed and accuracy. There is also face unlock and while it does work, its slow enough that I don’t use it at all, I turn it off.
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Connectivity
I was able to get great reception anywhere I went, even down in Mexico on AT&T, getting 4G LTE everywhere, even a moderately remote construction site. Speeds are blazing fast, even faster than my Zuk Z2, giving me a whole new way to eat my data at unheard of speeds.
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Camera
Specifications wise, the camera module here is rather packed for the now midrange Mi Note 3. It features the exact same setup as the Xiaomi Mi6, a 12MP 27mm wide angle lens and a narrower 12MP 52mm portrait lens, both of which support 4-axis OIS.
The camera app is simple and standard across MIUI devices, with a few added features to support the dual lens; you can switch between the two lenses by switching zoom levels from 1x to 2x.
When you switch zoom levels to 2x, you switch over to the 52mm lens and to my eyes, photos in this mode are slightly sharper than what you get on the wide angles. The framing of the 52mm lens is also perfect for taking photos of people as opposed to landscapes.
There is also portrait mode that adds Bokeh to the background, and it does it quite well, separating the subject from the background fairly well, but zooming in will show you the aberrations in the separation.
Moving on to video, the phone captures full 4K video and video detail is great, colour and contrast are both captured well. OIS does its job well in 4K, smoothing out some jitters that naturally arise from handheld shooting.
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Camera Gallery
Xiaomi Mi Note 3 Verdict
You can look at the Mi Note 3 from two perspectives. First, it could be a midrange device with a great camera that peeks into flagship level territory with an almost imperceptible performance difference to the more expensive Mi6. Or, it was a flagship device hobbled by the use of the Snapdragon 660 and is now a midrange device with leftover flagship bits. Either way, you’re getting an amazing if somewhat bland device that is great in every aspect. But, and there’s always a but, the high $379USD starting price calls into question the value you are getting with the Mi Note 3, considering the slightly better Xiaomi Mi6 is cheaper than this. A slight upside to the Mi Note 3 are the grey market prices, which usually add a good $70 to such a new product, but in this case, a premium of between $30-40 is applied to those of us outside China.
In a sentence, the Xiaomi Mi Note 3 is a great but overpriced piece of hardware.
Great & Overpriced
With the price is D.O.A. needs to be chipper that Mi 5 to gain traction. So this whose a huge miss from Xiaomi.
You will be surprise that out there a lot of people will still queue to buy this low spec and high price phone
Yes, but those people are most likely not tech nerds like us, just regular people or Xiaomi fanboys
It’s a miss & a big one. As you can buy last year’s Mi 5 for less than 250$ giving 380$ for this actually is far from a good choice… I do like S660 (which is cheaper than S82x) but not at that cost.
I think you missed mine and Wolvie’s point.
People will buy a $1000 S8 over a Mi6, same specs. There are people in the world who don’t care about specifications.
Yes & we usually call those iPhone users. We live in the era of tech just for tech where we consider it as jewelry one’s when it starts to think it self it will eat sorrowful creatures that we become.
The large majority of people do not think like us or buy like us either. That’s why marketing works instead of selling a good phone for a cheap price.
We call them “average consumers”. They purchase Samsung, Apple, LG, Google, Oppo and every other brand of smartphone you can think of. They don’t care about specs like we do. They care about the brand name, the popularity, promotions etc. Most couldn’t even tell you what SoC stands for let alone the differences between a SD835 and 660.
Many tech geeks also prefer S8 compared to Mi6 even tough it is much more expensive. Even tech geeks value the better screen, much better camera and bezelless design of S8.
At the moment you can get Mi Note 3 for around $330 https://www.kimovil.com/en/where-to-buy-xiaomi-mi-note-3
I would go for Note 3 over Mi 5 since the former phone has much better battery life, a larger screen and a better camera setup.
Hi, I need your opinion
regarding a purchase. I can get the RN4 Global Edition with 4GB Ram at
129,79€ on Gearbest website but at the same time I really like the Mi
Note 3 which is sold around 284€ excluding shipping costs. My feeling is
that the RN4 is little dated nowadays and I was wondering if it is a
good idea to spend 130€ in order to get it. Also, Xiaomi is going to
release the RN5 pretty soon according the recent leaks but when exactly?
At this stage nobody knows…The Mi Note 3 seems to be a very good
phone for the price asked but still a bit expensive for a phone that has
the SD660 CPU. I could live with the fact that the phone do not the B20
used in my country. Mi Note 3 is overall a much better phone compared
to RN4. What would you do if you were me? Thanks in advance! Peace.
Do you need a decent camera? If so I would go with Mi Note 4. If not, I would go for Redmi Note 4 or wait for Redmi Note 5. I will probably buy a Mi Note 3 and install Google camera with HDR+.
Thank you for your honest opinion. I have never spend more than 150€ for a phone but I guess that a decent camera might be useful in some occasions. Even if the RN5 will be very attractive in terms of pricing, if it has a bigger screen like the Mi Mix 2 it will in my opinion scatter easily if you drop it from your pocket. I mean that I can’t buy a new phone every month. Mi Note 3 has a better build quality and amazing design. 5.5″ is more than enough for me and the phone is still compact.
If you are interested by the Mi Note 3, Gearbest sell the phone at 278€ (using the coupon “BJnote3”) for the base variant. It is still expensive but I think that its price will decline significantly if you are willing to wait for at least 6-9 months.
Yup just look at what OPPO and Vivo have done over the past few years. They invented this market of super premium midrange devices. Devices with midrange specs that sell for flagship prices and both have sold tens of millions of phones this way.
One of the top selling phones in the world right now is the Oppo R11 which has nearly the same specs and costs more.
Average Consumers don’t buy phones based off specs, tech geeks do.
Sheep’s are easy to skin off. I am neither your abridge common folk nor a typical person disregarding of your point of view regarding it. I do like real teach progress which is rather slow thanks to mentioned sheep’s along with common commercial (prosumer) way thinks are done this day’s. How ever I am good on fixing things OEM’s (you name it) aren’t capable of so actually common folks do have some kind of use of me. It’s your choice entirely how you spend your time, effort and money. When it comes to phone I pick what satisfies my needs (nothing more & nothing less) other than that price difference I make I am more keen throwing away on trivial things as partying as what a hell you only live once.
You always seem to lack the ability to grasp the idea that you aren’t the target audience for any of these devices. To you it is a failure, but to actual customers it will sell in the tens of millions.
Lol… Targeted audience? Previous Mi Note owners won’t buy it not because of the price but because it’s a disappointment for them as it stranded before as the only true Mi flagship & N3 in the best case stands for higher end midrange. People who want bang for $$ won’t buy it either as their are much better deals & cetera. Tens of M? Well with all old & new models Xiaomi me by reaches 90M which would be their record & majority of it will be Readmi series. N3 won’t account for more than a 1% of that because it’s failure if it isn’t that would be 2~5%. Which is far from ten M not to mention cuple of them, this ain’t Samsung flagship to reach such a sails results.
With the price is D.O.A. needs to be chipper that Mi 5 to gain traction. So this whose a huge miss from Xiaomi.
You will be surprise that out there a lot of people will still queue to buy this low spec and high price phone
Yes, but those people are most likely not tech nerds like us, just regular people or Xiaomi fanboys
It’s a miss & a big one. As you can buy last year’s Mi 5 for less than 250$ giving 380$ for this actually is far from a good choice… I do like S660 (which is cheaper than S82x) but not at that cost.
I think you missed mine and Wolvie’s point.
People will buy a $1000 S8 over a Mi6, same specs. There are people in the world who don’t care about specifications.
Yes & we usually call those iPhone users. We live in the era of tech just for tech where we consider it as jewelry one’s when it starts to think it self it will eat sorrowful creatures that we become.
The large majority of people do not think like us or buy like us either. That’s why marketing works instead of selling a good phone for a cheap price.
At the moment you can get Mi Note 3 for around $330 https://www.kimovil.com/en/where-to-buy-xiaomi-mi-note-3
I would go for Note 3 over Mi 5 since the former phone has much better battery life, a larger screen and a better camera setup.
Many tech geeks also prefer S8 compared to Mi6 even tough it is much more expensive. Even tech geeks value the better screen, much better camera and bezelless design of S8.
One of the top selling phones in the world right now is the Oppo R11 which has nearly the same specs and costs more.
Average Consumers don’t buy phones based off specs, tech geeks do.
We call them “average consumers”. They purchase Samsung, Apple, LG, Google, Oppo and every other brand of smartphone you can think of. They don’t care about specs like we do. They care about the brand name, the popularity, promotions etc. Most couldn’t even tell you what SoC stands for let alone the differences between a SD835 and 660.
Yup just look at what OPPO and Vivo have done over the past few years. They invented this market of super premium midrange devices. Devices with midrange specs that sell for flagship prices and both have sold tens of millions of phones this way.
Sheep’s are easy to skin off. I am neither your abridge common folk nor a typical person disregarding of your point of view regarding it. I do like real teach progress which is rather slow thanks to mentioned sheep’s along with common commercial (prosumer) way thinks are done this day’s. How ever I am good on fixing things OEM’s (you name it) aren’t capable of so actually common folks do have some kind of use of me. It’s your choice entirely how you spend your time, effort and money. When it comes to phone I pick what satisfies my needs (nothing more & nothing less) other than that price difference I make I am more keen throwing away on trivial things as partying as what a hell you only live once.
Hi, I need your opinion
regarding a purchase. I can get the RN4 Global Edition with 4GB Ram at
129,79€ on Gearbest website but at the same time I really like the Mi
Note 3 which is sold around 284€ excluding shipping costs. My feeling is
that the RN4 is little dated nowadays and I was wondering if it is a
good idea to spend 130€ in order to get it. Also, Xiaomi is going to
release the RN5 pretty soon according the recent leaks but when exactly?
At this stage nobody knows…The Mi Note 3 seems to be a very good
phone for the price asked but still a bit expensive for a phone that has
the SD660 CPU. I could live with the fact that the phone do not the B20
used in my country. Mi Note 3 is overall a much better phone compared
to RN4. What would you do if you were me? Thanks in advance! Peace.
You always seem to lack the ability to grasp the idea that you aren’t the target audience for any of these devices. To you it is a failure, but to actual customers it will sell in the tens of millions.
Lol… Targeted audience? Previous Mi Note owners won’t buy it not because of the price but because it’s a disappointment for them as it stranded before as the only true Mi flagship & N3 in the best case stands for higher end midrange. People who want bang for $$ won’t buy it either as their are much better deals & cetera. Tens of M? Well with all old & new models Xiaomi me by reaches 90M which would be their record & majority of it will be Readmi series. N3 won’t account for more than a 1% of that because it’s failure if it isn’t that would be 2~5%. Which is far from ten M not to mention cuple of them, this ain’t Samsung flagship to reach such a sails results.
While I am not targeted audience I am a professor of logic which kind makes me an analyst & you tend to forget that a lot, probably on purpose.
Do you need a decent camera? If so I would go with Mi Note 3. If not, I would go for Redmi Note 4 or wait for Redmi Note 5. I will probably buy a Mi Note 3 and install Google camera with HDR+. I’m using Mi 5s now and is super satisfied with the Google camera. The problem with 5s is the poor fingerprint reader, small screen and average battery life. Mi Note 3 would be a good upgrade for me.
Thank you for your honest opinion. I have never spend more than 150€ for a phone but I guess that a decent camera might be useful in some occasions. Even if the RN5 will be very attractive in terms of pricing, if it has a bigger screen like the Mi Mix 2 it will in my opinion scatter easily if you drop it from your pocket. I mean that I can’t buy a new phone every month. Mi Note 3 has a better build quality and amazing design. 5.5″ is more than enough for me and the phone is still compact.
If you are interested by the Mi Note 3, Gearbest sell the phone at 278€ (using the coupon “BJnote3”) for the base variant. It is still expensive but I think that its price will decline significantly if you are willing to wait for at least 6-9 months.
Previous Mi Note owners are buying it which completely destroys your argument.