Potential strategies such as surface passivation and perovskite material halide mixing may protect material surfaces, improve luminescence, and reduce charge traps for device stability. In this study, we used deep level transient spectroscopy to investigate the effect of CdSe/ZnS core-shell quantum dots (QDs) on defect states and carrier transport in methylammonium (MA) lead halide perovskites (CH3NH3PbX3 where X = I, Br). In MAPbI(3) and MAPbI(2)Br films with CdSe/ZnS QDs, the density of hole traps located at E-v + 0.37 eV and E-v + 0.56 eV was reduced dramatically. Deep traps at E-v + 0.78 eV and E-v + 1.08 eV were removed, and one broad electron trap signal dominated. Film photoresponsivity under 600-nm wavelength light and a bias voltage of -0.7 V was 10 and 18 mA/W, which is 100 and 27 times larger than the 0.1 and 0.67 mA/W of bare perovskites (PS), respectively. This demonstrates that carrier transport was enhanced due to defect suppression. Our findings on defect suppression and photoresponsivity enhancement provide an important direction for optimizing high-performance PS device fabrication. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.