Meizu M3 Max Review: A good-looking smartphone in a budget

Meizu is a well known brand in China for its affordable premium smartphones. It has a minimum presence in India, but has managed to make a name for itself with that little availability. We have admired Meizu smartphones for what they have to offer at an affordable cost, but the intense competition in the market makes the path difficult for this Chinese company.

We received the Meizu M3 Max smartphone for review a little over a month ago. We have been using the smartphone since and we must say it serves the purpose on several levels. Let's take a look at the specs one-by-one.

Design and display

As we said earlier, Meizu phones have an impressive design and the M3 Max is nothing different. As the name suggests, the smartphone has a large display and caters to a specific set of people who admire the beauty of big screens. There is nothing new that the M3 Max has to offer in terms of design from the rest of the devices in its portfolio, but that's not a bad gamble.

During the review, the M3 Max was often mistaken for iPhone 6 Plus by several people. The look and feel of the phone is premium and it does not let you down despite the bold Meizu branding at the back. But single hand use can get tricky with M3 Max, which is usually the case with any phone with more than 5-inch displays these days. Thankfully, the ultra-slim profile of the phone makes it a bit easier to handle the M3 Max.

As for the display measuring 6 inches, it has a resolution of 1080 by 1920 pixels. Frankly, the resolution doesn't match the premium look and feel of the phone and it would be better if Meizu could pack a 2K display in the M3 Max. But for the sake of price and battery, we could settle for a Full HD screen.

Camera

Meizu M3 Max has a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with an f/2.2 aperture, PDAF and a dual LED flash. The handset delivers what is needed from the phone, nothing more or nothing less. There are several modes such as manual, beauty and macro among other settings to improve your photos, but there's a limit to how much you can get out of it.

On the front side, there is a 5MP selfie snapper, which is decent. Nothing extraordinary here.

Below are some unedited raw camera samples we shot using the M3 Max:

Performance

Let's combine everything here. The large screen real estate tempted us to watch more movies (offline and online) and we did not experience any buffers or lags during the show time. Multi-tasking is decent and as expected from a MediaTek Helio P10 octa-core processor, which boasts four 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 cores and four 1.0GHz Cortex-A53 cores and 3GB RAM. Thanks to the generous 64GB storage, you can store a good amount of entertainment content on the phone. But if you are looking for a great gaming experience from this phone, it is better to have other options.

The software is something we really liked in all Meizu phones. The M3 Max also runs the same Flyme OS, which makes handling apps, navigating from one place to another quite simple and easy. The home button also works as a back button, which is unique, and we got used to it in no time.

We ran a few benchmarking tests on the phone and the results are below:

We were not disappointed by the M3 Max's performance. But that doesn't mean it exceeded our expectations. We have Xiaomi's Mi Max at the same price range, and there is some serious competition there.

Read: Xiaomi Mi Max Review

Battery

Meizu M3 Max's biggest USP is the battery. The low-res display and average performance boosts the handset's battery life. There is a 4,100mAh battery built inside the M3 Max, which is good for a full-day use with data, calls and internet browsing. If you cut down on the 4G use, the battery extends to a few more hours and you can count on it to give you a day and a half of use.

Despite the large battery, it can charge fully in about one and a half hour, thanks to the fast-charging feature integrated within.

Fingerprint scanner

Unlike most Chinese smartphone makers, Meizu chooses to add the fingerprint scanner in the home button of their phones. Meizu M3 Max also has the same integration. Needless to say, the biometric scanner is fast, accurate and intuitive. There is no room for error there.

Conclusion

Overall, we would certainly rely on Meizu M3 Max as a primary phone. But if you have preferences such as handy design and great camera, M3 Max should be reconsidered. For the price of ¥1699, the M3 Max is not a bad choice, but Xiaomi offers the Mi Max for just ¥1499 in China. Between the two, Xiaomi has an upper hand. But the M3 Max wins the battle with its design.

It is worth noting that Meizu M3 Max is not available in India, and there is no immediate knowledge of when it might arrive.