Meizu is the latest entrant to India and the company launched their first device, the Meizu M1 Note in India few days back. Meizu M1 Note was first announced in December 2014 in China and it features a 5.5 inch IGZO display which has Full HD resolution (1080p) with a pixel density of 403ppi. The phone utilizes the 64-bit MT6752 chipset from Mediatek which is an octa-core processor clocked at 1.7GHz with Mali-T760 GPU. There is 13MP rear camera and 5MP front camera along with Android 4.4.4 KitKat and Flyme OS.
The phone also comes with 3150mAh battery and is priced Rs 11999. So is the phone worth the money? Lets find out in this review.
Related Reading: Meizu M1 Note Unboxing
Design and Build:
The striking thing about Meizu M1 Note is the design which is a copy of Apple iPhone 5C and there is no denying the fact that company has ‘inspired’ from it. The phone has a polycarbonate unibody design with a glossy finishing. Unlike most Android phones which have the three buttons at the bottom, M1 Note mimic the iPhone with a single button which is backlit and also used for notifications. The home button is capacitive.
At the top you will find the power and audio jack while, the micro USB charging slot and speaker grill is at the bottom. The hardware buttons for volume are located on the left side and have great feedback and is made up of the same material as the rear panel. On the left you have the SIM slot which needs to be pulled out with the PIN.
The glossy plastic rear cover houses the 13MP rear camera with dual LED flash and the Meizu logo at the bottom. The rear panel although has glossy finishing, it does provide good grip on the device with a curved design all round. Surprisingly the phone isn’t slippery even though it has the glossy finish. The bezels are small, but the M1 Note is still a big device with 5.5 inch display.
The front panel has the 5.5 inch Full HD display, sensors, front 5MP camera and the home button. The phone sports great build quality and looks solid.
Display:
M1 Note sports a 5.5-inch IGZO display which has a 1920 x 1080 resolution (full HD), resulting in a pixel density of 401 ppi. There is also Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection for the display. The display on the devcie is very good with great color quality, brightness and sharpness. The display is vivid and has excellent viewing angles along with good sunlight readability. We were able to read texts without strain even on bright sunlight. The display is great for multimedia consumption and also gaming. The touch response is also very smooth. Overall, we would say this is one of the best displays in this price point.
Software:
Inspiration from Apple does not end with design and looks, the software also has quite a few resemblances with iOS. The icons are arranged into multiple home screens without an app drawer and also has a completely different settings panel. The Meizu M1 Note runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with Flyme OS on top of it and we expect Android Lollipop update for the device.
The notifications center has all the quick toggles available which can also be customized.
Going to the settings you see a completely different design which has a two panel interface with the options listed on the left side and the corresponding settings located on the right panel. You can minimize or maximize the left settings panel. So if you were using stock Android, it does take some time getting used to the interface. The phone did come with only limited number of Google apps and it includes Play store, so you can always download apps.
The interface does look polished and there is no lag when using it, but the amount of customizations and features included are limited and does not match up with MIUI or EMUI 3.0. But it does feature some gestures like double tap to wake and sleep, swipe from bottom to top to unlock the device even when screen is off and few others.
Meizu released an update for the device which brings in theme support. Although this is right now in Chinese, you can still download hundreds of themes from this theme store. The phone also comes preloaded with apps like security, recorder, calculator and painter apps.
Performance:
Meizu M1 Note is powered by MT6752 processor from MediaTek clocked at 1.7Ghz and has Mali T760 GPU coupled with 2GB RAM. This is a 64bit processor from MediaTek and the performance is very good. We seldom saw any lags with normal usage and the phone responded well for the tasks it was put to. Even when running multiple apps (tested upto 15 apps) in the background, there was hardly any issue with performance.
MediaTek processors are now fast catching up with Snapdragon in terms of overall performance and this one is better than Snapdragon 615 Octa core. The gaming experience of the device was not really class leading as some games did have issues and were crashing. But for the games which we were able to play, the performance was smooth and the display has great graphics as well. With 5.5 inch Full HD display, it is a good device for gaming.
The phone comes with 16GB internal storage and there is no micro SD card support which might be a deal breaker for many. Around 12.5GB is available to user in the first boot. The phone does support USB OTG out of the box and you can connect your pen drives.
The call quality on the device was very good and we never had any issues with call drops. The phone supports dual SIM cards and SIM1 supports 4G LTE (FDD LTE in India) and second SIM is 2G enabled. The disappointing aspect of the device is the speaker, where the output was below average.
Camera:
M1 Note sports a 13MP rear camera with dual tone LED flash and a front 5MP camera for selfies and video calls. The interface of the camera app is very simple and easy to use and comes with almost all features you would want on a high end camera. The phone also features manual mode where in you can control the exposure, shutter speed, ISO and focus.
Other modes in the camera include HDR, Beauty mode, Slow motion and Panorama.
The image quality of the photos taken with 13MP camera was very good and the colors were spot on most of the time. The overall clarity for daylight photos were very good and there was very less noise. The auto mode is good enough to take some good photos in daylight. The close up shots also had good detailing and adds boken effects which makes the photos look great. But the low light imaging ability was not as good as the daylight and images suffer from noise when taken in low light. Things improve with adequate amount of artificial lighting. Considering the price point of the device, the camera is very good. The dual LED flash also works well when the light was pretty low.
The phone can record videos in 1080p and again the quality was impressive. Here are some of the photos taken with the device.
Battery Life:
The phone packs a 3140mAh battery and the capacity is pretty good for a 5.5 inch device. We tested the battery with heavy usage and on a average we got around 12 hours and 45 minutes of battery life with close to 4.5 hours of Screen on Time (SOT). The battery life is pretty decent for the device, but certainly not class leading as Xiaomi Mi3 and Mi4i with similar capacity have better battery life although they have slightly smaller display size.
The phone comes with battery saver, balanced and performance modes.
Verdict:
So is the Meizu M1 Note value for money? Certainly yes! Priced at Rs 11999, M1 Note offers great build, display, performance and good camera and a decent battery life. This device would have been the best in this category if it has a micro SD card slot. Apart from this, the worrying aspect of Meizu is how the after sales service is handled in India. We mailed the company and didn’t get any details on this. But we are hoping Amazon would be fulfilling these issues initially.
If you are not concerned on this aspect, the Meizu M1 Note offers excellent value for money.
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