Asus announced ZenFone Max in India at ZenFestival back in August . Now Asus Zenfone Max is launched in India priced at Rs 9,999. The main highlights of ZenFone Max is 5000mAh Battery which can act as a power bank, charging other devices on the go. Asus Zenfone Max is a mid-range smartphone with a 5000mAh Battery with Gionee Marthon M4 and Lenovo Vibe P1 with 6250mAh and 4900mAh Battery priced at Much higher than Zenfone Max . Here is our review of Asus ZenFone Max.
Design & Display
On Design ZenFone Max looks similar to other Zenfone series smartphone available in Market. on the front there a 5MP front-facing camera sensors, earpiece Asus branding and notification LED. Below the display there are three capacitive buttons. There is a micro USB port at the bottom along with a microphone.On the top the phone has a 3.5mm audio jack. Volume rockers and power button is on right side of the phone which is changed as compared to other Asus smartphones, there is nothing on left side of the phone.
On back ZenFone max has a plastic back with a leather Matte finish which gives good grip in hand. The phone has a rounded gold plastic strip running along the sides, with a slight rounding off on the back panel . It has a 13MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, Real Tone flash, Laser Auto Focus.The Zenfone branding and loudspeaker grills are present at the lower back.The phone has two micro SIM card slots and a micro SD card slot underneath the removable back cover .Asus Zenfone Max weights 202 grams, it is heavier than Gionee's Marathon M4 that has a similar sized battery inside. matte finish on the back and the phone's curvaceous frame help enhance grip and make one-handed usage possibility on it. ZenFone Max comes with a 5.5 inch HD screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection and supporting 1280 x 720 pixels resolution which is not 1080P Display but still offers vibrant colours, good brightness levels and wide viewing angles. Overall Design and Display of the device is quite good at the price point it is available.
Performance
Asus Zenfone Max is powered by a 1.21GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor coupled with Adreno 306 GPU and 2GB RAM. The phone comes with 16GB of internal memory which is expandable by up to 64GB via microSD card. ZenFone Max is a pretty good phone in terms of all-round performance. Tried playing some games like Candy Crush Saga and Subway Surfers , Asphalt 8: Airborne and Modern Combat run well without any heating or lag issue. Zenfone max performed good in our Benchmark test On AnTuTu Benchmark phone cores 25571 points , Geekbench 3 scores 499 on single core and 1501 on Multicore , On Quadrant Standard phone scores 14338 points , Vellamo score 1417 points. Performance was similar to Zenfone laser 2 quite smooth and fast.
Software
Asus Zenfone Max runs on Android 5.0.2 Lollipop with Asus own ZenUI on top of it. There are alot of bloatware. The number of pre-loaded apps is ludicrous. Overall, the interface makes the phone easy to use and even gives a large number of customization options.There are more than 10 preloaded app and most of them are useless. Also, Asus has broken down many features that you'd expect in one app into multiple apps which makes things more complicated.
It also comes with a theme engine so you can customize the look and feel of Android on the phone. Despite the heavy customization the interface feels very very responsive, which is a great thing. You don't ever get the feeling that the heavily customized interface is bogging down the performance of the phone. Yes you can uninstall unwanted apps and also move apps to microSD card. We didn’t notice lag while using the smartphone .
There are also option to change the themes. Double tap to wake up. The phone has an Easy Mode, which removes most of the UI elements and makes the phone easier to use with the help of big icons and simple layout. You can choose which apps and widgets to add on the home screen. Asus also lets you select the home screen options, the menu layout, and gives a number of themes, wallpapers, scroll effects, and icon packs when you long-press the home screen. The phone comes with Auto switch to Ultra saving mode. there is a app call ZenUI Movie app using which you can create Mini movie from the photos or videos available in the gallery.
Camera
On Camera Asus Zenfone max comes with a 13- megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture Laser Auto Focus and dual LED Flash and a 5MP front-facing camera for selfies. Rear camera captures good photo in Both day as well low light. Even though colours are mostly true to source in some of these photos all in all the level of detail goes for a serious toss most of the time. Selfies captured using front camera are also quite good and produces good images. Both rear and front camera can capture 1080P videos which can be used for video calls. The camera app comes with a number of shooting modes, like Beautification, Auto, Manual, Night, Low Light, and even HDR and Depth of Field. standard automatic mode, a detailed manual mode, HDR, panorama, smart remove, GIF animation and time lapse . Beautification mode lets you set timer of up to 5 seconds while capturing photos; shots taken in this mode remove all imperfections from your face, and like Beauty modes in other phones, give a glazed look to the photo. However, under low light conditions, photos touched up by Beautification mode will be the best for Facebook, Instagram . Check Out some camera samples below
Connectivity & Battery
On Connectivity it include 4G LTE / 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS . Audio Quality of call and speaker output was loud and clear . we didn't notice any issue while on Phone calls. Only One SIM support 4G secondary SIM supports 3G connectivity , Device also support microSD card up to 64GB . Asus also provided OTG cable which can be used to charge another phone using Zenfone Max. On Battery Asus Zenfone Max comes with a 5000mAh non-removable battery which can give battery back of 1 and half day on heavy usage also with Screen on Time of around 9 Hours. On Normal use Zenfone max can be used for more than 3 days on a single charge.
Asus ZenFone Max comes with a 1A/5V charger which takes around 5hours to charge from 0-100% .
Asus Zenfone Max with 5000 mAh battery is priced at Rs 9,999 available in two colour variants: black and white. It offers Good design ,build Quality , Camera and overall performance of the device is quite smooth . those who are looking for smartphone with good battery life with decent specs can go Zenfone Max which is capable of getting 4 days of battery backup on Single charge.
Benchmarks
Stay connected with us for more Tech News Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube