Asus ZenFone Max Review: The Pick For On-The-Go Users

Asus ZenFone Max Reivew: After a strong start with ZenFone 5 and 2, Asus has been facing some serious problems with its entry-level smartphone series. The highly touted product range from the company, especially its tweaked ZenFone Laser and other variants have been criticized for a number of reasons. They’re thick, the battery backup is not good, and what not! Asus has been a poor victim of many causes just like all other phone makers.

But, the Taiwanese giant is not ready to give up. Asus expects a big jump in the next quarter with its mind-boggling sensation, ZenFone Max. Crafted for hefty users, this handset brings the efficiency of a true ZenFone with immense stamina on the offer. Yes, it’s a power dedicated device with a big battery, but it’s nothing like Marathon M5 or other players that are only good on paper.

We tried the phone for a few days, here’s what we have on it-

Design Language

If you’re big on large screen phones, Asus ZenFone Max will certainly make your day! The device belongs to large screen category with a 5.5-inch display, but its overall profile feels pretty good for single handed usage. It is built nicely with textured faux leather finish on the back, and is one of the only few phones to offer something plastic on the rear. Compared to other phones in the same price bracket, this looks a real beauty to play with.

Along with a sassy profile, Asus ZenFone Max boasts standard port placement, with power and volume rockers on the right side and a 3.5mm jack on the top. The rear panel of the handset can be removed to access the 5000 mAh battery, SIM card and microSD card slot. The gold lining running along the sides also makes a decent addition into the aesthetics of the smartphone!

A Sharp and Vibrant Display

Though not the best, the display bundled with ZenFone Max offers a crisp visual experience, with good viewing angles and full concerns towards power saving. It’s a 5.5-inch HD IPS panel with a moderate 267 pixels per inch. As per our opinion, this display is not as impressive as regular full-HD panels, but is good enough to handle day-to-day functions like messaging, calling, and multi-tasking. It looks good but disappoints gamers and movie-buffs with a yellowish tint while playing offline, on YouTube or on any other channel!

To sum up, the lack of pixels and detailing will be a slight disadvantage for ZenFone Max buyers.

Performance and Hardware

According to on-paper specs, Asus ZenFone Max boasts top-notch hardware with Qualcomm’s reliable Snapdragon 410 SoC, 2GB RAM, and Adreno 306 graphics. The phone features four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.2GHz, and also includes 16 gigs of inbuilt storage with an added slot for memory expansion up to 64GB.

As for real life performance, we had a good experience with ZenFone Max. It ran basic apps smoothly and delivered seamless performance without any lags or performance issues. At some points, it took few seconds longer than normal, but on whole, there were no signs of stutter or excessive heating.

However, it is important to note that the gaming performance with Snapdragon 410 was slightly below par. ZenFone Max handled basic and medium-level games with perfection, but struggled while run games like Asphalt or NOVA-3! If you’re expecting a powerful gaming ecosystem, go for some other handset with powerful chipset and RAM under the hood!

Software and UI

As expected, Asus chooses to continue with its custom and highly interactive ZenUI interface. Running on the top of Android 5.0 Lollipop, the tweaked iteration of ZenUI features colourful app icons and a bunch of intuitive customizations. The UI of this handset has a lot on offer, but there are some downsides as well. Firstly, the amount of bloatware pre-installed on the device eats up all the storage and second, there are no signs of an official upgrade to Android 5.1 Lollipop or Android 6.0 Marshmallow!

Camera Output

Asus ZenFone Max incorporates a 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and Laser Autofocus, and a 5-megapixel front-facing snapper. It delivers crisp, sharp, and colour-rich images in day light conditions, and outperforms most mid-range players quite easily. However, in daylight conditions, the images from ZenFone Max turn out to be noisy, soft, and badly saturated. It is surprising from Asus, but the fact is this camera is suitable for daylight conditions and not for dull and low lit environments.

Audio Experience

ZenFone Max continues Asus’ good work in audio technology, and promises a prolific music experience with a speaker grill on its back panel. Despite being loud, the audio from this handset gives a nice music experience, and takes movies to a whole new level. Audio quality gets a little muffed when the phone is placed on a table, but overall, its true-to-life quality is pretty tempting.

Battery Life

The biggest USP of Asus ZenFone Max is its immensely powerful 5000 mAh battery. The handset sports a big battery, and performs far better than Marathon M5 all other power-focused devices. On light usage with few calls, multi-tasking and social networking, the phone lasted for almost three days, while on heavy usage, it gave two days of power without any snags or drainage issues. In a nutshell, if you’re one of those, who prefer heavy gaming and multi-tasking, ZenFone Max is an ideal device to count on.

Bottom Line

For the price, Asus ZenFone Max looks like a fair deal for moderate smartphone users. The device holds a powerful processor and battery, but if you’re looking for lag-free gaming and multi-tasking, we’d suggest you to look elsewhere. The device lags at multiple times, and fails to handle heavy games and apps.

On the contrary, if you do nothing more than social networking or basic gaming, this device is a performer with its impeccable battery support. It will cater all your needs and will not run out of power anytime soon!

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