Zenfone Max 2016 review – A vital upgrade

Last year Asus unveiled the Asus Zenfone Max at their Zen festival, later it was available in the market. Asus created a battery oriented phone but it was good in only that sector, things like the performance, camera weren’t up to the date with the competition; So now in 2016, Asus has a launched a second version of the  Asus Zenfone Max. Is it worth your money? Let’s find out!

Zenfone Max 2016 review

Starting with the build and Design.

Build and Design

The Zenfone Max is designed well, Asus has tried something different than the standard Zenfone’s layout, The volume and power buttons are on the right side. On the back of the phone, there is a leather-like texture which feels great to hold as well as feels luxirous. The capacitive buttons still lack a backlight which is a bummer.

 

 

The Zenfone Max weighs around 210 grams which according to me is a bit too heavy and more than one would like. Some brands recently used a new technology in which the battery cells were packed very closely which made the phone thin as well as it did not increase the wait. This could have been done by Asus in this model. When holding the phone or even just showing the phone to someone, the first thing which is pointed out is it’s bulk and for some, It can surely be a reason not to buy the phone. Nothing has changed on the outside, and even someone from Asus can not differentiate between the first gen and the second. So you may ask what has changed, well you will come to know about that soon.

Display

The Zenfone Max 2016 comes with the same screen found on its previous generation which means that you still get a 720p display. Even then the display is very bright and pleasant to look at. It is a little oversaturated but can be fixed in the display settings itself. Great work Asus! The sunlight readability is also excellent. What I do not like about the screen is the scratch protection. I opened the phone on 23rd may, at that time I had three more phones to review, So gave my phone to my colleague to test it for two days.

When he gave back the phone, I saw a big scratch on the display. I asked him and he had no idea when that happen. We usually keep our devices very carefully and always ensure that no damage is done to the review unit. However, this time, I was surprised. According to Asus, the display isn’t gorilla glass but a similar product So if you buy the phone, make sure to keep it away from any sharp object. Due to that scratch, I had to buy a tempered screen guard to protect it from further such scratches.

Performance

The phone performed well and much better than it’s the previous generation. It comes with a Snapdragon 615 which was launched last year but still competes well to the 616 and 617. The phone comes in two variants, one with 2GB RAM and one with 3GB. The phone performs well while gaming and doing routine tasks, but switching apps and multitasking is atrocious on this phone. It lags while changing apps and hardly store’s three apps in its memory. This is because of the Zen UI and the bloatware in it. What I did to improve the RAM management was disabling some apps which I don’t want including some Asus’s apps like Zen Circle. This helped a lot in improving the overall performance of the phone.

Heating

The SD 615 is famous for its heat issue but kudos to Asus for fixing it. Zenfone Max hardly went over 40°C which for a phone with 615 is a big achievement 😀

Here are some screenshot of the benchmarks I ran on the phone.

[Coming Soon]

Camera

Zenfones usually have a decent camera; This one is no different. It has the same camera which was in its previous generation so nothing new. Pictures come decently with good color accuracy. The phone also comes with laser autofocusing but when in auto mode, the shutter speed is so slow that no images come clear( in medium to low light). In good lighting, the camera performs well, though.

Operating System

The Zenfone Max comes with Asus’s own Zen UI, which is still filled with a lot of bloatware which slows down the phone. The tip I will give you is to disable every app which you don’t use like Zen Circle, Splendid, web storage etc. Except bloatware, Zen UI is an amazingly good UI with a lot of customizability options in it. There were hardly any bugs, and I didn’t face any force closes. The Zen UI on the Zenfone max is based on Marshmallow, which is the latest Android Version. Nice work Asus!

Some screenshots of the UI

[Soon]

Battery

The Max in the phone name comes from here. The Battery of the phone.

The phone comes with mammoth 5000 mAh battery which easily lasts for two days for heavy users and three days for average users. If you are someone who always needs to juice up your device, This phone is for you my friend.

Conclusion

The Zenfone Max has a decent camera, good display, Buttery smooth performance and a giant 5000 mAh battery. If you are looking for a phone under Rs. 10,000. Do not look any further!

Still want more info? Check out my buddy’s video here!