Meizu M3 Max

When it comes to smartphones, consumers are more savvy than ever these days, and aren’t necessarily blinded by the biggest names in mobile. After all, even the most expansive flagships can still catch on fire, or bewilder users by omitting a headphone jack.

And with even the likes of Samsung and Apple capable of turning off potential customers, more and more previously unheard-of Chinese brands are waiting in the wings with smartphones that seem to tick all the right boxes, at seemingly ridiculous prices.

One such brand is Meizu, a company that will be familiar to those of you residing in China, India and other parts of south and eastern Asia, as it seems to release more new phones than anyone else.

Meizu has been making smartphones and MP3 players since the mid-noughties, and is renowned for making phones that bear more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s range of iPhones

The Meizu M3 Max is a case in point: it could easily be mistaken for an iPhone 6 Plus on a dark night, with hints of the HTC 10 thrown in for good measure.

Meizu M3 Max price and availability

• Shipping worldwide from MeizuWorld.com
• Available in four colours priced at $329.99 (£280.49, AU$481.79)

The Meizu M3 Max is available directly from Meizu’s own online store, MeizuWorld.com;the usual price is  $329.99 (£280.49, AU$481.79) , although at the time of writing it's discounted to the very tempting price of $259.99 (£220.99, AU$379.59).

Built for power

This 6-inch phablet comes in four familiar colours: rose gold, silver, grey and gold. Each model incorporates a 10-core Mediatek processor backed by 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, a plentiful package that’s more than enough to power Meizu’s fully-skinned version of Android 6.0, Flyme OS.

There’s also a 13MP camera with dual-LED flash, a 5MP front-facing camera, a fingerprint sensor and a humungous battery weighing in a 4100mAh. At first glance there appears to be everything you’d want or need in a smartphone – but is there any more to the M3 Max than meets the eye?

Design and display

• Slim body with a familiar design
• Responsive fingerprint scanner built into the home key
• The 6-inch screen occupies most of the front

If you're familiar with any of the other smartphones in Meizu’s lineup, the look and feel of the M3 Max will be fairly familiar. While it wouldn't be considered a 'premium' phone, the build quality is very solid without feeling overly heavy or bulky. 

Weighing in at 189g, and measuring just 7.94mm thick, the M3 Max manages to combine a slim feel with well-balanced heft.

There aren't any unusual design choices to note – a volume bar sits a third of the way down the right-hand side, with a power button located just below; both respond to presses with a satisfying click, and don't wobble or move around like those on some other budget handsets.

The opposite spine is home to the tray that holds your nanoSIM card and a microSD card, and which can double as a dual-SIM card tray if you prefer. 

The bottom edge is home to micro USB and 3.5mm headphone sockets, and the single speaker, in a layout that's almost indistinguishable from that of the iPhone 6.

The silver chamfered edges on the rear of the phone are somewhat reminiscent of the HTC 10, though the dual-tone LED flash is located below the camera, which – unlike on the HTC – is flush to the body.

There's another little nod to Apple's design in the shape of a tagline inscribed on the rear of the phone, saying 'Designed by Meizu, LTE Mobile Phone Assembled in China'. It's not quite as glamorous as Apple's 'Designed in California' slogan, but the two brands share a similar production pedigree – Meizu's phones are assembled in Zhuahai, a small city just across the estuary from Shenzhen, where the iPhone is made.

On the front of the phone, a multi-function home button below the screen doubles up as a fingerprint scanner, replicating recent Samsung and HTC handsets. 

Everything else on the front is unsurprising – the bezels either side of the screen are fairly slim, but not as small as those on the 5.5-inch Nubia Z11, although we're happy to see that very little real estate has been wasted above and below the screen.

The screen itself is a 6-inch, 1080p panel, which might not be the highest resolution available, but has a density well above the 'retina' standard, meaning you’ll never see pixels with the naked eye. 

Screen brightness is exceptional and viewing angles are good, but, as on cheaper IPS screens, black levels are relatively poor.

Interface and reliability

• Unusual Android interface takes time to adapt to
• Google apps are missing, and take time to restore
• The interface is well-designed and fast

Pick up the Meizu M3 Max and you might be expecting a relatively straightforward Android experience with a fancy skin laid on top. What you actually get is version 5 of Meizu’s 'Flyme OS', which is most definitely based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow but has been skinned to within an inch of its life to more closely resemble Apple’s iOS.

Its proprietary home replacement launcher retains some similarities to Android: the notifications panel is accessed by dragging down from the top of the screen; you can add shortcuts, folders and widgets to the multiple home screen panels; and hidden behind the theme is a similar set of settings menus.

That is pretty much where the similarities end and the confusion begins. When you first boot up the phone you’re given a little explanation about the Flyme OS, then asked if you want to download the Google services in order to get access to the Play Store and all the apps and media it offers.

It seems a slightly unusual way of doing things, and may well be down to some kind of licensing agreement – or lack of – for prepackaging the phone with Google services in every country the M3 Max ships to.

After you've downloaded Google services and the Play Store app the device starts to feel a little more familiar, as you can download all the apps you'd expect to find on an Android handset – YouTube, Gmail, Maps etc.

Of course, you can choose to shun Google’s services entirely and go it alone with Meizu’s own app store – a Wild West affair of awkwardly renamed apps that look somewhat familiar, alongside apps that certainly look legitimate.

There’s also a 'Hot Apps' section, which enables you to download all the most commonly used apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram and, er, Pokemon Go.  Downloads via this service were speedy and certainly seemed normal enough, although to be on the safe side we would certainly recommend that any apps you download be obtained through Google’s official Play store.

As far as navigating the Flyme OS is concerned, there isn’t the familiar three-button layout – back, home and app-switching – you’ll find on most Android phones; instead you get a single home button that takes you back to the home screen with a click, or acts as a back button with a tap.

It’s a nice idea, but in practice you often end up going back when you mean to simply go back to the home button. To bring up the multitasking screen you can swipe up from anywhere below the screen – a nifty solution that we only discovered by accident.

In many of the apps and settings screens, the default icon to return you to the previous screen is located all the way over at the top-left of the screen, which seems a world away from your thumb when the phone is held in one hand – this is most certainly a two-hand device.

Alternatively, you can enable the ‘SmartTouch’ floating widget that adds the much-needed navigation in an ever-present dot that can be tapped to go back, swiped left or right to switch between apps, and configured to do much more. 

It can also be moved around the screen, so we chose to put it at the bottom left, to allow for easy control when using the phone in one hand.

Of course, the downside of this widget is that it can obscure text and other onscreen elements, so it’s not an ideal solution.

Like many other new Android handsets, the Meizu M3 Max recognises a variety of wake-up gestures: double-tap to wake; swipe up to unlock; swipe down to access notifications/settings. You can also add in custom gestures, which is a nice touch that makes it easier to launch straight into your most commonly-used apps.

Other unique features include an ‘Eye protective mode’, which works much like Apple's Night Shift mode, changing the colour temperature of the screen depending on the time of day and reducing the amount of blue light emitted to combat eye strain. A welcome feature indeed.

You can also independently adjust the colour temperature of the screen, to set it just right to suit your needs, whether you prefer your apps or media to have a warmer, cooler or more vibrant hue.

Benchmarks and performance

• Underwhelming benchmark scores don’t tell the whole story
• Despite the mid-range specs, everything runs very smoothly

Despite Meizu opting for cheaper silicon to power the M3 Max in the form of MediaTek’s 8-core Helio P10 processor, it's nigh-on impossible to tell the difference in day-to-day performance between this chip and more expensive options from Qualcomm.

Throughout our tests, apps launched quickly and ran without noticeable lag or slowdown, in a manner you'd expect from a considerably more expensive flagship device. Any games that we tried loaded quickly, ran without a hitch and looked great on the full HD screen. Our fingerprints were recognised instantly, waking the screen without delay.

In order to compare the performance of different smartphones we put every handset through the Geekbench 4 benchmark, which delivers scores based on single and multi-core performance. While benchmarks don’t necessarily reflect real-world performance, they still remain relevant for assessing raw performance.

With an average multi-core test score of 2718, the M3 Max achieved less than half the score returned by the similarly sized but significantly more expensive Huawei Mate 9, which returned a multi-score score of 5815.

Things weren’t much better in the single-core test, with the score of 684 reminiscent of the kinds of speeds seen on 2014 flagship smartphones.

Despite these somewhat lacklustre results, we would reiterate that these benchmark scores are not the be-all and end-all, and the overall performance we experienced on the M3 Max was very quick, without any noticeable slow-down.

Battery life

• Massive 4,100mAh drives the M3 Max into two-day territory
• Proprietary quick-charge claims a 45% charge in just 30 minutes

When you’re rocking a phone with such a large screen, battery size is a very important spec to take note of – and the Meizu M3 Max crams a 4,100mAh battery into a very slim frame.

The only phone to come close to the M3 Max in this regard is the Huawei Mate 9, which packs a 4,000mAh cell into a phone that’s almost the same thickness. When you consider that this is a whole 1,100mAh higher than the iPhone 7 Plus, it seems like quite the contender – but of course the real proof is in the testing.

A power-hungry flagship would still eat away at such a high-capacity battery pretty quickly, but with a low-power chipset onboard the M3 Max manages to breeze past the first night of usage, and without heavy media usage or gaming you could easily make it to the end of two full days without having to reach for the power adaptor.

Subject to the standard TechRadar battery test (playing a HD video at full brightness for 90 minutes, with accounts syncing over Wi-Fi in the background), the M3 Max’s battery dropped by 19%, to finish with a respectable-looking 71% remaining.

But we were a little surprised to see it drop so much, considering that the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge lost just 14% and the Nubia Z11 20%, and both phones have considerably lower-capacity batteries. If nothing else, this proves that when the 6-inch screen is in constant use, the capacity of the large battery is definitely needed.

Meizu’s battery settings menu enables you to see much of the same information as you'd find on stock Android, but with a number of added power-saving tweaks to help you stretch out the battery life that little bit further.

Strangely, the stats available don’t allow tracking beyond 12-hour blocks, but during our testing we didn’t find the battery life to be too much of a concern, anyway.

If you need a quick top-up, the included quick-charging adaptor can pump up your battery by 45% in just 30 minutes, thanks to a high-wattage output that's some six watts higher than Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 solution, which is used on many other flagships.

Camera

• 13MP rear camera with twin LED flash, 5MP front-facing camera
• Underwhelming camera software feels half-finished
• Unpredictable focusing makes the snappy burst mode a little pointless

The camera app pre-loaded on the Meizu M3 Max is largely unchanged from the app found on other recent Meizu handsets, and  offers a relatively mediocre feature set when compared to many other new smartphones.

The interface has a familiar layout, and includes a few quick toggles to change flash settings, turn the timer on or off, swap between front and rear camera, or play around with the live filters.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to switch on HDR without delving into the settings, and bewilderingly, there isn’t a button to quickly record video straight from the camera screen.

Thankfully, there is a fully-laden manual mode, which offers shutter speed, ISO, manual focus, exposure compensation, saturation, contrast and white balance adjustment. Most other phones in this price range forgo these manual settings, so they're a welcome addition here.

Getting into the camera app isn’t exactly speedy, as there's no way to quickly launch the app. To do so, you’ll need to set up a ‘gesture wakeup’ shortcut. We chose the obvious 'C' motion which seemed to do the trick, although it didn’t seem to register our gesture 100% of the time.

We were genuinely surprised by the burst mode, which takes as many as 30 shots in a single second when you press and hold the shutter button. This is even quicker than flagships costing twice as much, but unfortunately it sounds more impressive than the results would suggest.

The slow focus time means that even though you could capture many photos incredibly quickly, the majority would be out of focus, making it next to useless for catching the fast-paced action for which it's intended.

In general the quality of images from the Meizu M3 Max's camera is average at best. In good daylight pictures are more than adequate for sharing on social media, with accurate colours and decent dynamic range pulling in plenty of detail.

Sadly the majority of night shots we attempted were spoilt by processing filters that overly smoothed the images, making them look artificial and smeared on closer inspection.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera, meanwhile, isn't too bad. Sure, it’s not quite up to the standard of HTC’s wide-angle, optically-stabilised snapper, but it’s better than many other budget smartphones can muster.

Camera samples

Verdict

As one of the first Meizu handsets to be officially available worldwide, we were keen to see whether the Meizu M3 Max, which on the face of it offers great value for money, could deliver.

And in many respects the M3 Max positively snaps at the heels of phones more than double the price; in others, however, the corners that have been cut in order to make this phone cost much less than you might expect are shamefully apparent.

Though many of the design cues have been brazenly borrowed from the prettiest handsets around today, these elements are put together without any fanfare, making the M3 Max feel like just another 2016 handset.

It’s a bit of a shame, as the phone has a good screen, and feels solid and genuinely well built – we just wish Meizu had added some style of its own.

One of the biggest sticking points is the slightly unusual Flyme OS, which – despite being pretty to look at – feels a little half-baked and lacking in features, as Google’s widely-used suite of apps is not immediately available.

Performance is perfectly acceptable, and while the camera was a bit of a disappointment it would be foolhardy to expect all-out flagship performance for such a budget price.

Why should you buy it?

The Meizu M3 Max is for bargain hunters who value screen real estate over almost anything else. If you’re looking for a half-way house between a smartphone and a tablet, this is one of the best-value choices around.

If you're looking for a handset that delivers a suitably whopping screen, decent battery life and a solid build quality, the Meizu M3 Max should definitely be on your shortlist.

Phablet alternatives such as the Huawei Mate 9 and iPhone7 Plus are around three times the price, so if you can forgo a few features such as NFC and a top-rated camera, you’re still getting a lot of phone for your money.

Why shouldn’t you buy it?

Simply put, the M3 Max isn’t the complete package. You most certainly get a lot of phone for your money, but compare it to the competition and you’ll always be left feeling you’ve missed out on something along the way.

Look beyond the price and you’ll find a phone with a mediocre camera, confusing software and a design that while solid, feels totally uninspired.

The Meizu M3 Max is a well-built phone for a highly-affordable price, but if your budget allows, there are some other oversized smartphones we would recommend you consider. The following are three of the best…

Huawei Mate 9

Huawei has packed everything you might desire from a phone into the Mate 9, but packaged in a way you probably haven’t considered before.

With a 5.9-inch screen and similar-sized battery to the M3 Max, this powerful device is a good option. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 it doesn't come with a stylus, but apart from that it excels in terms of all the other features you’d expect from a phablet.

• Read our Huawei Mate 9 review

iPhone 7 Plus

If you’re looking for a full-fat smartphone in iOS flavour, the iPhone 7 Plus is the best option for you. A 5.5-inch screen, powerful A10 processor and a range of storage options make this the ultimate phablet.

It doesn’t have a headphone jack, but it does boast good battery life, and comes with a dual-lens camera that can take shots every bit as good as those you’ll get from the Huawei Mate 9.

The biggest difference? The eye-watering price starts at £719 ($769, AU$1,229) for the 32GB option, and goes up to £919 ($969, AU$1,569) for the top-end 256GB models.

• Read our iPhone 7 Plus review

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge may not be quite as large as the Meizu M3 Max, but what it lacks in overall dimensions it makes up for in features. It’s positively stacked with clever technology, looks absolutely superb, and is waterproof too.

The gorgeous QHD screen wraps around the edges, making the bezels almost invisible, while the battery life, camera and speed are up there with the best money can buy.

If you want a sizeable smartphone that doesn’t skimp, this is the one to have.

• Read our Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge review