With the increasing in the demand of the devices, specifically the smartphones, we have seen the major focus shifting from the display size to the battery size, significantly means that your phone won’t ditch you anymore before your bedtime. Though we have seen numerous high-end as well as the mid-range smartphones with expressive battery capacities of 3000mAh, and more, the best ones which have managed to go beyond all the norms were Lenovo Vibe P1 with 4900mAh battery and Gionee Marathon M5 with 6020mAh battery. We really don’t want to miss out the Asus ZenFone Max, which is significantly making rounds in the market.
Asus ZenFone Max has been launched at a price tag of 9999 INR and was announced last year in the month of August. Despite being a lower mid-range smartphone, Asus ZenFone Max has managed to stand alone with its 5000mAh battery. As compared to Vibe P1 and Marathon M5, ZenFone Max is substantially cheaper than both as well as is more power efficient. Do you think it is the best energy efficient Android smartphone by Asus? Well, personally, I do think that it is the Power Bank Android smartphone, but let’s find out in the review.
Build Quality and Design
The Asus ZenFone range is significantly known for its uniformity and thus, Asus tries to stick themselves with their own aesthetic formula, which makes the Asus ZenFone smartphone recognizable at once. The ZenFone range of Asus features capacitive soft-keys with a design of concentric circles, which is not at all impressive and Asus even doesn’t work really hard to stand out from other smartphones in the market. With this design, Asus simply makes it a little harder to differentiate between a budget and a premium Asus device.
Two colour variants are available in the Asus ZenFone Max device, i.e. the white and the black. The black colour variant device has a leather-like finishing, while the white colour variant device has a smooth, dull finishing at the back. This smartphone has a gold plastic strip, which runs through its four sides as well as slightly rounds off at the back as well, giving the smartphone a smooth feel and grip. The smartphone features micro-USB port at the bottom and 3.5mm jack at the top. Also, it features a notification light next to the earpiece in the front.
As per its price tag, even if ZenFone Max hit, a miss on its design, it is perfectly fine. In the price category, ZenFone Max features the largest battery and weighs about 202 grams. Also, it is one of the thickest smartphone with 10.5mm thickness in its price category. The chunky bezels on the device gives it a premium look and feel. The matte finishing with the curvaceous frame at the back of the device gives it a fabulous look and a perfect grip in hand. Overall, Asus ZenFone Max is among the most well-made smartphones in the market with distinct texture, giving it an excellent haptic look.
Display
The Asus ZenFone Max features an HD display of 5.5 inches with a pixel density of 267ppi and a resolution of 720×1280 pixels. While looking at other smartphones in the same price category, like Yureka Plus and K3 Note, the HD screen of ZenFone Max slightly disappoints. It has dim display, which doesn’t really impress us. It has average viewing angles and odd warm hue colours. For better vivid results, the Asus gives an option for manually tinkering the colour saturation settings. The outdoor legibility gives a challenge to the Asus ZenFone Max because of its low display brightness. If you are more into reading a text, then it is not a perfect choice for you. For better displays in the same price category, you can go with Gionee’s Marathon G4 or K3 Note or Yureka Plus.
Software
The Asus ZenFone Max features its custom ZenUI with the latest Android 5.0.2 version. Asus sticks to its old formula with its UI customization, which is quite easy to use as well. Though ZenUI lacks in simplicity as well as the aesthetics, it is better when it is about easy to use. It has got visibly light UI as well as more polished one than Vibe’s UI. This smartphone features pretty useful as well as handy customization tools along with an option for locking selective apps on the device. Also, it features an option for pinning the display on the screen, until you unpin it. The theme engine in ZenFone Max helps in personalizing the user experience with the smartphone.
This smartphone features RAM of 2GB, internal storage of 16GB (expandable up to 64GB) with Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor. Just don’t think that it could have a more potent processor, just you have to look at the bigger picture. It is the smartphone, which has a pitching efficiency in terms of its battery life. Keeping the price in mind, Snapdragon 410 is a way to go and even works really well, like it did in Moto G (Gen 3), though the results are not smooth in ZenFone Max. The Zen UI is lighter than the other UIs in the market, but it doesn’t really an impressive one.
Overall, ZenFone Max does perform really well in its basic tasks, like managing the social media accounts, texts, phone calls, YouTube videos and web browsing. The games like Subway Surfers or Candy Crush run quite well, but due to its GPU constraints, the games like Modern Combat 5 or Asphalt 8: Airborne let down the performance of the smartphone. The major plus point of a ZenFone Max smartphone is that it doesn’t give any heating issues. The phone calls are of average quality and the single speaker gives average audio as well.
Camera
The Asus ZenFone Max features 13-megapixel rear camera with a dualLED flash and autofocus. Also, it features a front camera of 5-megapixel. The rear camera works well and captures average pictures, not that impressive one. The pictures clicked outdoor get some metering issues associated with the sensor on-board. The pictures which are captured indoor comes out really well with good details. The front camera works satisfactory and have some metering issues as well, but acceptable at this price point.
Camera Sample
Battery
Finally, the major feature BATTERY of Asus ZenFone Max featuring 5000mAh non-removable battery. It is simply the fantastic one. The battery life of this smartphone goes on for at least 1 day, the 24 hours, even after the heavy usage in web browsing, video playback, gaming and much more. Also, the mixed usage gives it a close to a 2-day battery backup. Isn’t it simply a phenomenal one? Yeah, obviously. If you go by a generalized usage, then it goes beyond 2 days.
ZenFone Max has an outstanding standby time as well as no charge is being used if the smartphone remains untouched overnight. Also, this smartphone can be used for charging other smartphones using an OTG cable. The major downside of this smartphone is that it is not capable of fast charging. It would be more among the phenomenal smartphones, if Asus has managed to feature the latest technology, TurboCharging in ZenFone Max.
Verdict
If you are looking for the best and a big, battery, smartphone, then you should definitely go with Asus ZenFone Max. It would be unbeatable smartphone, if featured TurboCharging, yet to all your battery woes, ZenFone Max is the best and the worthiest answer. Overall, this smartphone gives a respectable performance with a respectable screen, despite its weakest feature, camera. So, if you can live without it and have at least budget, then ZenFone Max is the best choice.
