Asus Zenfone MAX 2016 Review

Asus announced ZenFone Max in India at ZenFestival back in August and was launched in India at Rs 9,999 earlier this year. Now Asus has launched an updated variant of Zenfone Max with Snapdragon 615 and 32GB of internal storage priced at Rs 9999 The main highlight of ZenFone Max is 5000mAh Battery which can act as a power bank, charging other devices on the go. Here is our review of Asus ZenFone Max 2016 with Snapdragon 615.

On Design ZenFone Max looks similar to the previous variant of Zenfone Max. on the front there is a 5MP front-facing camera sensor, 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 the power button is on the right side of the phone which is changed as compared to other Asus smartphones, there is nothing on the left side of the phone.

On the back ZenFone, max has a plastic back with a leather Matte finish which gives a good grip in hand. The phone has a rounded plastic strip which looks like Metal frame 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 weighs 202 grams, it is heavier than Gionee’s Marathon M4 which 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 1280 x 720 pixels resolution which is not a 1080P Display but still offers vibrant colors, 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 2016 is powered by a 1.5 GHz Octa core Snapdragon 615 processor compared to Snapdragon 410 on original Zenfone Max with Adreno 405 GPU and 2GB /3GB of RAM , The phone comes with 32GB of internal memory out of which 24GB is available for user which is expandable by up to 64GB via microSD card.

ZenFone Max is a pretty good phone in terms of all-around performance. Tried playing some games like Candy Crush Saga and Subway Surfers, Asphalt 8: Airborne and Modern Combat run well without any heating there was a little lag while playing games for a long time. Zenfone Max performed well in our Benchmark test On AnTuTu Benchmark phone scores 41538 points, Geekbench 3 scores 713 on a single core and 3056 on the Multicore, On Quadrant Standard phone scores 25249 points Overall Performance has improved compared to earlier Zenfone Max.

Software

Asus Zenfone Max 2016 is the first smartphone from Asus to run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Asus own ZenUI on top of it. Asus has removed some preloaded apps in Marshmallow, the interface makes the phone easy to use and even gives a large number of customization options. still, there are a lot of apps which are not used most of the time we can uninstall the apps or disable it.

There are also options 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 a 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 an Auto switch to Ultra saving mode. there is an app called 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 2016 has the same camera which was used in original MAX. It has 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 a good photo in Both day as well low light. Even though colors 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 the front camera are also quite good and produces good images. Both rear and front cameras 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 a 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, and Instagram .camera performance is good in Both day as well low light conditions. 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 supports 4G secondary SIM supports 3G connectivity, Device also supports microSD card up to 64GB. Asus also provided OTG cable which can be used to charge another phone using Zenfone Max. Now coming to a most important part of Phone Asus Zenfone Max comes with a 5000mAh non-removable battery which can give a battery back of 2 days on heavy usage also with Screen on Time of around 10-12 Hours. On Normal use Zenfone, max can be used for more than 3-4 days on a single charge. it takes around 5 hours to charge the device from 5-100%

Asus Zenfone MAX 2016 is priced at Rs 9,999 for 2GB variant and Rs 12,999 for 3GB variant if your are looking for more than 3 days battery life, Decent camera phone, HD Display then Zenfone max will be best Buy. Asus should have launched Full HD Display with 3GB RAM variant