Asus ZenFone Max review: Low on Cost, Big on Battery

When we go out to look for smartphones in the market, there are a huge number of options today, however, it becomes very difficult to create market differentiations. This is where Asus ZenFone Max is able to create its own niche by offering a great battery packed in a wonderfully designed smartphone that is not too high on cost.

We started using Asus Max for about a month and have great experience when it comes to be able to run the phone functions (making phone calls and taking pictures) for about four days, after charging it once.

ZenFone Max comes with a massive 5,000mAh battery. This is truly a power bank phone and most importantly it costs just INR 9,999.

Design and build

When it comes to design elements – this smartphone from Asus carries all the basic Asus ZenFone design elements. The company has taken special care to design this with interesting element of copper frame that is adding unique visual appeal to this smartphone. On the backside, the company has used special finish material that is giving this phone a premium look. And specially for this price range – this is a great job.

The back panel of this smartphone gives a special feel as it comes with the look and feel of embossed leather. This is giving this smartphone a chic look and feel which is certainly more premium than other such smartphones like Lenovo K3 Note or the Coolpad Note 3.

Display

The ZenFone Max comes with a 5.5-inch HD screen with a 720x1280 pixels resolution which roughly translates to 267ppi. What we learnt is that these display settings work best if one manually change the color saturation to suit one’s own need and style. This smartphone provides an option to manually play with the phone's colour saturation combinations and putting this to 'vivid' can provide better results on the display.

Battery

Asus ZenFone Max uses a 5,000mAh battery which is non-removable. This is a great battery which is ideal to power the phone for a long time. When we used this phone on heavy usage – mixed with videos, streaming, games, phone calls, Internet browsing as well as updating on social media – the battery has lasted for over one day. On the other hand, when we used it on a nominal scale of using it only for occasional voice calls, SMS etc – the battery gave us power for almost three days, this is definitely great performance.

And yes, most importantly, this phone can also act like your power bank – yes, you can use Max to charge other phones via OTG. However, you need to note that this smartphone doesn't ship with an OTG adapter, so you'll have to purchase it separately to utilise this feature.

On the downside – we do feel that it would have been better if this smartphone supported fast charging. ZenFone Max ships with a regular charger and since the battery power is huge, it obviously takes a long time to charge fully.

Software

The ZenFone Max runs Android 5.0.2-based Zen UI, which is Asus' custom user interface. In our opinion, today there are a number of vendor driven UIs which are being pushed in the market, however such UIs do have complexities which a user always finds it difficult to operate and execute regular tasks. On the other hand, Zen UI is one of the better UIs in the market today when it comes to delivering the best ease of user to the end customer.

But we did find a number of unwanted Apps being stored on the UI which should be allowed to be removed as per the requirement of the customer.

Performance

Asus ZenFone Max comes with a 1GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor clubbed with Adreno 306 GPU and has 2GB RAM. This smartphone comes with 16GB of internal memory which is expandable by up to 64GB with the help of a microSD card.

When you start using the ZenFone Max it is not likely to give you give you any kind of heating issues. When we reviewed this phone, we have never faced any such issue, even while playing graphical games, and running different apps on the sidelines.

Camera

Asus ZenFone Max sports a 13-megapixel camera on the rear with phase-detect autofocus and dualLED flash. There's also a 5-megapixel camera on the front. This is a powerful combination and delivers great

results on both regular as well as selfies. However, photos clicked outside provided better results when compared to similar photos clicked inside room where there is limited light.

The Final Verdict

Asus Zenfone max is a great device under this price category of INR 9,999. It is certainly wonderful to finally have a smartphone with large battery that it is not that heavy on the pocket too. This phone comes with equally appealing hardware and is providing quality performance.