The Chinese manufacturers are expected to continue their onslaught this year and Meizu is one of the new kids on the block in Malaysia. Already, this particular vendor has begun selling the MX4 here and will be bringing in its MX4 Pro sometime this year as well. While Meizu might be a new name for many, for those of us in the ICT news reporting line and a few others who hunt the Internet for their next gadget, it’s a brand that these few would have been aware of. In fact, I knew of it since my days in college. The thing is, Meizu had primarily been a manufacturer of MP3 players back then. However, it now has smartphones too and, thus, it’s appropriate the Meizu MX4 has come in for a hands-on this month.
HAVE WE MET?
The MX4’s design would look familiar to many, with its curved back reminiscent of the good old third iteration of a Korean flagship while the home button would surely make others think of a particular fruity brand. Regardless of such similarities, this one seems well built. The unit sent over to PC.com Tested Labs is grey in colour and while that’s fine, I would have preferred either the gold or silver coloured one as they do have a more premium feel. From the front, the side-frames are clearly metallic and that’s because it’s made with a high-tech aircraft-type aluminium alloy. Add the polycarbonate body on and the result is a device that has a solid build yet is priced affordably. Smartphones with a full metal unibody are nice but not many can pay the premium attached to such designs.
POWERED SNAP
Behind the device is the Meizu brand logo, a 20.7MP rear-facing camera, and the two-tone flash that is placed right below. The volume rocker is on the left while the power button and 3.5mm audio jack is on top. While this is a pretty strange placement for the former, fortunately I didn’t find it to be an issue. Lastly, Meizu placed the mic, microUSB port, and speaker at the bottom.
PUZZLING DESIGN
You can’t remove the battery and there’s no microSD or dual SIM slot on the MX4. This makes me question the decision to make the back removable - won’t it have been better to use an eject tray for the SIM? I’m especially put off by the lack of the former though some may argue that getting the larger capacities of the MX4 is enough. To be fair, this is my personal preference so it might not be a big deal for others.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
There are things about the MX4 that I needed to be familiarised with and that is saying a lot for a Chinese manufactured device. For one, there’s no capacitive back button, making it very unusual and inconvenient. Meizu makes up for this is by adding an overlay with that button for apps. Thus far, I’ve yet to encounter an app where it doesn’t work, so kudos to them for it.
TOP-CLASS DISPLAY
As for the screen, the one that Meizu MX4 uses is excellent. While some are in love with QHD, I think it’s better to stick to 1080p for now. A screen that offers characteristics of the former wouldn’t have much to offer and, on Full HD, the MX4 does well enough, outputting images that look crisp and offer excellent viewing angles. It’s really bright too so I can read off of it or check the map even when I’m outdoors. One more thing to note is that the unusual aspect ratio means you can’t watch YouTube videos in 1080p.
SERENADE ME THIS
Back in 2008, I had been hunting around for a high-end MP3 player that could possibly play any audio format. That had been how I go to know about Meizu, an industry expert in making some of the best portable media players around. With the Meizu MX4, I found the quality of the audio performance of this device to be equally as amazing. It sounds great on speakers but you’ll want to have a good set of earphone or headphone if you have plans to not share your passion in music.
MORE ISN’T ALWAYS BETTER
The MX4’s camera is probably the one thing I wished had performed better somehow. It may boast a 20.7MP sensor with two-tone flash controls that offer better white balancing, though in actual fact the pictures have a lot of noise in them. Up front is only a 2MP camera, so don’t expect to capture any hi-res selfies with it. Overall, the MX4’s camera really lets what could have been an all-rounded phone. On the flipside, it does pretty well when it comes to videos.
HIGH PERFORMER
Meizu boasts that the MX4 tops the chart for Antutu, all thanks to its Octa-Core MT6595 chipset it uses. Running on two quad-core processors in an ARM big. LITTLE configuration, the CPU is definitely a good one and while the GPU benchmarks don’t offer the same high performance, the MX4 can still take almost everything you throw at it. Truly, that’s what consumers look for in a smartphone - its real world performance. Hence, there’s no reason to suggest Meizu’s smartphone here can’t perform. The MX4 ticks a lot of checkboxes on the list of things people want these days and if you don’t include the mixed photo-taking performance, its asking price makes it a very attractive choice today.
VERDICT
Superbly value product that gets many things right.
SPECS
Dimensions 144 x 75.2 x 8.9 mm
Weight 147 g
Chipset MediaTek MT6595
Graphics PowerVR G6200 MP4
Memory 2GB RAM
Display IPS LCD, 5.36in, 1152 x 1920 pixels
Camera 20.7 MP rear-facing (autofocus and dual-LED dual tone flash), 2MP front-facing
Storage 16GB
Operating System Android 4.4 Kitkat, Flyme OS 4.0
Battery 3100 mAh