Asus Zenfone Max M2 Review

Asus had launched the predecessor of Zenfone Max M2df in May, 2018 and was a game changer in the market and gave a tough competition to Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 pro in all aspects.

Asus now is Back with a better and upgraded version known as ASUS Zenfone Max M2. We Finally had a chance to review the Asus Zenfone Max M2 which is the latest in budget segment.

Comparing the past year with the current one, the competition in the Smartphone has got really tough with Honor, Xiaomi and Realme launching devices fitting the budget segment properly.

 

Design

The Zenfone M2 has received a major upgrade over its predecessor Zenfone M1. The Previous version i.e Zenfone M1’s back panel was made out of plastic whereas the Zenfone M2 back panel is made out of metal now with the antenna band part made out of plastic that can be clearly seen in the photo of the device above.

On the front, the Zenfone Max M2 sports a 6.26 inches 19:9 Notch display which has narrow borders and aren’t not much noticeable on normal operations. The Front camera, Earpiece, Proximity sensor have been neatly placed on the Notch. The design team has made a little extra effort by placing the LED Notification light inside the Earpiece’s speaker grill, there is a Green notification light for general notification from apps and a Reddish orange one for notifying that the device is Charging. The screen of the device comes with the usual 2.5D curve but without any Corning Gorilla Glass protection as compared to the Pro version of Zenfone M2.

The back design is almost same with respect to Camera and Fingerprint sensor placement.

 

Specifications and Software

Asus has upgraded the processor from the Zenfone M1 which came with a Snapdragon 430 to a much powerful Snapdragon 632 in the Asus Zenfone Max M2. The processor is powered by eight Kryo 250 cores that have a clocked speed of 1.8GHz.

The smartphone comes in Two variants i.e One with 3GB Ram and 32GB storage priced at Rs. 8,499 and the other variant with 4GB Ram and 64GB storage priced at Rs. 10,499. Extra perk of 100GB Google drive storage is included for new users OUT OF THE BOX for valid for 1 year.

The Zenfone Max M2 sports a 6.26 inches display with 19:9 and a bigger notch as compared to Zenfone Max pro M2. On the It sports a 4000mAh that powers this Smartphone. On the downside, it sports a Micro USB port for charging and a Bigger opening for speaker. On the left, A Sim card tray with 2 nano sim slots and a dedicated SD card slot which is a lot better when you actually want to expand storage as well as use both sim cards. Asus has still preserved 3.5mm jack in this phone which is a good thing for music lovers.

The phone out of the box comes with Stock Android 8.1 which is upgradeable to 9.0.

 

Performance and Camera

The performance of the phone is much better than we had expected it to be. The phone doesn’t Heat up like other devices and remains a little warm. The Stock android is pretty basic so it doesn’t hinder much with the performance of the devices as compared to Xiaomi devices which have heavy bloatware.

PUBG MOBILE- The Game ran smoothly on the phone with a little hiccups and the gameplay was pretty smooth overall. It did get warm after 20 mins of gaming.

On the top notch place, The notch does eat up some place for displaying the icons but battery percentage, Time and some major notification icons are visible on the top notification bar.

The screen of Zenfone Max M2 is bright enough to be seen under bright sunlight, But it could have been much better as it feels a bit dull in displaying the colours. The speaker output is clear and it outputs a decent amount of sound through it.

 

The camera of Zenfone 2 sports a 13 MP f/1.8 Aperture rear camera with a 2 MP depth sensor for Portrait shots. The phone did well and picked up decent amount of details but lacked at focusing(took much time than expected) even in well lit conditions. The background blurring wasn’t upto the mark and the colours seemed to be on the lighter side. Well, the camera is pretty decent for a device of this budget range and was impressive. The phone also has EIS to stablize the videos. However, the we struggled while clicking night shots as they turned out to be pretty below average.

Camera Shots-

Talking about the video aspect, the Zenfone Max M2 can shoot 4K format videos as well but 1080p videos does the good work too. The camera still keeps hunting things for focusing throughout though.
The front camera is a decent shooter with which you can easily get photos worth uploading to social media. However, Asus also plans to give extra features in future updates like depth effect and EIS to it.

Verdict

The Asus Zenfone Max M2 result’s a mixture. The phone offers some sensible computing power and also the battery is spectacular. The interface is swish, although there’s a requirement to adding some additional features. The design iskind of Average, although the cameras could’ve been a bit better. Overall, the smartphone looks to be an honest possibility, if you’re able to compromise on the Camera part.