Asus Zenfone Max Pro (M2) Review
Lately, Asus has been influencing the Indian smartphone market with its competent smartphones at reasonable pricing. With a price starting from Rs 12,999, Asus Zenfone Max Pro (M2) is the new offering from Taiwanese electronics brand in India’s most competitive category: under $200 (where 80 percent of the market still lies).
ZenFone Max Pro (M2) comes with a load of upgrades over its predecessor; it features larger 6.26-inch FHD+ display, Corning Gorilla Glass 6, Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset, 5,000mAh battery, and upgraded cameras. We have used Asus Zenfone Max Pro (M2) 4GB RAM variant and here’s what we think about it.
Design: The Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 comes with a glossy finish with curved edges which makes the phone easy to hold. The frame is made up plastic but it doesn’t feel like. The Power and volume buttons are situated at right while SIM tray at the left. Zenfone Max Pro M2 comes with Micro-USB port but a USB Type-C port would have been welcome. You can find 3.5 mm jack, Micro-USB and Speakers at the bottom. Zenfone Max Pro M2 sports a dual camera setup at the rear along with LED flash, the setup is placed in one row with flash which gives look like triple camera setup.
The Fingerprint sensor is located at the center and is easy to reach. It also supports face unlock which work seamlessly.
Notch on display is slightly unique as it carries a front camera, LED flash, proximity sensor, light sensor, notification LED at very little space. The earpiece is situated just above the notch. This phone carries premium looks but nothing new in terms of design.
Display: Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 display is powered by 6.26-inch LCD display with Full HD+ (2280x1080) resolution. It comes with a small notch which cultivates the looks of this phone. We feel that brightness is not up to mark under direct sunlight. The Display of smartphone is protected by Gorilla glass 6, first in this price segment. Asus claims it can survive up to 15 falls from 1 meter. The Quality of Display is amazing. The Graphics are crisp and video playbacks are very sharp and smooth.
Camera: Asus is powered by 12-megapixel Sony IMX486 sensor with 1.25micron pixel size and an f/1.8 aperture which is paired with a 5-megapixel depth sensor. At the front, this phone has a 13-megapixel sensor with a 1.12-micron pixel size and an f/2.0 aperture. Portrait mode is up to the mark while HDR mode has some scope of improvement.
The smartphone can capture decent pictures somewhere similar to its competitors. It can record videos at 4K resolution and video quality is enormous at this price point. We feel that low night camera performance was ordinary and Night mode was not so competent. Front camera captures good amount of details and front flash worked great in low lighting conditions.
Performance: Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 is equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 660 processor paired with Adreno 512 GPU and runs on Stock Android. It offers quick performance thanks to its processor. We didn't find any lag or fluctuation in its performance at the time of usage. We played PUBG for 2 hrs with High Graphics and it performed very well. On Geekbench, Max Pro (M2) got scores of 1,435 for single-core and 5,463 for multi-core.
Zenfone Max Pro M2 runs on Android 8.1(Oreo) and Asus promised to roll out Android Pie update with AI scene detection along with EIS and Bokeh mode for front camera in January.
The USP of this smartphone is its 5000mAh massive battery. After playing 3hrs of games, 2hrs of watching videos and 50 minutes of calling, the battery remains at 51% till the end of the day. The best part is that despite having such a massive battery, this phone does not feel heavy in hand. The handset gets fully charged in 2 hrs and 15 mins which is not bad at all.
Conclusion: If battery backup is your priority then this phone has a massive edge over others. It comes with the same processor which Mi A2 and Realme 2 Pro offers you at a slightly higher price. If camera is the most pressing matter then Realme 2 Pro has a little edge over it. In our opinion, if you are looking for a decent phone with mammoth battery backup with good performance, decent cameras, and reasonable pricing, then you should definitely go with it.
