Asus Zenfone Max 2016 Review – Great Battery And Reverse Charging Mode

The battery life in a smartphone definitely one of the key features we look for. Many manufacturers are producing phones with huge batteries. The Asus Zenfone Max(2016) is one of them and affordable too. The Zenfone is priced at Rs 9,999 for the 2GB RAM variant and Rs 12,999 for 3GB one and are available at Blue, Black and Orange colors. Let’s find more in our full review.

DESIGN & DISPLAY

The design aspect remains the same as other Zenfone series smartphones. The Asus logo on the above the screen with a front camera on the upper right and Zen design below the chin with navigation keys above it.

The phone is well packed with the bronze-color plastic frame, the power button and volume rockers are placed at the right side of the phone, while a 3.5mm audio jack is located on the top and a micro-USB port with a mic at the bottom side of the phone.

At the back, this time, the phone comes with a faux leather back panel which feels better in the hands and Asus logo emblazoned on it. The 13-megapixel camera module with dual LED flash and the laser AF is also located at the back. While the speaker grille is located on the bottom at the back. Under the hood there’s a 5000mAh battery and Dual-sim Slots.

The Zenfone Max(2016) sports 5.5-inches – HD display which is decent. It is vivid and easy on eyes, we didn’t face any problem using it in bright sunlight.

USER INTERFACE

When it comes to the user interface, we have customized Zen UI based on Android 6.0. I love the fact that there are a lot of added features like gesture controls and customization options. If you are familiar with the ZenUI, you will feel  right at the home.

HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

Asus Zenfone Max(2016) comes with an Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 with the clock speed of 1.8 GHz, with an option of 2/3GB of RAM to choose between and 32GB of built-in storage. While this spec-sheet will definitely not blow your socks off, but is decent enough for day-to-day usage. There were some lag after a week of usage in switching the apps.

When it comes to gaming, the performance is good for the normal games but if you play graphics-intensive games you’ll experience quite a lot of stutter and some skipped frames. It’s better to keep down  graphics to medium to experience better gameplay. Also, the phone tends to get warm sometimes but does not overheat.

CAMERA

The Zenfone Max(2016) sports a 13MP camera and it is capable of  producing one of the better-looking images for a phone at this price segment. Most of the daylight shots came out good. The low-light camera performance is just okay and you cannot expect great night shots. There are several options including manual mode in the in-built camera app to play with and let you take a full control of the pictures you take. The camera can record videos at FHD resolution.

A 5MP selfie shooter will definitely serve the purpose for Social Media. Overall, Zenfone Max(2016) has a great if not the best camera in its class.

BENCHMARKS

We ran standard benchmarks of the device and the results were  as follow:

AnTuTu Benchmark 6: 39025
Vellamo 3 MultiCore: 3039
Geekbench 3 Multi-Core: 3039
3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited: 9234

BATTERY LIFE

The most noticeable feature of the phone is battery and it really performs well. In our test labs during our test we achieved over 6 hours of screen-on time even with heavy usage. So one should easily get over 7 hours of SOT on a mixed usage.

The main highlight of Zenfone Max(2016)  is the reverse charging feature which lets you charge other phones through the bundled USB OTG cable using the Zenfone Max. It also has an option of rapid reverse charging that charges other phones with an output of 1.5A for this the phone will turn off.

CONNECTIVITY

We didn’t face any connectivity issues with the phone, the signal reception, the call quality and other connectivity options ran without any issues.

CONCLUSION

So, there you have it, a phone which is designed for those who want a better battery backup( who doesn’t?), you can’t expect anything spectacular out of this phone. Well, it isn’t the best phone on the market in this price segment. It has a pretty decent display and a very good ZenUI. The cameras do impress and the battery life is an obvious plus. Asus Zenfone Max(2016) may not be a flagship killer but a good phone for someone looking for a battery house which can deliver decent performance. Despite few shortcomings, it is surely well worth for the price you pay.

You can buy the Zenfone Max from Flipkart.