In recent time, we had seen manufacturers are shifting their focus to making more power efficient devices by adding more battery to the device so that your device can last all day without mid-day charging, and in this race, Taiwan-based manufacturer, Asus has also launched a battery packed device, the Asus Zenfone Max which comes with huge 5000mAh battery which is quite enough for heavy user to last more than a day and an average user can get more than two days with it, but what else this device has got, does it comes with more features or it’s just a battery packed device.
Build And Design Of Asus Zenfone Max:-
Till now we had seen Asus has stuck with its design language which they had introduced a year back in ZenFone 2, but here company has tried to do something new, when you first hold this device or take a look at it from front, then you will find it very much similar to Asus Zenfone 2 Laser, you have same 5.5 inch HD display screen, three touch capacitive buttons which do not light up, and below that you have concentric circles design metallic chin.
But when you flip the device you will find new design language, thankfully now there are no volume rockers on its rear, now they sit on right side of the device along with power and sleep button, they are plastic button finished in chrome and provide nice feedback to you.
At bottom, you will find your Micro USB port for charging and data transfer along with your primary microphone, there is nothing on the left side, it all clean.
At the top, you will find your 3.5mm audio jack for your headphones.
The back panel of this device has got leather like texturized finish which feels good to hold and provide better grip to it. At the back you will find 13Mp rear snapper along with dual LED flash and laser autofocus, at the bottom part, you will find your speakers, and as speakers are placed at the rear, audio do get muffled a bit when you place them on the flat surface.
The back panel of this device can be removed, and once you remove it, you will get access to dual SIM slots, a micro SD card slot and massive 5000mAh battery.
The overall build and design of the phone is nice as Asus has done something new as compared to what we have seen on earlier launched ZenFone’s.
Hardware And Specs Of Asus ZenFone Max:-
When it comes to under the hood features, Asus ZenFone Max has got identical specs which we had seen on Asus Zenfone 2 Laser 5.5inch variant, it is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 SoC along with 2GB RAM and has got 16GB internal storage which can be further expandable up to 64GB via micro SD card.
For the connectivity, it’s a Dual SIM smartphone, first SIM support Indian LTE bands but the secondary SIM is limited to 3G only, apart from this it also supports Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, Micro USB and USB OTG is also supported.
Display Of Asus ZenFone Max:-
Just like Asus ZenFone 2 Laser, Max also comes with 5.5inch HD display screen, the display is very much decent in terms of brightness and colours, sunlight visibility is also decent and should not have any major issue while using it outside.
Sometimes you might feel display lack details and sharpness due to low screen resolution, company has probably done this to save power of the device as 1080p display consume more power as compared with 720p, for an average user, this screen will be fine.
Software Of Asus ZenFone Max:-
Like any other recently launched Asus smartphone, this ZenFone Max too runs on Android 5 Lollipop wrapped under ZenUI which is one of the best Android UI in terms of customization, it supports gesture controls, themes support, power management and several others options are there, but at the same time it do comes with several pre-loaded apps.
And every second day you will find pending updates for those pre-installed apps, even on our first boot we were asked to update almost 40 apps.
Camera Of Asus ZenFone Max:-
Not only specs of Asus ZenFone Max are similar to ZenFone 2 Laser but the camera is also same, its 13MP rear snapper with laser autofocus and has got dual LED flash, at the front you will find 5MP selfie camera which again remains same.
The camera UI is same which you might have seen on recently launched ZenFone’s, lots of modes like HDR, Night Mode, Manual and some more are there which might be useful for you.
Surprisingly, even when the camera is same as of ZenFone 2 Laser, images which we had captured using ZenFone Max has more details, and colors are also more accurate and good on Zenfone Max.
Images taken in very bright sunlight seems to be washed out, if you take image inadequate lights then you will find nice amount of details and colors in it, Laser autofocus does its job brilliantly but as soon as you move to low light, it struggles
Check out some camera samples below:-
Battery Of Asus ZenFone Max:-
Here comes the highlight of Asus ZenFone Max, the battery, it has got 5000mAh non-removable massive battery, it comes with 1A/5V charger in box which makes no sense, as with supplies charger, it takes around 5 hours to reach 100 percent from zero, we had used fast charge as well and with that it took somewhere around 3 hours.
Company should have included the fast charger in the box and it would be good if company has included fast charging technology in it as I am not going to wait 5 hours for this device to get charge fully.
On the full charge, it can easily last two days on heavy usage, if you are a moderate user then you can easily get three or more days with it. We had got around 10 hours of screen on time with this device which is very good.
Not only this, with the supplied OTG cable, you can reverse charge devices with it, means it can be used as power bank to charge your other device, however, the charging speed is very slow but again, it’s better to have something than nothing.
Performance Of Asus ZenFone Max:-
Even being a budget smartphone with the budget chipset and specs, Asus ZenFone Max able to handle some heavy task, we played some heavy games like Dead Trigger 2, Asphalt 8, Real Racing 3 and some more, all went smoothly, yes we did face some frame drops but those were acceptable.
There was no issue while switching between apps, web browsing was nice, and while doing all task we never faced any abnormal heating on the device.
Final Verdict On Asus ZenFone Max:-
In recent time couple of manufacturer has realized the need of battery efficient device and launched some battery packed device, earlier Gionee and Lenovo has launched these kinds of devices, but Asus has launched a battery pack device below 10K which makes it stand out in the crowd.
Asus ZenFone Max has got good build quality, decent rear snapper, good performance for the price and excellent battery life, the only thing which is wrong here is supplied charger. If you want a device under 10K which and your primary need is battery then ou should consider this device for sure.
