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Meizu is a brand name we unusually get to mention, even though the Chinese company has been in the smartphone business for an entire decade. That’s because only recently its phones became officially available in Western markets – via retailers like Amazon and Meizu’s online stores. And as the case is with few Chinese brands, Meizu handsets goal to stand out by providing decent specs and attractive design at a competitive price.
The Meizu Pro 6 Plus, in particular, is a high-end Android model that’s going to price 499 euros (about $530) when it’s launched in France and Italy. In exchange, you get a device with software and design that have been clearly inspired by Apple’s iPhone, whereas the specs place it in the premium tier, next to the Galaxy S7 and the likes. However ultimately, is the Meizu Pro 6 Plus a good buy? I used it for few weeks to find out!
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Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Specification
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Display Size: 5.7 inches
OS: Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)
Internal Storage: 64/128 GB
RAM: 4 GB
Rear Camera: 12MP
Front Camera: 5MP
Battery Life: Non-removable Li-Ion 3400 mAh battery
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Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Design
Meizu has plenty of experience designing metal-bodied phones now, so it’s no shock to search out that its high-end Pro 6 Plus is elegantly built.
Elegant, however hardly unique. The phone’s rounded edges drilled ports, and horizontal antenna lines reveal a different Android phone that apes Apple’s iPhone 6 design language.
I was given the gold model, which is never a color selection that’s particularly to my taste. However, there are gray and silver options available too. Note, though, that the gold color here has a softer, more metallic sheen than many similar smartphone variants.
Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Display
Meizu has not cut any corners with the Pro 6 Plus display. Indeed, on paper, its specs match as much as the dearly departed Samsung Galaxy Note 7 – a 5.7-inch with a QHD (1,440 x 2,560 pixels) resolution for a nice 515ppi pixel density.
Even the council type matches Samsung’s ex-flagship: a super-vivid Super AMOLED. It would be a tad trusting to hope that the image would be as good. It’s not. However whereas Samsung remains the king of AMOLED, I had few complaints with Meizu’s effort.
Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Software
It comes with an Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box. This isn’t the freshest build of Android in town these days, with Android 7.0 Nougat officially landing back in August 2016.
Although this is the global version of the phone, you will be rather confused by the looks of Chinese Mandarin text during the setup procedure. Scrolling down and choosing English as your language will restore things to legibility.
Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Hardware and Performance
We talked about earlier that the Meizu Pro 6 Plus has the identical core setup as the Galaxy S7, and that is impressive for a phone at this price level – to date, it’s something only OnePlus has managed to achieve in the UK mainstream mobile phone market.
rReading the show here is one of Samsung’s Exynos 8890 processors, an octa-core chip with 4 Cortex-A53 cores operating at 2GHz and 4 at 1.6GHz. You should note that when you buy the 128GB storage model (our review model came with 64GB of fast UFS 2.0 storage, however, no possibility of expansion via microSD), these cores are clocked above at 2.3- and 1.6GHz respectively.
Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Camera
Meizu Pro 6 Plus comes with a 12-MP camera and a combination of part detection and laser autofocus.
You don’t get anything special regarding the phone’s 5-megapixel front-facing camera, although the pixels are a bigger 1.4µm, which helps out in lesser lighting situations.
Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Battery Life
Backing all of this processing power is a 3,400mAh battery, however not likely to get you far into a second day unless you are a very light user. Meizu claims that its battery is long-lasting and may survive as much as twice so long as common batteries, with a lifetime of over 900 cycles. Clearly, we will take a look at this, having only owned the phone for around a month (at the time of writing).
Meizu Pro 6 Plus Review – Connectivity Options
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, Hotspot
Bluetooth: 4.1, A2DP, LE
GPS: Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS
Sensors: Fingerprint, accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass, heart rate
Gallery
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Conclusion
The Pro 6 Plus is a fairly good flagship device. It has a massive, lovely screen, stable efficiency, and a nice point-and-shoot camera. It’s, by no means, a nice phone, however, its capabilities admirably. There are some issues, even outside of the implementation of GMS, however not so many as to make it unusable. The navigation model and fingerprint sensor, though, are probably the worst issues about it.
The lack of US LTE bands is to be understood, as we here aren’t Meizu’s goal market. However, 3G on a T-Mobile MVNO and call quality worked just nice. The MSRP of $435 USD (for the 64GB) is the place things get sticky. When put up against different opponents who’ve each U.S. and international presences, the Pro 6 Plus begins to falter. You may get an equal or better camera/software experience, better fingerprint sensor, and GMS certification for about the identical price from OnePlus or ZTE.
Fellow U.S. citizens, this phone is clearly not for you. These of you who live outside of the USA, for whom Meizu may be a bigger player, I recommend that you think about other options for a phone. The Pro 6 Plus isn’t bad by any stretch. However, it simply isn’t as good as its price point competitors.
Review Score
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