Meizu MX4 Pro Review

Introduction

What should the ideal smartphone look like?

Most of you will point out that a large and vivid display, powerful processor, a solid, refined design, and a good camera are a must. Good battery life is also essential, and so is a fast and good-looking user interface. The more demanding will point to fingerprint security as a requirement, and sound aficionados will hope for crystal clarity in music playback. Why are we listing all those wishes now and here? Simple: on paper, the Meizu MX4 Pro has got it all.

Yet another high-profile handset from China, the MX4 Pro is a creation of the company Meizu, which has its root in the music industry. It’s thus no surprise that - apart from having all the basics covered - one of the key selling points of MX4 Pro is its ‘hi-fi’ audio. It also packs a fingerprint reader, but those are hardly its only highlights: it delivers with a 5.5” Quad HD, nearly bezel-less display, a powerful, octa-core Exynos 5430 system chip, a 20-megapixel main camera and a spacious 3350mAh battery.

All of that at a price lower than that of a flagship from a first-tier company like Samsung and Apple. Is it all as good in reality as it looks on paper, though? Let’s find out!

In the box:

• 2A wall charger (faster when compared to the usual 1A charger)
• microUSB Cable
• User manual
• Headset only included in some markets (not in our box)

Design

The Meizu MX4 Pro design is a display of craftsmanship with a solid build quality, thin bezels and nice in-hand feel.

A sibling to the recently released Meizu MX4, the MX4 Pro looks nearly identical in terms of design with an austere, yet stylish design. It’s noticeably taller than the MX4, but just a hair wider and thicker, so overall the difference between the two is minimal. The frame of the phone is made out of metal, but the back cover - despite its similar paint job and finish as that of the aluminum frame - is plastic. Still, the MX4 Pro is reassuringly well put together.

It’s worth pointing out that Meizu has done an outstanding job cramming in a large 5.5-inch display in a very compact-for-the-size body. The bezel around the screen sides has almost disappeared - it measures just 2.8mm, a remarkable engineering achievement. Admittedly, it is a hair wider than the almost unnoticeable 2.6mm bezel in the original MX4, but nonetheless impressive.

Just like on the iPhone, there is only a single physical home key where the fingerprint scanner resides on the MX4 Pro - no back button or any other traditional capacitive buttons. In order to go back in menus, you have the choice of either virtual, on-screen buttons, or an upwards gesture starting from that same physical home key.

With all the marvels of a thin bezel, though, Meizu has inconveniently decided to place the lock key in a hard to reach position on the top of the phone. Luckily, this is not really an issue on the MX4 Pro - the handset can also be easily locked by holding the much easier-to-reach home key. For those times you’d use the physical keys - the lock key on top and the volume rocker on the left - you’d appreciate the craftsmanship on display as they are both metal-made and clicky.

Display

The 5.5” Quad HD display is sharp and features vivid, but overblown colors that are not perfectly accurate.

The Meizu MX4 Pro comes with a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a 1536х2560-pixel resolution (Quad HD-ish). The interesting thing in Meizu’s latest phones - including the MX4 Pro - is the unusual 15:9 aspect ratio. When you hold the phone in a vertical, portrait position, this results in a wider-looking display, better fit for reading as lines of text do not appear as short and your eyes don’t have to jump between lines so often. Turn it over into horizontal, landscape orientation, though, and rather than have full-screen video, you’ll start seeing two very slim black stripes to compensate for the shorter, 16:9 common video aspect ratio.

In terms of sharpness, we’re dealing with a pixel density of 546ppi here, more than enough for even the most eagle-eyed viewers who examine their displays with a Sherlock Holmesian fever. The panel is also protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

What about the colors, though? At first sight, it’s obvious that images appear vibrant, with rich, juicy tones, but are they really accurate? Our analysis shows that the whites on the MX4 Pro are a bit on the cold, blue side with color temperature of around 7500K (above the reference 6500K value). RGB balance is off with overblown blues and greens, and underrepresented reds. Gamma is perfectly close to the reference 2.2 value at 2.15, so overall output is fairly well controlled throughout. Turning over to color and saturations, we see that while the MX4 Pro - admirably - sticks to the sRGB color gamut triangle, colors are purposefully blown out of proportion and look unnaturally saturated. We’ve seen way worse, but it would have been nice if the color balance was a bit better.

Brightness can be cranked up really high and while we’ve seen phones filter out reflections a bit better, the MX4 Pro is definitely one that is fairly easy to use outdoors, even under direct sunlight. It’s worth noting that the brightness can also be reduced to very low levels, which is neat for night birds who value a very low minimum brightness, key to avoiding irritating your eyes. Finally, viewing angles are also nice and wide.

Interface and Functionality

The Flyme user interface features simplistic, modern looks and sleek animations, and it comes with the Google Play Store pre-loaded.

The Meizu MX4 Pro runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with the Flyme 4.1 custom user interface. The skin is a deep overhaul of the looks of stock Android: Meizu does away with the app drawer, and adopts an iPhone-like UI with all apps on the homescreen.

Icons are larger than usual which is a nice touch in terms of usability, and they also look modern in a simplistic way. Since we reviewed the original MX4, the Flyme UI has been updated from version 4.0 to 4.1, and along the way, it has gotten a slight visual rehash, with iOS-like zoom-in animations that work smoothly and add a lot of flair and continuity within the UI.

While many aspects of the Flyme skin translate very well to first-time users, it does take some learning to grasp all the intricacies here: multitasking, for instance, works with an unorthodox swipe up from the bottom of the screen; you can also unlock the device and go straight into apps via gestures (11 different gestures are supported on the MX4 Pro, while earlier versions of the UI only had 4); and the list of peculiarities goes on. We were also happy to find the Google Play Store pre-installed on the MX4 Pro. Even though you don’t have the usual suite of other Google apps on board, you can easily download them via the Play Store.

Still, a lot of the Chinese flavor of the device shows up in various places - starting with Meizu’s own app store and customization center that is filled with China-oriented content only, and finishing with the Flyme account registration required for some more advanced features. We should, however, say that registering a Flyme account is a fast and straightforward process, and you should not be afraid to try it, if only for the easy root. Meizu is one of the very few companies that offers a one-click rooting process - great news for Android tweakers.

Fingerprint scanner: mTouch with ARM TrustZone

One of the highlights of the MX4 Pro is its ‘mTouch’ fingerprint scanner built in the home key. It can unlock the phone and be used for purchases with a Flyme account (those are limited to Chinese content, though). Good news is that it is very quick and accurate.

It works in a way similar to the one on the iPhone - with no swiping required, you just tap on the home key. You can register up to 10 fingerprints, and while the registration process takes a minute or so, we find this slightly longer time for registration to pay off with accuracy.

Meizu claims that the MX4 Pro can recognize your fingerprint even when you have your hands wet, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that it lives up to that promise. We remember having some major difficulties unlocking Samsung phones like the S5 with wet fingers, but it seems that this is not an issue with this device.

Finally, for all those who are concerned over the security of their biometrical data (especially given the easy access to root access here), Meizu reassuringly says that the phone uses ARM’s TrustZone, a separate, encrypted hardware layer, that cannot be accessed by the rest of the system.

Processor and Memory

The octa-core Exynos 5430 handles the Quad HD load nicely, and the experience is smooth. In games, however, performance is one step below first-grade flagships.

The Meizu MX4 Pro is powered by a Samsung Exynos 5430 system chip, the same chip used in the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. This is one of the first 20nm solutions on a smartphone, and while the chip does not fully match the most powerful silicon like, say, the Exynos 5433 that Samsung uses in some of its Galaxy Note 4 models, it still does deliver quite the performance punch. The Exynos 5430 is a 32-bit chip that features an octa-core processor with four ARM Cortex-A15 and four ARM Cortex-A7 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration, 3GB of RAM, and ARM Mali-T628 GPU.

First, let’s get one thing clear: in daily performance, the MX4 Pro runs and multitasks very smoothly.

For all else, the actual performance depends on the mode you choose to run the phone in: power-saving, balance, or performance (you select this in the battery section of settings). The default running mode is ‘balance’ where the phone shuts down two of the eight cores, effectively turning into a hexa-core setup. We could not reach the maximum advertized 2GHz frequency in this mode, it seems that the cores cap at 1.8GHz, while the average running clock runs closer to 1.5GHz. If you want to unleash the full potential of the MX4 Pro, we recommend running it in ‘performance mode’ where all eight cores are unleashed, and the peak speeds do indeed go up to 2GHz. Finally, the ‘power-saving mode’ does not seem to rob anything off the smoothness of the MX4 Pro in daily tasks, but its slower performance can be felt in more intensive apps. In this mode, four of the eight cores are shut down, and clock speeds hover around the 1.2GHz mark (with occasional spikes to 1.5GHz). Finishing with the technicalities, it’s also worth mentioning that the particular version of the Cortex A15 performance-driven CPU core used here is an upgraded one - the newer r3p3 version and not the common r2p4 one. This translates into improved clock gating and battery consumption on the MX4 Pro.

Turning over to gaming and graphics performance, the ARM Mali-T628 GPU does a decent, yet not stellar job. The GPU performance is on par with the Adreno 330 (a typical Snapdragon 801 part), but falls nearly 50% behind the newer Adreno 420 (used in the Snapdragon 805). We should also note that the device does get very hot when you play games or run more intensive tasks. With this in mind, take a look at the benchmark results right below to see the hard numbers.

For internal storage, you can pick between a 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models of the MX4 Pro, and do keep in mind that the built-in memory cannot be expanded, as the handset does not support a microSD card slot. With support for eMMC 5.0 for faster operations, the MX4 Pro has above average internal memory speeds, but it is still slower than the best performers in this regard - the Moto X (2014) and the Note 4.

Internet and Connectivity

The MX4 Pro comes with a custom browser that boasts a nice, touch-friendly design and it performs well - scrolling and zooming around happens without a stutter.

In terms of connectivity, you have 4G LTE on board with support for both TDD-LTE (the international standard), as well as FDD-LTE for China. We still urge you to check your carriers’ supported bands to ensure that LTE will work for you.

It’s also worth mentioning that the MX4 Pro is a single SIM phone (while many other Chinese phones use dual SIM connectivity). Other connectivity options include dual-channel Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Bluetooth 4.0, GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, and BDS for China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System). NFC is also on board, a step up from the MX4, which did not have it.

Camera

The 20-megapixel camera on the MX4 Pro is capable of capture very good images when it is in focus. Unfortunately, there’s no continuous auto-focus or face detection, and focus cannot lock correctly even under good light.

The Meizu MX4 Pro ships with a 20-megapixel main camera featuring one of the largest sensors on Android (a 1/2.3” Sony IMX220 one, as big as on the Xperia Z3) with a 31mm 5-element lens covered with sapphire glass and a dual-LED flash. The native aspect ratio of the sensor is a rather traditional 4:3, while pixel pitch is on the small side at 1.17 micron size for each individual pixel.

The camera app itself is very tastefully and originally done, with an interface that is convenient to use and offering various shooting modes: auto, where you can control resolution and toggle HRD on or off, but with no other options; then a very useful manual mode, exposing low-level controls that photo enthusiasts will appreciate (you can control shutter speeds, ISO, exposure, and you even have manual focus). Next, there are a couple of other shooting modes that you’d find yourself using less often: panorama, document scans, micro, lightfield (offering after-shot refocus), and slow motion video.

Image quality is good, but there also are some major drawbacks. We’ll start off with the annoyances: time between shots is very slow and you can forget about burst photos (dial down the resolution to 12-megapixels and the camera is a bit faster, yet this is not really an acceptable compromise), but even more importantly, auto-focus is not very reliable - there is no continuous auto-focus in video nor face tracking (in both video and images), and tap to focus is a hit or miss even in well-lit conditions, which is not really acceptable.

When you get in focus, colors are mostly true-to-life (outdoors, we see a tendency for slightly colder tonalities, while indoors the phone nails white balance fairly correctly), and detail is good but not great. We have some very noticeable lens flare issues. Under low light and with no flash, though, we were pleasantly surprised by how sharp images look (when they are in focus), and how well colors are preserved. When you fire the dual-LED flash, however, colors go way off into the land of colder, unnaturally greenish tonalities.

Up front, there is a 5-megapixel selfie shooter that does a very good job. Naturally, you also have beautify effects that introduce an age-defying blurring of the skin.




Turning over to video, the MX4 Pro can record in up to 4K at 30fps. The bit-rate of 4K videos, however, is lower than what we’re used to seeing (30Mbps vs 50Mbps on, say, the Note 4), and while video does appear fairly good, it does come with its issues. First, we have a terribly obvious rolling shutter effect, more pronounced than we’ve seen on other 4K video from a smartphone, and sound recording comes of disappointingly low quality.

Multimedia

The highlight of the MX4 Pro is its excellent sound quality - grab a pair of quality headphones or hook it up to a good speaker, and you’d appreciate the loudness and richness of the sound.

With a spacious 5.5” Quad HD display, the media experience is a joy on the MX4 Pro. All the stock media apps - the gallery, music and video player - are minimalistic, with no fancy options, but they still get the job done well.

The music player in particular shows live lyrics and supports lossless file formats like FLAC and APE. The video player copes easily with Full HD and Quad HD video playback, but it does not support the popular no DivX/Xvid. You can fix this by a simple download of an app like MX Player on the Play Store, though.

Hi-Fi and “Retina Sound”: WATTS it all about?

Meizu started off making MP3 players, and it has finally put those expertees to good use in the MX4 Pro by getting rid of stock digital hardware and instead equipping it with state-of-the-art amp and audio processor. We’ll go over the technicalities below, but let us say that if you have good headphones or speakers, you’d be able to enjoy one of the best music quality on a smartphone with the MX4 Pro. With a very loud output, a rich bass that has a fullness not overwhelming the mids, and a crisp highs that reveal vocals nicely, we were able to enjoy various styles of music - from the silky, deep vocals of Iyeoka to the lows of hip-hop bass. We compared the sound from the MX4 Pro with a few flagship devices including the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Apple iPhone 6, and found the iPhone 6 to be the only one in the same ballpark. Apple’s handset has a quieter output, and a very slightly muddier bass, but both are great phones for music lovers.

The MX4 Pro in particular, owes its music prowess to a PA1612 amp and an ES9018 audio processor, with a passive filter to eliminate background noise. Meizu is also using the ES9018K2M DAC with signal to noise ratio of up to 114dB and a dynamic range of up to 123dB. The PA1612 amp’s common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) is very stable at 120dB under 80KHz, way above the 20KHz threshold audible to human ears.

Also, the phone comes with support for lossless FLAC/APE built-in, which is again a nice for audiophiles.

You can also enable or disable (disabled by default) Dirac HD in settings. Dirac HD is a software technology that analyzes and corrects sound colorations. It works via a digital controller that optimizes the performance of both the output of the loudspeaker and of headphones, all of that tailored for a particular device, in this case - the MX4 Pro.

Call Quality

Call quality on the MX4 Pro was an unexpected disappointment, especially given its audiophillic affiliations. Sound in the earpiece in particular is audibly digitized and while loud enough, it lacks sorely in clarity. While the handset ships with three mics (one on the top, bottom, and front), sound on the other end of the line has almost the same digitalization and lack in clarity.

Battery life

With a 3350 mAh non-removable battery, the MX4 Pro has a larger than average battery for its screen size, and that comes to its advantage. We ran our battery life test to see how the MX4 Pro battery life compares to that of popular devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Apple iPhone 6, and others, and found out that Meizu does very well. In fact, it ranks spectacularly in our battery rankings with a result of 9 hours and 30 minutes, nearly 10% more than the battery longevity of the Note 4. Keep in mind that we perform our battery tests uniformly for all devices: with the same load simulating typical smartphone use and all displays pre-set at 200 nits.

In real life use, the MX4 Pro should be able to last a full day easily, and under average use you might need to charge once every two days, which is great.

Keep in mind that we ran the battery life test in the default ‘balanced’ mode on the device. The possible culprit behind such a good battery result on a device with a Quad HD display is likely the very efficient NEGA LCD panel that is said to consume only 5% more than the smaller, 1080p 5.36” MX4 display.

Unfortunately, recharge times are not as stellar - it takes some 2 hours and a half to from a dead phone to a fully charged one, and this result is achieved using the 2A, 5V wall charger in the box. There are also no special power saving modes in the Flyme software.

Conclusion

The Meizu MX4 Pro builds up on the successful formula of the Meizu MX4: it keeps the signature simplistic, good-looking design and the futuristic minimal screen bezel. At the same time, Meizu is out competing with top flagships here: it includes a flagship-grade Quad HD display that looks fine, an adequate system chip, as well as a fast and reliable fingerprint scanner. In addition to all this, sound quality on the MX4 Pro is great and will please audiophiles. All of this works admirably well on the sleek and modern-looking Flyme Android skin.

The only area where Meizu could have done a better work is the camera: the 20-megapixel shooter is not bad by any means, but it is much slower than you’d expect and has some issues with focusing and overall photo presentation.

The MX4 Pro is the most expensive phone in Meizu’s lineup with a recommended price of $400 (2499 yuan) for the base model, which is around the typical cost of a China-made flagship device, and much more affordable than a similar smartphone from a well-established global company like Apple or Samsung. Resellers are likely to sell this for no less than $500 to the Western world, but even at that price, the MX4 Pro looks like a device well worth your consideration.