Asus Zenfone 3 Max Review: A decent performer with big battery

With the ZenFone 3 Max (ZC553KL), Asus expands its ZenFone lineup by another model focused on long battery life and enduring system readiness. When Asus entered the smartphone market, it did a great job in delivering budget smartphones. Especially, the Zenfone 5 was one of the best smartphones in 2014. Since then, the whole range of Asus smartphones now feels overcrowded and confusing. It seems Asus loves confusing people by bringing in a myriad of models. We expected our review model to be Asus Zenfone 3 Max (ZC520TL) but when we opened the 'magic box' it was Asus Zenfone 3 Max (ZC553KL). Design: The smartphone weighs 175 grams and flaunts a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS 2.5D contoured glass screen up front with good viewing angles. The device certainly looks elegant and more than that it feels robustly built. It’s a well crafted metal clad Smartphone with unibody design which feels solid in hand. Upfront there’s a notification LED and below the screen there are three capacitive keys for home, menu and back -which aren’t backit. At the top edge, we find the 3.5 mm headphone jack and secondary noice-cancellation microphone. At the bottom, there is a Micro-USB charging port placed next to the single bottom-firing speaker and the primary microphone. It has the volume rocker and power button on the same side making it easy for one-handed use. On left side, it features a hybrid SIM-tray. The Zenfone measures 8.3mm in thickness and has a pixel density of 401ppi. At the back, which is made up of metal, we have 16MP camera, a dual tone LED flash, a laser assist for autofocus. The fingerprint sensor, placed at the back, is very responsive and quickly unlocks the phone. The device allows you to program the fingerprint sensor- touch and hold it to answer a call, double-tap on the fingerprint sensor to launch the camera or tap it once to capture a photo when the camera mode is on. The signature Asus logo is placed beneath the camera compartment. Performance: In terms of performance, we did not feel any slack in any aspect. This variant of Zenfone 3 max is powered by a mid-range Snapdragon 430 chipset with eight cores clocked at 1.4GHz. The device houses 3GB of RAM and Adreno 505 graphics processor and boots on Android v6.0 (Marshmallow) operating system. It has plenty of storage on board with 32GB which can be expanded by up to 128GB using a microSD card. The handset is 4G LTE VoLTE compatible. You can use it on Reliance Jio network without needing any workaround. The second SIM slot is a hybrid type, which means that you can only use 1 SIM if you decide to use a microSD card. The phone runs pretty smoothly for general tasks and even multitasking. During normal usage, you are unlikely to notice any stutter or sluggishness. It doesn’t have any overheating issues while playing games or using camera. Though, Adroid 6.0 Marshmallow deliver a level of smoothness but software certainly feels a little bloated. The combination of its processor and RAM handles day to day tasks efficiently and you won't experience any lag while playing games. Camera: The 5.5-inch Zenfone 3 Max is equipped with a 16-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and 5p Largan lens, phase detection and laser autofocus, electronic image stabilizer (EIS), and dual-tone LED flash. For selfies, there’s an 8-megapixel sensor with f/2.2 and 1080p video recording capabilities. In terms of features offered, it certainly does the job well. The overall quality and sharpness of photos we have taken from this device is quite good. However, in low lights camera performs average. In artificial lights, images appear sharp at first but after zooming in there is some grain/noise visible in pictures. In natural light, it is a little tricky with the exposure, as you need to focus on the right area, or the light distribution goes down a little. The HDR mode is good, with quite some natural feel added. You can get the camera to click some decent pictures provided you switch the manual mode. The Super Resolution mode increases the quality by the looks. The overall Colour reproduction is fairly accurate and Focusing is quick courtesy the laser autofocus and PDAF.  The front 8MP shooter also captures detailed selfies under good lighting conditions. Images look good with the vibrant display, and the device handles high-bit rate videos just fine. Battery: The phone comes with 4100 mAh Li-Ion battery, its main jewel, and lasts almost two days with moderate use on single charge. The phone gives you what it promises 'maximum' battery power. With heavy usage it lasts upto day and half. It can also be used as a kind of power bank for supplying other devices with power via the micro-USB port. Verdict: The Zenfone 3 Max has a few aspects such as build quality, screen, and battery performance going for it. However, at Rs.17,999, it feels a bit overpriced. It's a battery centric smartphone with a robust buil quality. If you need a smartphone that packs a great battery backup and good performance, you may consider the Asus ZenFone 3 Max.