Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 review – The battery hero you should know.
The country where Xiaomi has his dominance to budget market with multiple devices and last year Asus made its comeback with the Asus Zenfone max Pro M1. The recovery did hit the Xiaomi’s share with a class dominance of its own. The M2 successor of the last device and if you think it won’t stand out when you are wrong about it. The motive of the Asus was to make a phone with brilliant battery life and amazing performance for the midrange.
Table of contents
Specification of Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 14nm Octacore CPU 1.96 GHz
- Adreno 512 GPU
- 6.26 inch 1080×2280 FHD+ LCD display. Corning Gorilla Glass 6 Protection
- 4GB RAM 64GB Internal Storage
- Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box ( Pie update is promised)
- 5000 mAh Battery Fast charging with 10W charger
- Model Number: ZB631KL
- Weight: 175 g
- 157.9 x 75.5 x 8.5 mm
- Rear Camera: 12 MP f/1.8, 1/2.9″, 1.25μm, PDAF + 5MP F/2.2 Depth sensor
- Front Camera: 13MP F/2.0
- Rear Fingerprint scanner, Face unlock
In-box content
- The device itself
- Transparent TPU Case
- Sim-ejector tool
- Paper work
- 5V – 2A charger
- Micro USB to USB-A Cable
Build of Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2
Let’s start with the build at this time. Asus decided to push forward a plastic build with the reflective back makes it much better. The looks for the phone is enhanced than to the previous generation of the device. It’s a more attractive looking device. The smaller notch design does give a device a better real estate at the same time the m2 pro is lightweight. You won’t notice a bulge for a 5000 mAh device inside the pocket. When competitors are going to much premium material for the device construction, Asus may fall a little behind. I will say still its an attractive looking device for the price point and features the device offers.
The headphone jack is at the bottom with speakers, mic grill and Micro USB charging port. The side has the volume rocker and power button. The rear has the dual camera setup, and Asus branding on the shiny blue back makes it unique. The back of the device is a fingerprint magnet, and I spend most of the time of the device inside the TPU case provided in the box.
I will rate the build quality of the device 3 out of 5. Considering the attractiveness of the device and competition of the market. Definitely the device has its own advantage and Asus has it own.
Software and Performance
One things which differentiated the M series line of the Asus is the stock like android experience. No doubt it does delivers to it over to the flagship its unique approach definitely makes the device have a best android experience. Note the experience needed little more refinement and constant software updates like the Android One, Pixel or the Android Go devices. The Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 lacks that as those updates are still solely controlled by asus and only experience is delivered to the end user.
Even though it doesn’t have a complete advantage it is one of the best software experience at the budget phone you could get at today’s time. More important the battery optimization and RAM management of the operating system is simply fantastic for the optimal performance. The storage read speed was at 280 MB/s and Write speed at 186 MB/s.
If you talk about the benchmarks the device scores 125887 in the Antutu benchmarks. In the GeekBench Single core score it scores 1424 and In Multi-core it scores 4729.
Battery life
There are lot of phone which really wants to deliver just a day span of battery life. Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 is the name which not just surpass the a day span of life but it delivered 2 days battery life for me. Yes you read it right a whole 2 days with 10 Hours of on-screen time I was just blown out how brilliant it performed in the battery life department. The number 1 choice of smartphone if battery life is priority for you. You might watch 3 bollywood 3 hours movie and still 1 hour juice is left for tasks.
The phone doesn’t has a fast charge but ti does support Quick charge. You might have a wait a little longer to charge 5000 mAh battery beast but 2 days juice for normal use is just brilliant.
Camera
I did shoot couple of shots with the stock camera app but majority of the time I’ve spent time is with the Gcam mod for the device.
How to install Gcam in Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2
- Download Minimal ADB from here.
- Extract it to the folder you wish.
- Now in your phone go to settings, system, about phone and tap on build number 7 times until it says you are a developer.
- Now In settings go the Developer options and enable USB Debugging.
- Power Off the device and press and hold Volume up + Power key to go into fastboot.
- Connect the phone to PC or laptop.
- Go to the adb and fastboot folder which you extracted in step 2.
- Press and hold shift key in the keyboard and right click and select Open PowerShell window here or Open command window here.
- In the command, windows type fastboot devices
- Once you see the device is detected type the second command. fastboot oem enable_camera_hal3 true
- The above commands enable the camera 2 API for you hit the next command fastboot reboot.
- Here are Pixel 3 camera Gcam APK (only rear camera works with night sight front not working) and pixel 2 apk (both camera working).
Camera sample
Here are few camera samples from the device.
I will definitely say its a totally good camera shooter.
Verdict
For Rs. 13,999 you get a killer battery and performance ratio with Asus. More to add value you are bundle with the Stock like android experience. I think the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 totally balanced in all the key pillar of the phone aspect and we give it a complete thumbs up to buy.