Meizu M1 Note First Impression: Decent Phablet with Smart Specifications at ₹11,999 [IMAGES]

Meizu is known as a key player and biggest rival of Xiaomi in its home market, China. Meizu made its debut in India with its budget phablet device that is expected to take on Xiaomi Mi 4i.

Priced at ₹11,999, M1 Note is ₹1,000 cheaper than Xiaomi's latest Mi 4i. Meizu has also played a trick with the availability of M1 Note. Unlike Xiaomi's pre-booked flash sale strategy, Meizu made M1 Note available in the country via open sale on Amazon. Naturally, several potential buyers would opt for M1 Note just to avoid the annoying flash sales.

One customer, who failed to buy Xiaomi Mi 4i in previous flash sales, recently bought M1 Note. Here's our first impression of the device:

Design & Build Quality

M1 Note features a glossy white back cover with a curved bezel. The polycarbonate material used for making M1 Note is very similar to what Xiaomi used for its Redmi Note devices. The back panel behaves as a fingerprint and smudge magnet.

For the curved bezel, the device is quite ergonomic and can easily slip into pocket. Meizu used decent quality materials to make it feel rugged. We won't compare M1 Note with Mi 4i in this section since both the devices feature different footprint, but have to admit that Xiaomi has used better material in Mi 4i to make it look attractive from the back.

Featuring a unibody design, M1 Note houses the rear camera lens at the top middle and the dual-tone LED flash sits just below it. The dual Micro SIM slot sits on the upper left side, while the volume rocker and power/sleep buttons are located on the top left side. Meizu has placed the speaker grille on the bottom edge.

Measuring 150.7x75.2x8.9mm, M1 Note is 1.1mm thicker and weighs 15g more than the Mi 4i. But, this is because M1 Note features a bigger display than Mi 4i.

Display

Unlike its competitors ASUS ZenFone 2 ZE550ML, Huwaei Honor 4X, and Moto G (2^nd Gen), M1 Note packs a 5.5-inch display with 1080x1920 pixels resolution at 403PPI display. Sadly, all the competitors except Xiaomi Mi 4i offer a 720P display. In comparison, Xiaomi Mi 4i boasts a 5-inch display with 1080x1920 pixels resolution.

For protecting the display, Meizu packs Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and GFF Full lamination.

Meizu M1 Note is impressive as the screen is vibrant with crisp texts and icons. We were fairly impressed with the colour balance and contrast level of the display.

Specifications

Meizu packed powerhouse specification for its price. A MediaTek MT6752 SOC, which equips a 1.5GHz octa-core processor and a Mali T760MP2 GPU, 2GB RAM and 16GB inbuilt memory are impressive, when we factor in the price.

Out of the 16GB memory, the OS and pre-installed apps consume 4GB that means 12GB is left for user's consumption.

The SoC (System on Chipset) featured in Meizu M1 Note can also be found in Lenovo's A7000. Earlier in our review, Lenovo A7000 scored 42710 in AnTuTu, 737 single-core and 3734 multi-core in GeekBench. Since M1 Note packs similar RAM and SoC model of A7000, it is expected the device will achieve almost similar score.

Compared to current standards, anything above the score of 35,000 is outstanding for a budget phone.

OS & Interface

Meizu M1 Note runs on Android Kitkat 4.4 overlaid with homemade Flyme OS 4.2.0.5. The interface features quite similar icon packs like Cyanogen and offers several gestures and heavily customised setting screen.

The interface sacrifices the app drawer screen and features everything on the home. The setting screen arranges the entire menu in a way to make the interface more user friendly. The drop down notification menu features all the necessary toggles to change settings in a single tap.

Though M1 Note lacks the menu and back capacitive button below the screen, the menu button offers some gestures for waking up the display or send it back to the sleep mode. Meizu also allows you to double tap so as to wake the device or put it to sleep gesture.

We wish Meizu will soon release the Android Lollipop OTA update for making M1 Note unbeatable in this segment.

Camera & Battery

M1 Note packs a 13MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture with 300 degree panoramic capable lens. In the front, Meizu packs a f/2.0 5MP camera with face AE light boost technology and FotoNation smart selfie enhancement.

Both the cameras are fast while focusing and we didn't find any visible delay between snapping and saving the image. The stock camera interface features a minimalist design and offers several gestures for customisation.

Our Impression

At ₹11,999, Meizu M1 Note positions itself in the league of Xiaomi Mi 4i and ASUS ZenFone 2 ZE550ML. Since both the mentioned devices are priced ₹1,000 higher, M1 Note will clearly get some advantage in the price conscious market.

For its price, Meizu M1 Note offers decent value for money for its display, camera and the great hardware configuration.