Meizu M6 Review | Excellent $100 Phone! By Gio Gargiulo / The Nerd Herd

Hi everyone Gio here, and welcome to the full review of the Meizu M6. So I can tell you right now that most of my initial impressions have been confirmed, but there are a couple of things worth pointing out, so let's break it down. First off, I like the design and the build quality. It's a simple design, with rounded corners everywhere, but it's surprisingly solid, even if you don't factor the price in. It's not metal as I initially thought, but rather polycarbonate that looks like metal. Nevertheless it doesn't feel flimsy, and in this couple of months I wasn't able to cause any visible scratches on it.

Also the camera does not protrude from the back, which is so much better as a design choice in my opinion, as you can lay it flat on a table without worries. In terms of ports and buttons you get the usual power button and volume rockers, the SIM and SD card tray, a headphone jack and a micro USB port. There is only one button on the front of the phone, which doubles as a home and back button, and also houses the fingerprint scanner. The scanner is pretty accurate and fast, and even though it doesn't have a 100% success ratio, it gets surprisingly close. As you may have noticed there is not app switcher button, so to access your recent apps you'll have to swipe from the bottom.

Inside that polycarbonate body you'll find an MT6750 octa-core processor, and either 2 or 3GB of RAM depending on your model. The processor is reasonably fast for normal daily usage. You can do social media and browsing at a decent speed, and most games will work just fine on it. You'll notice some dropped frames from time to time, but at this price I don't think it's a deal breaker. The biggest limitation are rather the 2GB of RAM, especially considering that the OS already takes up a decent chunk.

You can only have a couple of apps open at any given time, and any more than that are inevitably going to be shut down by the system. The 3GB RAM variant is probably going to be a better option overall, and it only costs around $30 more. In terms of storage, the built-in 16GB is not much for apps, but fortunately the SD slot can mitigate the problem if you need to store media. As you may have already noticed, the software running on the M6 is not stock Android, but rather a custom version made by Meizu called Flyme OS. Right now I'm running version 6 on top of Android 7.0. One thing I do like about the OS is that you get plenty of options for customization in the settings, and it's surprisingly light on battery.

Standby time is really good, even though the Screen-On-Time is just average. On a normal day I can get around 4 hours, which is good but not exceptional. Besides, there is no quick nor wireless charging available, so you'll want to have an external battery with you if you're out for a full day. The display is a 5.2" 720p IPS panel, which is vivid and gets pretty bright, being decently visible even outdoors. Viewing angles are not the best but not bad either, even though it looks way worse on camera than it does in real life.

You can adjust the temperature to your liking for better accuracy, but I haven't found a setting that really makes them look natural. In terms of sharpness you are certainly not looking at a 4K panel, but honestly it was easier than expected to adjust to 720p. Overall, my only complaint with the display is color accuracy, but it's a good panel for the price you're paying. If you're upgrading from an older phone this is definitely going to be better, but even the downgrade from 1080p is not that bad, and consuming media is still enjoyable. Speaking of consuming media, speakers are just not very good.

They can get pretty loud, but distortion is definitely a problem the higher you go, and even at lower volumes the sound is thin and lacks bass. In terms of cameras, you'll find a 13MP rear facing sensor and an 8MP front facing one. Sharpness is acceptable, especially on the rear, even though white balance and color in general have their issues. Dynamic range is also not the best, but in many cases the HDR mode does help. From time to time the results can present artifacts or look overdone, so I'd recommend using it only when necessary.

Apart from the standard photo mode, the camera app offers a few extra modes like Pro Mode for manual settings, Panorama Mode and Timelapse. Video recording tops at just 1080p at 30fps, and you can go up to 120fps for 720p slow motion, but I wouldn't really use slow motion. Camera quality is overall okay, it can surely produce good shoots under the right conditions but color accuracy is quite lacking. So, in conclusion, is it worth it? For a phone that only costs around $100, the Meizu M6 is surprisingly solid. It's well built, compact and light, has a decent display and can handle most tasks with no problem.

Overall, if you're looking for a phone in this price range this is definitely an option I feel like recommending.

Source : Gio Gargiulo / The Nerd Herd