Year 2017 is a comeback year for this blog on reviewing Asus Zenfone devices so I went to their one of their selections with huge battery capacity inside. Here is my Asus Zenfone Max 5.2 review
Fingerprint reader is one of the best on this price bracket on this phone as you will only gonna need the power button for resetting the device. The double tap to sleep is also handy and Asus was one of the first who perfected this one when I put this one inside my pocket which other brands fail.
Compared to the last Zenfone that I reviewed which is the Asus Zenfone 2 Laser , the Taiwan-based brand did some tweaks on their ZenUI which is a bit lighter based on my random navigation and really putting in some heavy tasks on it. The same bloatwares are visible on this one as well as the animations. Overall, it was an improvement for me compared to the previous series.
Compared to the first Zenfone Max, the form factor was way better on this one even that it does not have a curved back. The gold variant that I got is not bad at all as well as the display for it's given price tag
Connectivity had almost no problems on me in terms of calls, texts, Bluetooth, OTG, WiFi, GPS and mobile data. I am happy to tell you as you may not saw it on others that this is the first Zenfone that I saw with 4G only support (no more 2G/3G/4G mode on this one if you need solid LTE) but there are a very few times that even I already set this one up, sometimes it will still throttle me back in 3G mode.
Audio is average on this one via the 3.5 mm. audio jack and nothing major issues on this phone.
Do not forget the "T" on this one as it has the Mediatek MT6737T quad-core processor which gives some edge on Antutu compared to the typical MT6735 quad-core processor which gives around 31 to 32,000 although in real life performance, it almost had the same good performance for gaming like Modern Combat 5 and Asphalt 8 with very mimimal lags. The 3 GB RAM and 32 GB ROM were also factors on this phone. The phone has 6 out of 9 working sensors which means no gyro inside. The internal storage was made from Samsung
Fingerprint reader is one of the best on this price bracket on this phone as you will only gonna need the power button for resetting the device. The double tap to sleep is also handy and Asus was one of the first who perfected this one when I put this one inside my pocket which other brands fail.
If there is one main highlight of this phone is the battery. In my video battery rundown test, the phone survived at 15 hours and 40 minutes. In real life usage as I am already considering myself as a heavy user, the 30 to 36 hours of battery life is already impressive with 6 to 7 hours of battery life. If there is one con for me is they did not provide quick charging tech as I already suspected on this months before I waited for this review unit and my guess was right. Charging time took me at around 3.5 hours from 0 to 100 percent
On the camera side, I would say that this is only on the average on outside and indoor lighted environment. The camera modes are the usual that we saw from previous Zenfones like Low Light Mode, HDR, Panorama and so on. Of course, Auto will still be the most common mode that you will gonna use. Low light has some noise so I would not recommend it.
Asus Zenfone 3 Max 5.2 rear camera samples
Asus Zenfone 3 Max 5.2 front camera samples
Pros: Good form factor, better choice of processor (if I gonna compare it with the first Zenfone Max with SD 615 octa-core SoC which heats like hell), display, fingerprint reader, awesome battery life. LTE only option
Cons: No quick charging support, camera is not that good on low light.
If you only gonna compare it only on international brands and looking for a big battery at this price point, the only competitor on this one was the smartphone from another A brand but with less than a thousand peso price difference but no fingerprint reader and 50% less on RAM and ROM plus no fingerprint reader. If you can tolerate the bit longer charging time, fingerprint reader is a must, camera is not that much of a priority and huge battery tank are on your targets, you can give the Asus Zenfone 3 Max 5.2 a chance. Rating for me is at 3.75 out of 5.