Table of Contents
amazon Asus ZenFone 4 Max reviews
Design and Build Quality
Design Aesthetics:
The Asus ZenFone 4 Max does not stray too far from the standard smartphone design blueprint prevalent in its time. It features a clean and understated design that focuses on practicality rather than flair.
- Front Design: The front of the ZenFone 4 Max is dominated by a 5.5-inch display, with moderately thick bezels at the top and bottom. The top bezel houses the earpiece, front camera, and proximity sensor, while the bottom bezel accommodates a physical home button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor, flanked by capacitive buttons for navigation.
- Back Design: The back of the phone sports a matte finish, which provides a good grip and is less prone to fingerprints. The dual-camera setup is positioned horizontally in the top left corner, with a single LED flash adjacent to it. The Asus logo is subtly engraved in the center of the back panel, adding to the overall minimalist aesthetic.
- Frame: The frame of the ZenFone 4 Max is made of plastic, which helps keep the phone lightweight but does not feel as premium as metal or glass alternatives. However, the plastic construction does make the phone more durable against drops and scratches.
Build Quality:
Despite its budget-friendly positioning, the Asus ZenFone 4 Max offers a solid build quality. The device feels robust in hand, with no creaks or flexes when pressure is applied. The choice of materials, while not premium, does not detract from the overall durability of the phone. The buttons on the side are tactile and provide satisfying feedback when pressed, which contributes to the overall user experience.
Ergonomics:
With dimensions of 154 x 76.9 x 8.9 mm and a weight of 181 grams, the ZenFone 4 Max is slightly bulkier compared to some of its contemporaries. However, this is a trade-off for the large battery that the phone packs. The device is still comfortable to hold, thanks to the rounded edges and matte finish, which provide a secure grip. One-handed use is feasible for most tasks, although reaching the top of the display can be challenging for users with smaller hands.
Display
Display Specifications:
The Asus ZenFone 4 Max features a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels, resulting in a pixel density of approximately 267 pixels per inch (PPI). While this resolution might seem underwhelming compared to the Full HD displays found in many other smartphones of the same era, it is adequate for the target audience of the ZenFone 4 Max.
Color Reproduction and Brightness:
The IPS LCD panel ensures good color reproduction, with colors appearing vibrant and true-to-life. The display’s brightness levels are sufficient for indoor use, and it remains readable under direct sunlight, although it might struggle in very bright conditions. The screen’s contrast ratio is decent, with deep enough blacks for an LCD panel, though not comparable to the rich contrasts seen in AMOLED displays.
Viewing Angles and Sharpness:
As expected from an IPS panel, the ZenFone 4 Max offers wide viewing angles, with minimal color shifting or distortion when viewed from different angles. The 720p resolution, while not the sharpest, still provides a decent viewing experience for daily tasks such as browsing, messaging, and watching videos. However, users who are accustomed to Full HD or higher resolutions may notice a lack of sharpness, particularly when viewing text or detailed images.
Touch Responsiveness:
The touch sensitivity of the display is responsive and accurate, with no noticeable lag or delays in registering inputs. Multi-touch gestures, such as pinch-to-zoom, work smoothly, contributing to a fluid user experience.
Asus ZenFone 4 Max does not show much improvement over its predecessor, but battery life is good, nice screen and cheap price.
We have the ZenFone 4 Max gold. Beside of that, customers also have the option of ZenFone 4 Max Black is more elegant because the front of it is also designed with the same colar as the back. Compered with ZenFone 3 Max, it does not have many improvement in design.
The new version still adapt the design of ZenFone 3 Max/ ZenFone 3 Max 5.5. The difference is that the ZenFone 4 Max is upgraded dual camera. The navigation keys are brought out of the screen interface to make more space for the screen. It has two SIM card slots and a microSD card slot. Lucky for users who want to use 2 SIM that Asus has no longer use the same SIM card slot with microSD. Unfortunately, Asus arranges these trays are still in the same compartment so it is not very convenient.
About display quality, ZenFone 4 Max is just like its predecessor, only supports resolution at HD. However, ZenFone 4 Max’s display quality still acceptable. We highly appreciates ZenFone 4 Max’s automatic brightness control. The panel 5,2 inché on ZenFone 4 Max is bright enough to ensure good display quality in high-light environments. But we does not appreciate the aesthetics of panel layout 5,2 inches for ZenFone 4 Max. The ZenFone 4 Max’s screen border is not very thin and also bordered with black lines create a sense of thick frame, lack of aethestics.
Asus has upgraded the ZenFone 4 Max with the SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 hardware, 3GB RAM. However, with this hardware, we can imagine the performance of the ZenFone 4 Max, especially when the product is still has BXL on its own, processor is configured in the popular segment and is still manufactured on a 28nm process
The benchmark score has unexpected results. Compared with its predecessor, the processor performance Asus equips on ZenFone 4 Max does not really outperform. But compared to some competitors in the same segment, the performance of ZenFone 4 Max is still acceptable.
Througt the experience of the ZenFone 4 Max, it can run every daily apps smoothly like surfing web browser, facebook, zalo and simple game apps that do not require a lot of resources to handle grapics. Conpared with the old version, ZenFone 4 Max has also been upgraded to the new UI. But the icon set application is almost not change much and Asus is still quite “greedy” when packaged with many apps that this manufacturer developed. With the ZenFone 4 Max, we can easily navigated between screen pages, moving between categories in the menu controls smoother. The speed of ZenFone 4 Max’s heavy application load is not fast but it does not slow enough to make the user experience feel shaky.
where can you get a Asus ZenFone 4 Max online
ASUS ZenFone 4 Max 5.5-inch HD 3GB RAM, 32GB storage LTE Unlocked Dual SIM Cell Phone, US: Buy it now
ASUS ZenFone 4 Max 5.2-inch HD 2GB RAM, 16GB storage LTE Unlocked Dual SIM Cell Phone, US Warranty, Black (ZC520KL-S425-2G16G-BK): Buy it now
ASUS ZenFone 4 Max 5.2-inch HD 2GB RAM, 16GB storage LTE Unlocked Dual SIM Cell Phone, US Warranty, Black (ZC520KL-S425-2G16G-BK) and Cricket Wireless BYOD Prepaid SIM Card: Buy it now
About camera, the ZenFone 3 Max’s camera quite good but the enhanced on camera of ZenFone 4 Max is somehow not as good as the previous one. From the interface, it shows minimalism when it only has basic setting like Auto, Pro, Beauty, Super Resolution, Panorama, Time Lapse or GIF Animation. With fully automatic settings, the quality of photos taken in bright light conditions can be set to an acceptable level. This make us feel bad for ZenFone 4 Max, especially whe the ZenFone 3 Max has ability to bring nice shot, good movie recording and support many recording modes for creativity.
Fortunately, the ZenFone 4 Max still carries a solod battery. Testing with the PCMark tools shows it can give battery life of 11 hours 38 minutes compared to the time 11 hours 23 minutes that ZenFone 3 Max had scored before. It can also used as a backup battery to power another smartphone in an emergency. But, what makes this smartphone lose points is that it needs more than 2 hours 30 minutes to fully charge as ZenFone 3 Max.
Performance
Hardware Specifications:
Under the hood, the Asus ZenFone 4 Max is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor. This is an octa-core chipset based on the ARM Cortex-A53 architecture, clocked at up to 1.4 GHz. It is paired with the Adreno 505 GPU, which handles the graphical processing tasks. The phone comes with two RAM options: 2GB or 3GB, depending on the variant, and offers 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, expandable via a microSD card slot.
Processor Performance:
The Snapdragon 430 is an entry-level chipset that is designed for efficiency rather than raw power. In day-to-day usage, the ZenFone 4 Max performs adequately for basic tasks such as browsing, social media, and light multitasking. Apps open at a reasonable speed, and navigating through the UI is generally smooth, although occasional stutters may occur, particularly when running more demanding applications or multitasking heavily.
Gaming Performance:
The Adreno 505 GPU, while not designed for high-end gaming, is capable of handling casual games without much trouble. Games like “Subway Surfers” and “Candy Crush” run smoothly, but more graphically intensive games such as “Asphalt 8” or “PUBG Mobile” will require lowering the graphics settings to achieve playable frame rates. Even then, users may experience occasional frame drops or lag during gameplay.
Storage and Expandability:
The Asus ZenFone 4 Max comes with 32GB or 64GB of internal storage, which is adequate for storing apps, photos, and media. For users who require more storage, the device supports microSD cards up to 256GB, providing ample space for additional content. The inclusion of a dedicated microSD slot, as opposed to a hybrid SIM slot, is a welcome feature that allows users to expand storage without sacrificing dual SIM functionality.
Overall, ZenFone 4 Max is a product that gives us mixed feelings. No doubt, ZenFone 4 Max has long battery life, performance is good in the price range, but it takes long time to fully charge. It’s a bit change in looks, but not attractive enough because the design of the screen border. Compared with its predecessor, the ZenFone 4 Max is enhanced with a dual camera, but the photography experience seems to fall back. With a lot of disadvantages, the ZenFone 4 Max is not yet a complete upgrade that Asus’ fans expect. Hopefully, Asus ZenFone 4 Max will soon be upgrading to Android 8 Oreo in a short time.