Meizu 20 Pro review: Two years of hard work, a full-on "alien" flagship

For the mobile phone market and consumers, the Meizu brand has always been an "outlier" in the industry.

In the past era when there were many schools of thought and the industry was running blindly, Meizu stood out with its meticulous polishing of feel, appearance, and system; now the industry generally adopts the strategy of launching a large number of products, and many manufacturers schedule press conferences in a year, but Meizu has slowed down instead, and the 20 series is late.

Facts have proved that Meizu has indeed kept fans waiting for a long time. The 20 series was sold out on the first day of its launch, and even now people have to pay a premium to buy it in the "seafood market". This is a rare sight in today's highly homogenized mobile phone market. This shows the popularity of the Meizu 20 series of mobile phones.

It is worth mentioning that the three smartphones in the Meizu 20 series have almost the same SoC configuration, providing a very high experience threshold for the entire series in terms of performance. On this basis, the Meizu 20 Pro provides more comprehensive hardware improvements in screen quality, camera sensor array, charging and battery life, and the Meizu 20 INFINITY Unbounded Edition represents Meizu's ultimate pursuit of design and appearance.

For those who want to buy the Meizu 20 series but don’t know which one to choose, my suggestion is - if you are not sure that you want to buy the Meizu 20/INFINITY version, then buying the Meizu 20 Pro is a "basically safe" choice. Later, you will not regret not paying for better configuration, nor will you pay for an appearance design that you may not need.

I got the Meizu 20 Pro phone early and have used it as my main phone for a week. So, how does this new flagship of Meizu, which took two years to develop, perform? Let's take a look!

High-quality "outliers" in the era of homogeneity

First, let’s take a look at the packaging. The one in hand is a Dawn Gray color. The gray indirect packaging is full of technology. There are only the words "MEIZU 20 PRO" on the front, and the small red dot in the Meizu new logo representing "new starting point", which is quite a finishing touch.

After opening the package, what comes into view is the back of the Meizu 20 Pro, which is covered with a protective film and there is also a protective sticker on the lens.

After opening all of them, you can see the real Meizu 20 Pro. The triple camera and dTOF laser focus sensor adopt a borderless design and are directly embedded in the flat back panel. The "MEIZU" Logo is set on one side of the lens. The entire back panel is left blank, and the design of metal frame wrapped in frosted glass makes it highly recognizable.

At the bottom of the phone, there is a "love letter" written by Meizu to Meizu fans, which once again emphasizes the brand slogan "No Meizu fans, no Meizu". Below that, there is a charger, a data cable, and an official water case. The case feels very delicate, and it doesn't feel sticky even if your hands sweat a little. Of course, the naked party can ignore it. The front and back of Meizu 20 Pro use "Titan Glass" with a hardness that exceeds Apple's super ceramic crystal, which greatly reduces the chance of the screen breaking due to hand slippage.

In terms of appearance, the Meizu 20 Pro uses a right-angle frame made of high-gloss material, taking into account the weight and appearance texture of the phone.

The power button and volume button are placed together on the right side of the body, and the position is closer to the middle, which is convenient for one-handed operation. The buttons are finely polished, with a crisp feel, and the holes and buttons are tightly matched, so there will be no loose buttons due to lax quality control or excessive tolerance.

From the left to the right, there are the SIM card slot, microphone, Type-C charging port, and speaker, separated by an antenna strip. Meizu itself is an obsessive-compulsive disorder patient among mobile phone manufacturers, and all the opening centers are on the same horizontal line, which is comfortable.

The top of the Meizu 20 Pro is a noise reduction microphone and an infrared output port. The mobile phone remote control is a function that most people don’t pay much attention to, but once you use it, you can’t do without it. It not only provides a lot of convenience in daily life, but also makes traditional home appliances play a little smart.

Meizu is also different in that it has always taken "user experience" as the core criterion for testing its products over the past 20 years. Meizu's story of polishing the appearance and feel of its phones has always been a favorite among Meizu fans.

Meizu 20 Pro is no exception. This phone uses a right-angle frame, but the rounded chamfers and delicate transitions greatly enhance the grip of the phone. It does not feel uncomfortable or cut in daily use, and the curved R corners of the body do not look abrupt when held in the palm of your hand.

The transition between the stainless steel frame and the double-sided glass is very smooth, and there is no obvious sense of segmentation when running your finger across it. The inlay and fusion between different materials have reached an extremely high level in craftsmanship, which can be said to be a microcosm of the industry's technological progress in recent years.

It is also worth mentioning that Meizu still insists on a 50:50 body weight distribution, which results in an already excellent weight of 208g. In actual hand-held experience, it seems to be lighter, and there is no sense of insecurity of falling in the hand or being top-heavy.

Holding the Meizu 20 Pro in your hand gives you a natural, jade-like sense of unity. Meizu's ultimate pursuit of appearance and feel makes this phone provide a unique experience in the current Android camp.

In terms of screen, the biggest upgrade of Meizu 20 Pro compared to Meizu 20 is the 6.81-inch OLED screen with an ultra-high resolution of 3200x1440, coupled with a peak brightness of 1800 nits, DCI-P3 movie color gamut, 8000000:1 contrast, and HDR10/10+ certification. The screen of Meizu 20 Pro is undoubtedly in the first echelon of the industry, with delicate and bright colors and accurate color reproduction.

The advanced LTPO technology allows the Meizu 20 Pro's screen to adaptively adjust between 10-120Hz, providing the ultimate high-refresh experience while also taking into account low power consumption.

Meizu 20 Pro uses the new generation of ultrasonic under-screen fingerprint recognition Ulteasonic mTouch 2.0, supports BCR Class 3 security level, and the unlocking time is as low as 0.075 seconds. In daily use experience, it is obvious that the fingerprint unlocking speed is very fast, and it is more adaptable to working conditions and environments, is not picky about external light, and dirty fingers and sweat will basically not have much impact on the unlocking speed.

It is said that because the ultrasonic under-screen fingerprint unlocking speed is too fast, Meizu officials had to re-make the unlocking animation for the system to adapt it.

Let me digress here. During the few days of using the Meizu 20 Pro, an accident made me fully feel the strength of the "Titan Glass" - I slipped and dropped the phone from a height of about 1 meter, and the screen hit a sharp object, but it only left a mark on the randomly given film, and the screen itself was intact - I feel that most people will not be able to use the official screen breakage insurance.

Humanistic imaging system, recording beautiful life

Taking photos seems to have never been Meizu's strong point, and it was even ridiculed as a "barcode scanner" in the past. However, it can be seen that the Meizu 20 Pro has made great progress in taking photos.

First of all, in terms of hardware, the Meizu 20 Pro uses a sensor array of 32 million front cameras + 50 million rear portrait cameras + 50 million wide-angle cameras + 50 million ultra-wide-angle cameras. It can be seen that there are no "filler" lenses, and each focal length has a real meaning to cope with different light, environment and shooting framing requirements.

Let’s take a look at the sample photos directly.

A still life shot in an indoor natural environment, taken with the main camera. The diagonal speed is fast, the subject is clear, the imaging color tends to be realistic, and what you see is what you get. The details of the doll and the veins of the leaves are richly preserved, and the background is blurred to a certain extent.

This is a main camera photo taken in a cloudy environment. The light environment is not bright. Meizu 20 Pro really restored the scene at that time. The white balance and color performance are very accurate.

Zooming in to see the details, the complex tree branch structure is preserved with clear edges. Although it has been greatly magnified, the mottled marks on the building are clearly visible.

Cars under the ultra-wide-angle lens. The ultra-wide angle and shortened distance between the photographer and the subject allow the lens to accommodate more scenery. After adjustment, the three rear lenses of Meizu 20 Pro have achieved high consistency in color and white balance, and there will be no abrupt feeling when switching lenses. It can be seen that the ultra-wide angle has excellent control over the distortion of the lens edge.

The magnolia flower captured by the macro lens has clear details of its petals and stamens.

In the professional mode, the sample photos have a certain improvement in resolution and richer details.

For night scenes, Meizu 20 Pro uses the Dark Vision 2.0 algorithm. Through the lossless algorithm in the RAW domain and the support of AI computing power, the overall picture is brighter, and the color reproduction and exposure control are more accurate.

Let's look at the sample photos of buildings and plants outdoors at night. You can see that the buildings and plants are well represented, and the large light ratio between the lights and the tree shadows is restored. In addition, rich details can be seen in the brighter lobby, and the highlights are well suppressed, which shows that the camera has a very high tolerance.

In more extreme scenes, the branches and buildings of trees under dim light are well rendered, but there are obvious traces of smearing in the sky.

In the backlit scenery, you can see that the smearing of the sky is much better than in the previous one, and the backlit job also performs well. While trying to present clear scenery as a whole, the ISO is not deliberately increased to make the night look like the day, thus restoring the real lighting conditions of the scene.

Experience the best, you can always trust Meizu

In terms of configuration, it can be said that the Meizu 20 series is fully "full". The entire series is equipped with the second-generation Snapdragon 8 processor, using TSMC's 4nm process, and a top-level flash memory combination of LPDDR5X+UFS4.0 (Meizu 20 is UFS3.1). Whether it is large-scale games, video creation, or multi-window tasks, you can have a smooth system experience.

In actual tests, at room temperature, the Meizu 20 Pro AnTuTu score was 1.278 million points, with the CPU surpassing 91% of users and the GPU surpassing 99% of users.

In terms of games, the Meizu 20 Pro can play "Honor of Kings" with high resolution, extremely high image quality and 120Hz ultra-high frame rate. The overall gameplay can basically guarantee full frame rate. After playing for one hour, the top of the body becomes slightly hot and the battery loses 24%.

In terms of battery, although the Meizu 20 Pro is thin and light, it is equipped with a large 5000mAh battery, which supports 80W wired fast charging and 50W wireless fast charging. Under 80W wired charging, it can be charged from 0% to 40% in 10 minutes, and fully charged in just 37 minutes. It is very close to the official claim of 35 minutes.

It is also worth mentioning that Meizu 20 Pro also supports fast charging protocols such as PD3.0, PPS, QC4+. Even without a dedicated charger, users can enjoy the fast charging experience of various protocols.

Flyme is enough reason to buy Meizu

If you ask Meizu fans why they choose Meizu, I believe most people will give the answer "Flyme". In the highly homogenized mobile phone industry, Meizu has always been ahead of the times in terms of system optimization and software and hardware tuning. The mEngine touch engine, mBack touch mode, small window function, etc. are all classic designs that are "hard to go back to once you use them".

This time, the Flyme 10 experience has made a qualitative leap in animation interaction performance, system fluency, and humanized functions, which has taken the Meizu 20 Pro experience to a higher level.

According to official data, Flyme 10 can identify key subsystems that affect performance, ensuring that the phone can be used smoothly for 48 months without any lags; security protections such as the Guardian Scepter, All-Seeing Eagle Eye, and Privacy Cloak provide all-round protection for user data privacy; OneMind 10.0 smart hub uses a supercomputing AI engine to create a more powerful artificial intelligence experience, allowing Aicy assistant to scan pages, documents, pictures, and other content to comprehensively improve efficiency.

In addition, Meizu 20 Pro can also bring users an integrated system data experience. With just one Flyme ID, the mobile phone, home and car ecosystems can be connected, allowing the mobile phone to control the smart home ecosystem. At the same time, it can also become a smart hub in the smart travel ecosystem, allowing multi-format desktops, RuRan engine, small window mode, Aicy voice assistant and other functions to be installed in the car with one click, allowing the mature smartphone ecosystem to empower the car system and bring the most powerful car-car interconnection experience on the market.

Summarize

20 years ago, the newly born Meizu opened the door to the MP3 market with the two keys of "quality" and "experience", and fought a bloody path among a number of fast-growing and fast-dying competitors; 14 years ago, Meizu made the most user-friendly large-screen full-touch screen smartphone M8 in China with the three major weapons of hardware, system and UI, and "snatched food from the tiger's mouth" from manufacturers such as Nokia, Motorola and Samsung; 9 years ago, relying on the three scalpels of chips, interaction and cost-effectiveness, Meizu MX4 reorganized the context of the smartphone industry.

In 2023, after two years of silence, Meizu has launched the new 20 series of mobile phones through its consistent adherence to "user experience". While promoting its software interaction, it has also given a new interpretation to the "car-home smart ecosystem".

Among them, Meizu 20 Pro has achieved an all-round balance in quality, design, performance, configuration, etc., and is extremely competitive in the mobile phone market in 2023. Needless to say, for Meizu fans, and ordinary consumers who know too much about Meizu fans, Meizu 20 Pro is also a very excellent mobile phone product, suitable as a "pit" product for the Meizu brand.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.