Meizu Note 9 review: A sub-flagship nightmare, the best PUBG smartphone you can buy

When Li Nan live-streamed a PUBG game with three girls on the eve of the press conference, he had actually announced the product direction of Meizu Note 9 - a thousand-yuan PUBG phone.

Because of the homogeneity of mobile phones, it is increasingly difficult for users to choose. Why do many mobile phone brands have to set up sub-brands and sub-brands to cover all kinds of user needs from business to games? Differentiating brand levels is one aspect, and allowing users to accurately find their own needs is one of its important functions.

Those who play games buy gaming phones, and those who need to carry a small bag when going out to talk about business buy business brands. This is the choice many people make based on their first impression of the brand. Since Meizu merged with Meizu, the brand spectrum of Meizu has become wider, but at the same time, the more detailed and targeted parts are missing.

Therefore, in my opinion, Li Nan taking his sister to play PUBG is an extremely pleasing and effective marketing method. Even whether the press conference will be held the next day has become ambiguous. Anyway, users have also got the core expression that Meizu Note 9 can play PUBG without lag.

Eating chicken is really not stuck

This is not a traditional review. We will put the appearance part at the end, and start with the performance part of Meizu Note 9. The reason is simple. As the first domestic mobile phone to use Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 chip, this is the most shining part of Meizu Note 9, and it is also the biggest contributor behind its so-called smooth playing of PUBG. This is not to belittle Meizu's optimization work, but to say that an excellent chip is the cornerstone of a successful mobile phone. As for whether to build a villa or a high-rise on this stone in the future, it is the optimization work adjusted according to market demand.

The Snapdragon 675 chip has been gaining popularity since its launch. In many evaluations, its scores are slightly higher than those of the Snapdragon 710. This makes it hard to understand Qualcomm's strategy, to let a chip with a 6-digit number suppress a chip with a 7-digit number. Isn't this a mess? It's like if the BMW M3 is more powerful than the M5, who will the M5 be sold to?

In fact, this is an illusion in running points, and Qualcomm is smart and will not do such a stupid thing. Although the CPU part is evenly matched, the 710 using the 10nm process is still a little ahead of the 675 using the 11nm process in GPU.

The real replacement of Snapdragon 670 is Snapdragon 675. There have been many articles analyzing the positioning and similarities and differences between these three chips, and many people said they couldn't understand it. For example, 675 actually uses the same Kryo 460 architecture as 855, and the frequency of the two A76 cores is as high as 2GHz, which is 20% higher than the overall performance of Snapdragon 670 using Kryo 360 architecture. You should know that the sub-flagship 710 only uses Kryo 360.

Leading in architecture and running points, but slightly behind in process, perhaps this is the strategy Qualcomm has to resort to, it can't let the 675 take all the benefits. So, why was the 675, a chip sandwiched between the 670 and the 710, created? I think one of the important reasons is the support for 48-megapixel photos. This involves the issue of photography. In the publicity of Meizu Note 9, in addition to gaming performance, the second most mentioned thing is the photography level. We will look at this later.

Back to the game part. True gold needs fire to be tempered. Before starting the chicken-eating test, I still couldn't avoid running AnTuTu. Indeed, Li Nan is honest. The promised 180,000 points is 180,000 points, which is basically the same as some phones using Snapdragon 710.

Frankly speaking, if you are surrounded by news about flagship phones every day and only care about running scores, then the Meizu Note 9 may not be suitable for you. But if you want a phone with a moderate price and good performance, the performance of the Meizu Note 9 is one of the best phones you can buy on the market.

Just like playing football manager, if you have a lot of money, you can buy the best players to win the championship. If you don't have money, those young talents are naturally the best choice because they are cheap and easy to use.

In the test of the game "Absolute Battlefield", it was found that the Meizu Note 9 is indeed such a mobile phone. It is full of charm and has achieved an excellent balance between running speed, picture smoothness and heat generation.

In Note9, Meizu has added the Hyper Gaming function, which you can understand as a technology for optimizing games. It is similar to the "powerful technology" of its competitors. It can intelligently allocate hardware resources according to the fluctuations in game load to prevent large frame rate jumps on the game screen.

After turning on the game mode, we tested the performance of Note 9 in PUBG. In the settings screen, we can see that the game has not yet been adapted for Note 9, HDR high definition cannot be turned on, and there are only three levels of frame rate to choose from. In order to restore the most realistic game effect, under these conditions, we adjusted the picture to the highest effect possible.

During the game, we tested the frame rate in some typical scenes. Whether it was racing in the wild or running away from the poison outside the circle, Note 9 maintained a stable frame rate without any lag. During the whole game, the tester kept holding the phone with both hands and did not feel that the body temperature was too high. The temperature control was also ideal.

In addition, thanks to the large 4000mAh battery, after half an hour of full-speed gaming, the Note 9's battery life only dropped by 6%. After 18W mCharge fast charging, the battery power jumped from 30 to 42 in ten minutes.

According to calculations, even if you are a heavy gamer who plays games for four hours a day, the Note 9 is more than enough to support a day.

48MP camera makes the world more real

Is it useful to upgrade the camera to 48 million pixels? A photo is more than 10 megabytes, and it has to be compressed to post on Weibo. Our answer is yes, of course it is useful. At least with more pixels, the world in the lens will become closer to reality.

The 48-megapixel main camera sensor of the Meizu Note 9's rear dual camera comes from Samsung's S5KGM1, with an aperture of F1.7. The other 5-megapixel black-and-white camera is a joint work of Samsung and Meizu, supporting portrait background blur, with an aperture of F1.9.

Samsung S5KGM1 supports pixel synthesis, which can synthesize every 4 0.8μm pixels into one 1.6μm super large pixel. The advantage of this is that the details of the picture can be preserved more completely.

In this photo, the morning light shines through the branches of the trees, but the picture still maintains a certain purity. The camera's control over light is remarkable.
A lone boat on the sparkling lake. Perhaps because of the weather, the whole picture is not bright enough, but the details in the dark part of the picture are sufficiently expressive. Even the details in the shadow of the lone boat can be seen clearly in front of 48 million pixels, which is more realistic.

It is worth mentioning that the night scene performance of Meizu Note 9 is somewhat beyond expectations.

In an environment where there are almost only a few lights in the distance, Note 9 can also grasp the details of the picture very well.

The front camera of Meizu Note 9 is a 20-megapixel customized camera, which is said to have a beauty function that can turn an old man into a young man in seconds.

This is indeed the case. Even in a dimly lit environment, this front camera can take good photos and produce appropriate beauty effects.

In short, the impression of Meizu phones in the past was that "Meizu phones have no camera," but this idea was ended in the Meizu 15 and 16 era. However, the performance of the camera on the Note 9, which is a thousand-yuan phone, has made a significant breakthrough within the framework of a thousand-yuan phone. For taking pictures of scenery or taking selfies, this phone with 48 million pixels should be enough.

The appearance of the 8 million extra is really good.

The reason why the appearance is put last has been mentioned before. In fact, this part is also where the Note 9 shows off its strength. Especially the "shallowest water drop" customized by Meizu at an extra cost of 8 million, which is only 3.06mm.

To be honest, there are not many manufacturers who can spend an extra 8 million yuan to make such a trivial adjustment. After all, in daily use, this slight difference is not particularly noticeable. But Meizu is willing to spend an extra 8 million yuan for this, just to pursue that little bit of excellence.

However, this is Meizu. Designers are afraid of it when it comes to personality. This is indeed the case. Among the thousand-yuan phones, the frame of Note 9 has already opened up a gap with its competitors. It is indeed narrower, which makes it more pleasing to the eye visually.

It has a 6.2-inch full screen with an aspect ratio of 18.7:9 and Full HD resolution. The only regret is that the screen-to-body ratio does not exceed 90%, but is 89.23%.

The back of the Note 9 is said to be made of a composite material that feels like plastic, but because it uses a bright porcelain stacking process, you will have a different visual experience when you look at it from different angles, and it shines with a metallic texture.

Many people may not have thought that this is the first time that the Meizu Note series uses a Type-C interface. The headphone jack is also retained, so those who are not used to Bluetooth headphones can still use wired headphones.

Meizu Note 9 has three models for sale, the top model is 6+64 GB. I thought I could increase the capacity by inserting a card, but when I opened it, I found that the card slot does not support TF cards. This is a bit embarrassing. If you like to watch movies, you may not be able to afford the capacity.

Summarize

Among the thousand-yuan phones, Meizu Note 9 has pursued perfection in its own way, or amplified some of its strengths, such as Snapdragon 675, the shallowest water drop, 4000 mAh large battery, and 48-megapixel camera. However, due to cost and pricing, its shortcomings are also obvious, such as the display effect of the screen is not that good.

In short, among the thousand-yuan phones, Note 9 is still quite competitive in the current market. With its powerful performance, many sub-flagship models may be impacted by it, which can be called a nightmare for sub-flagship models. More importantly, Note 9 is available now, which is undoubtedly very tempting for students who are eager to change their phones.

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.