Can the 1799 yuan price tell the truth? Meizu MX4 full review

In September this year, the mobile phone industry has seen a wave of new product announcements. The first to appear was the Meizu 2014 flagship phone MX4, which was officially released on September 2. Its starting price of 1,799 yuan also shocked the entire domestic mobile phone industry.

For Meizu itself, MX4 is the first masterpiece after the return of its soul figure Huang Zhang, and its importance is self-evident. On the other hand, for the market and consumers, the new Meizu flagship with a starting price of less than 2,000 yuan is unprecedented. The price is more competitive than that of its competitors, which is enough to win the attention and hearts of more users.

But there are also doubts in the joy. Is the larger Meizu phone still easy to use? Does the processor with the MTK logo deserve the title of flagship? What are the advantages of the Flyme 4.0 system? Behind the 1,799 yuan price tag, can the MX4 let us see the truth?

Appearance design: Is the big screen still useful?

The packaging of MX4 still uses Meizu's usual "flip book" design. After turning over two pages of promotional leaflets, the dark version of Meizu MX4 appears in front of you. The unboxing feeling is quite good.

The accessories that come with MX4 are extremely simple. Apart from the warranty certificate, there are only two items: the charger and the data cable. They are undoubtedly designed in the pure white Apple style. The charger with an output specification of 5V/2A is extremely small.

Viewed from the front, the overall design of the MX4 is still very pleasing to the eye. There is no logo on the front, and the highly integrated front panel and slightly glossy metal frame when the screen is off highlight the sense of design.

It is worth mentioning that the glass panel of MX4 is not in direct contact with the metal frame. If you look closely, it is not difficult to find the filling material between the two with the naked eye. This is the screen glue suspension technology emphasized by Meizu at the press conference, claiming that it can reduce the probability of screen breakage when the phone falls to a certain extent, but we don’t have the courage to verify the actual effect.

The frame of MX4 is made of metal. At the press conference, we learned that the name of this "steel plate" is "aviation aluminum". MX4 still retains the chamfer design on the metal frame. Although the workmanship of the details is still fine, the polished metal surface is more prone to scratches. In addition, the transition between the metal frame and other materials of the machine is not smooth. If you run your finger across the edge of the machine, you will feel a slight cutting sensation.

Compared to the eye-catching front and frame of the machine, the back design of MX4 is relatively ordinary. The plastic back shell adopts the same color as the metal frame. The biggest change is the addition of a dual-color temperature flash under the camera, which is similar to the new Apple iPhone 5s. The design of the removable back cover but not replacing the battery has also been retained.

In terms of usability, Meizu has always used "easy to use" as the prefix of its products. This time, the screen of MX4 has been increased again to 5.36 inches. In terms of parameters alone, it has surpassed Samsung's first-generation Galaxy Note. So, will Meizu still be easy to use?

Meizu has always emphasized its narrow bezel design on MX3, and this has been further deepened on MX4, reaching 2.58mm. The screen-to-body ratio of the whole machine is over 75%. The most direct comparison is to use a picture with a ratio of 16:9, first display it at the original ratio, and then enlarge it to full screen. This process can most intuitively show the shocking effect of the ultra-narrow bezel.

The biggest advantage of the narrow frame is that it effectively controls the width of the body. Since the MX4 once again adopts a "non-mainstream" screen ratio, the width of 75.2mm does not seem to have any advantages, but in actual use, one-handed operation of the MX4 is still not a problem in most cases. Combined with the certain curvature of the back cover, the 8.9mm thick body looks thinner visually, and the MX4 feels more stable to hold.

Hardware performance and imaging quality: a clash between top-tier components and MediaTek

The screen is the "face" of large-screen smartphones, and MX4 still excels in this aspect.

This 5.36-inch IPS technology display has a resolution of 1920x1152 pixels at the FHD+ level and a PPI of 417. It also continues the Sharp New Mode2 LCD technology used in previous MX models. Whether in color reproduction, viewing angle, or the "death diagonal" that countless JDI screen phones are afraid of, the MX4 performs stably and is in the "first echelon" of the industry.

Another important component, the camera part of MX4 has made a huge leap compared to its predecessor. The main camera uses Sony IMX220 20.7 million pixel photosensitive element, supports 0.3s high-speed focus and 4K-level video shooting.

In terms of actual imaging, the MX4's camera focuses very quickly, and the 20.7-megapixel lens captures the details of the picture quite well.

For night scene shooting, MX4 has a built-in camera night scene mode. In this mode, the overall brightness of the photos is significantly improved in scenes with poor lighting conditions. The only drawback is that the smear marks on the picture are a little serious, but the overall imaging level of MX4 is still satisfactory.

Of course, most people's focus on the MX4's hardware is on the MediaTek MTK6595 processor it uses. At the press conference, Meizu emphasized that this "intelligent octa-core" processor has a running score of over 47,000 points, and some media even measured a score of 50,000+ points. However, it should be noted that the MX4 will automatically run in "high performance" mode after the running software is turned on, and the running score of the machine in our hands "only" remained at 46,000 points.

The parameters of the MTK6595 processor itself are quite good. The "big and small core" design of the 2.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A17 core and the 1.7GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 core, combined with the MX4 2GB of running memory and the eMMC 5.0 high-speed flash memory specifications, are enough to bring excellent system fluency and multi-tasking capabilities to the device.

However, the performance of the processor still depends on large-scale games as the criterion. We selected three games from different game developers, "Need for Speed ​​​​17", "NBA 2K14", and "GTA SA" for testing. Although MX4 has no problems with game compatibility, its overall performance is not perfect.

Take "Need for Speed ​​17" for example, the game has medium special effects turned on by default, and the running smoothness is not very high, while "NBA 2K14" will occasionally skip frames, and the gaming experience is not ideal. Lenovo people previously predicted that the performance of the PVR G6200 GPU in MTK6595 is at the same level as Qualcomm Adreno 320, and this guess is relatively accurate, that is, in some aspects, the gaming performance that MX4 can provide is not much different from the Samsung Exynos 5410 chip in MX3.

MediaTek's mobile chips have always been known for their excellent power consumption control. Combined with the MX4's large 3100mAh battery, it also brings good battery life to the machine.

In a Wi-Fi environment, it only consumes 3% of power in 9 hours of standby mode, and the power consumption only drops by 10% after playing games for 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the MX4 does not seem to have very good control over power consumption during video playback. Although the built-in player can perfectly support almost all formats of videos including 4K videos, when the power is 35% remaining, the MX4 can no longer smoothly play a 2-hour and 15-minute 720P movie in MKV format, and eventually shuts down automatically.

Under normal usage, the heating of the MX4 is very well controlled. Even when recording 4K video, the heating of the machine is not obvious. However, it should be noted that since the metal frame conducts heat quickly, as long as the phone heats up while running a game, the frame of the MX4 is always the part that heats up the fastest.

Finally, the charging time of MX4 is relatively long. Even with the original charger that comes with the machine, it is still not fully charged from 12 noon to 3 pm. Moreover, after the battery is recharged to 85%, the charging speed will slow down again. Of course, this is entirely possible because the machine in our hands is an engineering prototype.

System interface: Flyme adds new vitality

For smartphones, the appearance and hardware indicators of the device are only half of the measure of the product's quality, while the system design is the other half of the product. For Meizu, this half is Flyme.

If "flatness" is a major trend in smartphone systems, then Flyme's fresh and simple style is a perfect fusion of "flatness". In MX4, Flyme has reached version 4.0. The new system developed based on Android 4.4 runs smoothly and runs in ART mode by default. The overall style has not changed. The intuitive changes revolve around the following two aspects.

First of all, Flyme4.0 has readjusted and redesigned some of the system interfaces.

The pull-down notification bar of Flyme4.0 can not only be pulled all the way to the bottom, but also further deepens the frosted glass effect, and the quick settings of the notification bar are also more convenient to use.

The weather interface has also been comprehensively improved. It is more beautiful and provides users with more practical information. At the same time, swiping up on the screen can call out the global search, and applications such as calculator also support small window floating display.

In Flyme4.0, Meizu's self-created "SmartBar" control bar also accepted the opinions of the people and added hidden options. However, it should be noted that even if the hidden option is turned on, in applications that require "return" or "menu" operations, the "SmartBar" will still appear and be turned on again. Users who have just come into contact with the Flyme system need a certain amount of time to adapt.

When the screen is off, Flyme4.0 supports the double-click wake-up and sliding to directly open the camera and other applications' shortcut operations that many flagship models have, further enhancing the ease of one-handed operation and making the MX4's interactive experience even better.

Secondly, Flyme4.0 has also added a lot of new content for users in terms of services.

Meizu's cooperation with major Internet companies has further improved the system's functions. For example, in terms of security protection and cloud services, Meizu has cooperated with Tencent Mobile Manager, LBE and 360 Cloud Disk to launch the "Security Center" and "Cloud Storage" functions. In terms of video content, Flyme 4.0 has also integrated multiple Internet video service platforms such as Sohu Video and LeTV to launch online video services, making the system's built-in "Video" application no longer just a video player.

Overall, there is no difference between the functions that come with these systems and the services provided by third-party apps. Especially for the "Security Center", the ROOT-free protection function will make it more convenient for users to use.

Of course, Meizu itself has also added some new items to the new Flyme. It is worth mentioning here that the newly added "reading" and "voice recognition" functions.

"Reading" in Flyme4.0 is a part that Meizu emphasized at the press conference, but in actual use, Meizu's "Reading" is not much different from reading software such as ZAKER, and Flyme does not reserve a browsing page specifically for it like HTC's Blink Feed.

The newly added "voice recognition" in Flyme4.0 is by no means a new thing in the industry. The feature of Meizu's "voice recognition" is that it can answer some questions about the product itself offline without an Internet connection. Judging from the usage, the accuracy of "voice recognition" is still very high. Although this is the first time that the voice function has been added to the Meizu Flyme system, the user experience is still quite mature.

For gamers, Meizu has also pre-installed the installation program for the Google service suite in Flyme, clearing the way for the installation and running of large Android games.

However, there is no doubt that the new system is bound to have minor problems. In actual use, the success rate of double-clicking to wake up the screen in Flyme4.0 is not very high. When the computer is just turned on, desktop plug-ins such as weather cannot be updated in time under Wi-Fi environment. The most unacceptable thing is that the settings menu of the camera interface cannot be displayed in horizontal screen. Such minor flaws should not appear in a brand's flagship product. Of course, solving these problems only requires Flyme to provide a system update in the future.

Summary: 1799 yuan is enough to see the truth

Is Meizu MX4 a success? I think the number of reservations, from 3 million, 7.7 million to over 10 million, has given us the most powerful answer. The starting price of 1,799 yuan, which has been further reduced, is undoubtedly an important factor that touches consumers. The seemingly "not high-end" MediaTek processor has strong running points and is enough to meet the needs of most users. Coupled with the excellent Flyme system, MX4 is still an outstanding Meizu flagship product.

Of course, some people will question whether the Meizu MX4 still has the flavor of Meizu after saying goodbye to the Samsung processor and no longer having above-average pricing?

But it is undeniable that even though the MX4 is more market-friendly, whether it is the stunning narrow bezel or the good grip, the MX4 still reveals the feelings of Meizu. The new version of Flyme is not only more "down-to-earth", it even supports more non-Meizu brand devices, which has far-reaching significance.

Even though there are other domestic manufacturers who have threatened to launch competing products with similar configurations to the MX4 but at lower prices, no one can guarantee whether other competing products can have the same flagship status as the MX4, and whether they can have highlights and features comparable to the MX4 in terms of workmanship, materials and user experience.

So, MX4 is not a perfect machine, but it is still the best continuation of Meizu style. For 1799 yuan, you can still get the best and most sincere Meizu product.

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.