Design
The Meizu m2 Note features a plastic body – there are no premium materials such as glass or metal, but that’s expected for such an affordable phone. Nonetheless, build quality is great: the phone is put together solidly, with no loose parts, and everything is perfectly well aligned. It comes in a choice of four colors: three glossy shells in pink, blue and white, and a matte gray body. The gray matte option is reportedly a big hit in China because it does look somewhat similar to metal, and the feel of the plastic is great, eschewing that somewhat cheap feeling of glossy plastic. In terms of pure size.
The 5.5inch handset features a fairly slim side bezel, so overall the phone ends up being narrower than, say, the iPhone 6 Plus. The exact dimensions are: 150.9 x 75.2 x 8.7mm. The m2 Note is also surprisingly lightweight for its large size, it weighs 149 grams, with the weight slightly shifted to the top. While it’s not among the thinnest phones, you would find the m2 Note to be of average thickness and fairly comfortable to hold.
Features
The Meizu m2 note features a 5.5-inch full HD IGZO capacitive display and although the side bezels are thin, the top and bottom ones are thick. The phone comes with MediaTek MT6753 SoC which features a 1.3GHz Cortex A53 octa-core processor and Mali T720 graphics solution. This chipset is paired with 2GB of RAM and the phone comes with 16GB of storage of which only 11.7GB is available to the user. It does offer you the option to expand the storage using a microSD card.
The phone comes with Android 5.1 with the Flyme 4.5 UI atop it. You get a 13MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera. On the connectivity front you get a dual nano-SIM card slot, Wi-fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS, along with sensors such as accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity sensor and a compass.
Performance
Call quality was good and the earpiece speakers are decently loud but in traffic you will need to strain your ears. The Mediatek MT6753 SoC with 2GB of RAM keeps things speedy. We did not notice any slowdown of the device while using multiple apps or having multiple browser windows open on the m2 note. The benchmark scores are on most occasions lower than those seen on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC sporting devices such as the Xiaomi Mi4i, Oppo R5, Yu Yureka and so on. However that doesn’t mean it is a slow phone. Using heavy apps does heat up the rear portion of the m2 note. You would find it getting warm quickly while outdoors when using photography apps or playing heavy games.
Meizu m2 note comes with a 13MP rear camera with an f2.2 aperture 5-element lens whereas a 5MP front-facing camera with an f2.0 aperture 4-element lens. The camera user interface offers quite a lot of interesting features. You get the regular filters, HDR mode and Beauty mode, but there’s also slow motion video mode, manual mode, light field mode and a scan mode which is useful when scanning bar codes. Daylight image quality is quite good and images are packed with details. The focussing speed is not the fastest, but good enough to shoot in the daylight. The HDR mode is quite subtle in the sense that there is no aggressive blowing up of highlights, which is good. The selfie camera is good enough for casual selfies every once in a while.
Battery
The phone is powered by a 3,100 mAh battery which has become almost a standard for 5.5-inch full HD devices. The battery is non-removable of course thanks to the non-removable rear cover. The phone easily lasts a full day, but not much more with average use. Overall, Battery life is good: you won’t have a problem getting through a day of even heavier usage.
Overall, it looks like the Chinese phone makers have cracked the value for money proposition, with the Meizu m2 note being the latest example. The m2 note gives a decent performance and will certainly be competing with the Yu Yureka Plus and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G in the ₹9,999 price bracket. The performance is a bit slow when compared to Snapdragon 615 SoC sporting devices and heating is noticeable outdoors. The phone’s user interface and gestures may not be to everyone’s liking. Barring these drawbacks, the m2 note delivers a good battery life and camera performance. Of course, the low light photography isn’t up to the mark, but features such as slow motion video, scan mode, manual mode in the camera are good to have. This phone is priced at ₹9,999.