Meizu has done an excellent job at proving you don't need to spend big bucks to get a quality smartphone. The company has gone down the same path as Xiaomi and nowadays both of these companies rule the mid range with a wide portfolio of attractive smartphones at very competitive prices.
Today we're going to discuss one of the company's most anticipated releases; the Meizu M3 Note. This new model follows in the M2 Note's footsteps and delivers a phablet sized phone with great specs at a good price. However, as they say, not everything that shines is golden.
With that in mind today we seek to untap both the advantages and disadvantages of Meizu's newest flagship on this post of the Meizu M3 Note Pros and Cons you can't ignore. Are you ready?
Meizu M3 Note Pros and Cons to Consider
Meizu M3 Note Cons
Still running on Android 5.1
This is something we could deal with if the specs weren't up to par but with 3 GB of RAM and a full on octa core CPU running Android 5.1 just seems wrong.
Non removable battery
Another Meizu M3 Note con is that while improving upon the design with a nice aluminum alloy, Meizu has removed one of the most coveted possibilities that a non unibody design brings; the ability to swap out the battery when you're running low on juice.
Sure, the battery has been upgraded to a 4100 mAh capacity that promises around 12 hours of multitasking use but that still leaves us exposed for the never-ending fear that we'll run out of battery at any given time.
Non upgradable storage (if you go down the dual-SIM route)
It's a new tendency amongst manufacturers such as Meizu to place the consumer at a crossroads; he can have a dual SIM smartphone or a smartphone with loads of storage. In this case you have to choose, you can insert a card that's up to 128 GB of capacity or you can have two numbers in one device.
For some users this isn't really an option as such. In countries like India where not all carriers offer a wide cell reception having two SIMs is a must unless you wanna loose signal from one moment to another. Is it really that hard to add an extra slot?
Radio? What radio?
We get it, we can listen to the radio online, we can use services such as Pandora, Spotify or even Apple Music to stream the songs we want when we want them but what about the old fashioned radio?
The one that used to come as a standard on all phones and now seems to be slowly vanishing into oblivion. I miss listening to the radio on my smartphone without having to worry about data plans or subscription services, just plain old radio.
Still no NFC support
NFC is quickly growing on the market as a way to make payments easy and secure. However, it seems that Meizu didn't get the memo because with the M3 Note we have yet another smartphone that lacks NFC support.
I know NFC is hardly the standard today but we're buying a smartphone that will hopefully give us a couple of years of use and it could very well be that a year from now everyone accepts NFC payments but you're unable to access that function because the Meizu's latest flagship does not support it. Talk about a con of the Meizu M3 note.
Meizu M3 Note Pros
A polished Design
I get that I'm being a hypocrite here because I complain about how the new design leaves us without a removable battery but seeing it makes it almost worth it. It's just so darn stylish and premium. I was a big fan of the design on the Meizu Metal, which was basically an M2 Note on a metal body so I'm also a firm believer that the design on the Meizu M3 Note is one of its biggest advantages.
Besides, it's not just pretty, it's also quite light weighing in at 5.75 ounces and measuring just 0.32 inches. All this in a body that features a front facing touch ID sensor on the home button and a colossal 5.5 inch display.
Big camera upgrades
One of the biggest upgrades present within the M3 Note is the set of cameras. Sure, the set of cameras on the M2 Note weren't all that bad but they were far from good. Here's where Meizu has fixed that issue by betting on a 13 megapixel rear end camera with a dual tone flash a 5 lens optic and a pretty good f/2.2 aperture that will help you capture better pics even in low lighting situations.
The front facing camera has also been upgraded with a 5 megapixel sensor, 4 lens optics and an f/2.0 aperture for better quality selfies. There's still no 4K video however so Meizu might wanna get on that for the M4 Note.
Octa core processor and plenty of RAM
While this would really go into the category of "minor improvements" it should be noted that Meizu has updated its set of internals on the M3 note with a Helio P10 octa core processor and up to 3 GB of RAM if we go with the 32 GB version.
Again, these are minor improvements that overall while they make a difference over the first edition Meizu Note they don't really change all that much from the M2 to the M3 Note.
Bigger battery
We mentioned this above as we listed the cons when we talked about the non-removable battery. However, the battery in itself is one of the most distinguished pros of the M3 Note. To be precise, it comes with a 4100 mAh battery which is 32% bigger than the one present within the M2 Note.
According to the company, this new and improved battery can give us up to 12 hours of continuous use while multitasking and 2 days of average use. Who knows whatever that means but let's meet somewhere in the middle and say that the smartphone will give us a whole day's usage. Not bad bit hardly impressive either.
An excellent display
Chances are, if you're looking to buy the M3 Note it's in big part because of the big display. You wouldn't be wrong, the M3 Note has the most attractive display up to date of the Note lineup. With Miravision technology, the blacks are pitch black and the colors are very alive.
Couple that with a 5.5 inch diagonal, a Full HD resolution and an LTPS IPS LCD screen and you got yourself a very nice window onto the multimedia universe. Whether you're surfing the web, watching videos or reading a book, it's a very nice display to look at.
So what's the verdict?
After reviewing the pros and cons of the Meizu M3 Note we gotta say we really do love this smartphone. Once that's out of the way, if we're being honest, other than the overall design and the fingerprint sensor there really isn't that much that has changed from the M2 Note so it's almost impossible to justify an upgrade from the previous version.
That said, if you've never had a Meizu smartphone and you're really looking to get into the phablet space but don't wanna spend big bucks on a Samsung Galaxy smartphone then this is a good bet. It's hard to imagine anyone being disappointed by this smartphone, unless of course you think 5.5 inches is too big for you.