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Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 Quick Review: A Beefier Battery King!

Jamie Inocian

A Fitting Bookend to 2018

Asus kicked off 2018 by introducing us to the newest member of their Max lineup of smartphones, which also debuted its new naming convention for the series—the Zenfone Max Pro M1. The big-batteried device from the Taiwanese company offered a lot of value and was actually one of the favorite devices in the Sub-10k price bracket. Now that we’re in the tail end of the year and a couple days away from Christmas, we found it fitting that Asus would bookend 2018 with the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2. What exactly does this new device have to offer? Let’s give it a quick go around to show you guys what’s what with their new Battery King.

They’ve Changed Its Look Completely

When the M1 was launched here in the Philippines, we were a little underwhelmed with the overall design of the device. Not that it looked bad but there was nothing new about the device; aside, of course, for the 18:9 display. It was something we’ve seen from the Taiwanese company with past releases but we did appreciate the fact that the phone was still made out of metal.

The Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2, on the other hand, has gotten quite the visual upgrade and is now in-line with what we’re seeing in most devices out in the market. It’s available in two color options (Midnight Blue and Cosmic Titanium) that have a glossy finish with what the company is calling a “wave” pattern that seems more like ripples on a pond to me. The phone attracts fingerprints like crazy so it’s good to know that retail units will come with a case and you’re definitely going to want to slap that on from that get-go to avoid having to wipe up those smears and smudges plus protect it too.

Gone is the metal build from the M1 that’s now replaced by a clear acrylic back panel and what feels like a polycarbonate frame. Aside from the visual upgrade, this also allows the company to claim that the Max Pro M2 is the lightest smartphone on the planet with a 5000mAh battery. There’s still a bit of heft to the device but it certainly feels like it has lost a bit of weight. It handles really nicely with gentle curves to making easy to hold too.

Time for the tour around the device to check out its button and port layout.

You’ve got the power button on the right side along with the volume rocker.

Access to the triple-slotted SIM tray in on the left.

No In-Display Fingerprint Scanner here. Just your good, ol’ fashioned physical one on the back on the phone.

On the bottom, you’ll find the speaker grille, headphone jack, and—we can already feel you guys cringing—a micro USB port. Yup. It’s a bit of a bummer that type-C still hasn’t made its way onto all devices, which means topping up the Zenfone Max M2 is going to take a while but more on that later.


Tough Screen Is Tough

Up in front, the M2 rocks a 6.3-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD Display that produces decent colors, has great viewing angles, and a good amount of brightness for use in the outdoors. It’s got an 88-percent screen-to-body ratio and, yes, it does have a wee little notch up on top. While we’ve seen displays of this caliber before, the Zenfone Max Pro M2 gets a thumbs up for using a Gorilla Glass 6 panel to protect its display so that might put you at ease if you admittedly have butterfingers and drop your phone more than you’d care to admit.

The speaker on the device produces a lot of volume but is a little tinny and you’ll want to keep it to about 80-percent when consuming content to avoid distortion. Again, there’s a headphone jack so you can always default to that.

The Max Gets a Performance Boost

What we were really excited about when we got briefed on the M2 was the fact that it was now using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 under the hood; compared to the SD 636 on the M1. Now, granted this is the version of the 660 with a lower clock speed but it still performed rather admirably during our time with the phone. The SoC is paired with up to 6GB of RAM and up to 128GB of onboard storage but the unit that was handed to us was the 6GB/64GB variant, which was still more than enough to handle the day-to-day stuff without any issue.

It should also be noted that we were handed an engineering unit to try out so there were a few kinks that should be ironed out by its release date but nothing to really ruin our experience with the device.

If you’re into gaming, you’ll be happy to know that it hums along fairly well with the games we often use for our gaming reviews. Asphalt 9 ran extremely smoothly at the highest settings and NBA 2K19 had a few frame rate drops with everything turned up to the highest we could get it without Cloth Simulation on. We’ll release a gaming review for the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 once the few hiccups we’ve encountered have been resolved and the phone runs the way it’s so supposed to when it hits store shelves.

It Still Runs on Stock Android

One of the things we loved about the Max Pro M1 was the fact that it ran on Stock Android and we rejoiced at the fact that the M2 would still be getting the same treatment. It isn’t running on Android Pie and we’ll have to confirm if it will be getting the update to 9.0 but we’ll take the simple and clean OS any day of the week over any UI overlay.

Camera AI Functions to Follow

For its cameras, the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 has dual rear shooters with a 12-megapixel main camera at an aperture of f/1.8 that’s backed by a Sony IMX486 sensor plus a 5-megapixel depth sensor. The front camera is a 13-megapixel shooter with an aperture of f/2.0. We were sort of surprised that a wide-angle lens was left out on the M2 since that’s the usual setup of Asus device that rock two cameras. During our sit down with the folks at Asus for the M2, a fair bit of discussion were about the AI functionalities on the shooters of their new device. It hasn’t quite made it into the unit that we have with us but, another reminder, this is a pre-release unit.

We didn’t think it was fair to judge the photos coming out of the shooters of the M2 just yet but we thought that the initial photos we took with the device were pretty good so we’re curious to see what improvement AI will bring in to the mix.

All Hail the Battery King!

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the M2 would have a kick-ass battery that would give you a tremendous amount of juice. It has a 5000mAh battery that easily lasted two days with my workload. We were able to run battery benchmarks on the phone already and it managed an impressive 17 hours and 38 minutes. If there was any doubt about the battery life on this device, that was surely erased when we saw the results of the test.


A competitive price?

Now, for a quick review, this was already pretty comprehensive and the reasons that we couldn’t call this a full review was because of the pre-release software on the phone plus the fact that, as of writing this article, we don’t know the official price tag of the Max Pro M2 just yet. We’ve heard whispers and have even seen its price released in Russia that amounts to about Php 14,000.

UPDATE:

Asus has officially announced the price for the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 with the sticker price for the 4GB/64GB model at Php 12,995 and the 6GB/64GB variant at Php 14,995. It’s definitely facing tough competition in its price range though it does make a serious case for itself because of its lasting power.

The Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 will be available on December 15.

Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 Specs

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