Meizu 21 Pro Quick Review Philippines: The Meizu 21 Pro might just be the bang-for-the-buck flagship that the Philippines has been waiting for. This sleek, powerful, and hopefully decently-priced flagship has a lot of things going for it, though pricing will dictate if it’s something that Pinoys will buy. 

Pros

• Premium design and build
• Good hardware
• Ultra sharp display

Cons

• It looks a little bit like the Galaxy S24
• Pricing is still up in the air

Meizu is back in the Philippines and it’s bringing a bunch of phones with it. While the Chinese brand is launching two budget phones in the country, what caught our eye was the Meizu 21 Pro, their flagship smartphone that if priced correctly, would make Xiaomi, OnePlus, and a bunch of other manufacturers very upset. Meizu’s targeting the price equivalent of $600 to $700 for this phone, but I think they should go as low as $550 to disrupt the local market. 

Meizu 21 Pro Quick Review Philippines: Design and Display

Meizu took a lot of inspiration from Samsung’s Galaxy S24 in the design of their current flagship. And I do mean a lot – the chassis sports flat sides made out of aluminum, and the back of the phone uses a matte glass finish, The camera rings at the rear are also a dead ringer for the S24, though there’s a fourth camera ring that works as a notification light as well as an indicator that the AI in the phone is working and listening.

Despite that overly obvious homage, the Meizu 21 Pro feels great in the hand. The phone doesn’t feel cheap – in fact, the phone looks and feels the part of a flagship. The design is well executed, and overall the phone is as premium as any flagship that I’ve used in the past 6 months. The phone also has IP68 protection, which is pretty much what we expect for a phone of its class nowadays. 

The phone uses a 6.79-inch LTPO AMOLED panel that has a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, and a 1368 x 3192 resolution. It looks very sharp to our eyes, probably the only thing that I’m not a fan of is the limited display brightness since it tops out at 1250 nits. 

Meizu 21 Pro Quick Review Philippines: Camera 

The phone uses a 50-megapixel F/1.9 aperture main camera that has PDAF and OIS. That’s complemented by a 10-megapixel f/2.0 periscope telephoto camera that has PDAF and OIS along with 3x optical zoom, along with a 13-megapixel f/2.4 ultra-wide camera. The phone can capture videos up to 8K, there’s also 4K recording available. Stabilization is digital only when you’re shooting, however. There’s a 32-megapixel selfie camera on tap here as well. We haven’t had the opportunity to take photos with the phone’s camera, so you’ll have to wait for our full review for that. 

Meizu 21 Pro Quick Review Philippines: Hardware and Software

What makes this phone a good contender for a flagship killer is the processor – the phone runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor inside of it, paired with 12GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage depending on the configuration you get. 

Despite being an “older” processor, and I’m emphasizing the quotes around older here, the SD 8 Gen 3 chipset is still a kick-ass piece of silicon that’s more than enough to handle whatever you need as far as apps and games go. 

With the return of Meizu is the return of FlymeOS, their fully customizable Android OS. We’ll have to go and talk about FlymeOS in another article, but what Meizu wanted to talk about is the AI integration of AI in their phone. For the Philippines, that means Google’s Gemini. 

As for the battery, you’re looking at a 5050mAh cell, along with 80W of fast wired charging and 50W wireless charging. 

Meizu 21 Pro Quick Review Philippines: Wrap-Up

The Meizu 21 Pro looks to be a great contender for a bang-for-the-buck flagship, but only if Meizu Philippines prices it correctly. The phone isn’t exactly new–it debuted last year–so the brand has a lot of wiggle room here pricing-wise for more people to enjoy their devices. 

If this is priced at $600 (around 35K in PHP) or lower, then it’s going to be a great disrupter when it hits stores.