Terminal Thoughts

I like the Meizu Pro 6 Plus. It'south the best device I've used from the visitor, and it's one of the best flagships available from the multitude of Chinese-focused OEMs. At merely over US$400 it'southward competitively priced for the hardware you lot get, and its localization for Western countries is basically perfect.

But I wouldn't buy it over the OnePlus 3.

In a caput-to-caput boxing with the OnePlus 3 or OnePlus 3T, the Meizu Pro six Plus fights admirably simply is ultimately browbeaten by a more rounded device. Coming in second place to such a fantastic device is a great accomplishment for an OEM that gets little fanfare overseas – and in many ways the Pro 6 Plus is a better buy than more expensive flagship handsets – but finishing second isn't where a visitor wants to be. Meizu wants to be first, and while they're virtually at that place, the Pro six Plus isn't an outright winner.

At that place are a lot of things I love about the Pro 6 Plus. The blueprint is one such area: this phone is cute, with its well-crafted metal unibody and slim, light build. For a 5.7-inch phone, this chassis is remarkably comfortable and piece of cake to utilize, plus information technology looks like an expensive loftier-end piece of hardware. Despite its slenderness, bombardment life is neat, outperforming most other high-end Android phones from 2022 in this department.

The Pro half dozen Plus is also kitted out with a range of features yous'd come to expect from a flagship. In that location's a fingerprint scanner on the front, a USB-C port on the lesser, and a iii.5mm headphone jack with back up for high-fidelity audio output. At that place'due south no microSD card slot, but 64 GB of fast NAND is standard and it'due south cheap to upgrade the handset to 128 GB. You practise get dual SIM back up, nevertheless, which is a handy feature to have.

The Meizu Pro six Plus (left) next to the Google Pixel XL

There'south no shortage of high-end hardware in the Pro 6 Plus, and I'1000 glad Meizu hasn't opted for a crappy MediaTek SoC. Instead y'all're getting a Samsung Exynos 8890, the same SoC in the Milky way S7 and Galaxy Note 7, plus four GB of RAM and total back up for fast LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, and fast charging. This bit competes strongly with the Snapdragon 820, and while the Snapdragon 835 may supersede it in the coming months, it will all the same provide excellent performance across apps and games…

…provided you switch the telephone into its performance mode. The default 'rest' fashion slows the phone downward considerably, leading to a stuttering, entry-level feel. I have no thought why Meizu decided to cripple this telephone out of the box, when users would exist expecting flagship-level performance. Luckily, every bit before long as you switch to performance mode, the phone ramps upwards to provide CPU and GPU speeds just a few percent behind the Galaxy S7 Border, while retaining not bad battery life. You should switch to operation style as before long every bit you lot go this device.

The display on the Pro 6 Plus is also high quality, packing 1440p into a 5.vii-inch AMOLED similar to the Galaxy Notation 7 (merely without the curved edges). The brandish is vibrant and oversaturated due to a color gamut well above sRGB, while both contrast ratio and viewing angles are fantabulous. It'due south a shame at that place'south no color accurate display style here, but I think well-nigh people will like the way this OLED display pops when displaying almost content.

The chief disappointment with the Pro six Plus is the photographic camera. The hardware of this photographic camera system is quite respectable; features similar 1.25 micron pixels and OIS brand this the best Meizu camera I've used. But unfortunately the photographic camera still ends upwardly simply mid-range due to poor processing, falling a fair way behind the OnePlus three in overall photo quality. Phones like the Galaxy S7 and Google Pixel Twoscore blow abroad the Pro 6 Plus with better quality shots, more camera features, and faster hardware.

It's a real shame that the photographic camera isn't upwardly to snuff, because it's such a crucial feature of today's smartphones. When spending more than $400, you really wait a high-quality camera, and the Pro 6 Plus just tin't provide this. Luckily, I believe just a few tweaks to the photographic camera's firmware and its processing would make this photographic camera great, and then allow'south hope Meizu can release an update in the future that addresses this.

Speaking of software, the Pro vi Plus comes with Flyme on board, which is the Android skin seen beyond Meizu's telephone portfolio. My review unit came with Flyme 5.2 and Android six.0 on lath, only this will be updated to Flyme 6 and Android 7.0 in February. Past the fourth dimension people can really purchase the Pro 6 Plus, you'll be getting the latest version of Android, except with a heavy software peel and several feature additions.

The principal takeaway here is that while the Pro half dozen Plus competes strongly on several fronts – the pattern, display, performance and bombardment life are all smashing – it falls behind the OnePlus 3 and several other flagships in one central attribute: the camera. It'south hard to recommend a device that is generally solid but doesn't produce the same quality photos every bit similarly priced competitors, especially when a smartphone is the just camera people behave with them these days.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Meizu Pro half dozen Plus on Amazon

So while the $420 Meizu Pro 6 Plus is competitively priced against the OnePlus 3, information technology's difficult to recommend it. Aye, information technology is a good budget flagship option, and it's not bad to see more companies inbound this market with excellent products, merely it's simply not quite good enough to exist the go-to option for buyers with $400 to spend.

Pros: Exquisite metal unibody screams "flagship". Top-stop hardware with great performance and battery life. Decent five.7-inch 1440p AMOLED display. Affordably priced.

Cons: Camera is merely mid-range. Heavy software peel with some oddities and bug.