[ENG] Meizu M6S Review - The New Best Budget Smartphone 2018!

M6s is Meizu's answer to some of today's smartphones- such as Vivo V7 or Xiaomi Redmi 5. Three of them have equally classy-specs with similar 18:9 ratio and 5.7 inches screen size. Meizu M6s is an affordable smartphone with a super solid body. Compared with Vivo V7 and Xiaomi Redmi 5, the M6s weight is the heaviest, that is 160 grams. The heaviness is caused by full metal material on its body. Besides it feels tough, metal material also make this smartphone feel so solid. Talking about the dimension, it is not much different from the two competitors, Vivo and Xiaomi.

This because the screen dimensions are equally 5.7 inches with 18:9 ratio. So it will make this smartphone easy to hold and fit nicely in your pocket. However, there are some notes during use. One of them is the power button that we think is placed too high. The area that usually for the power button is used by M6s for fingerprint sensor. Yes, Meizu M6s is somewhat unique.

Meizu may want to make the rear M6s's body look simple, so this sensor is placed on the side. And this sensor is purposely design with a curve to make it more easier to use. Maybe you're curious, is M6s comfortable to use? During our daily-use, we feel this sensor is somehow all right, it is fast and accurate enough. But still less pleasant than the sensor that placed in home button or rear body. Because the area to put your finger is more tiny. Sensor placement on the side also make its rear body looks plain. There's only Meizu logo and single camera module + LED flash. The camera module is a little bit bulge. And at the front, its upper bezel, Meizu puts an LED notifications. Whereas there’s absolutely nothing at the bottom bezel. The navigation key is already in-screen. Then at the bottom there is a line of audio jack, microUSB port, and mono speaker grill.

Meizu M6s comes with Flyme OS 6.3.1 that based on Android 7.0. As usual, the UI doesn’t have an App Drawer. All apps icons gather on the Homescreen. Well, when in Homescreen, you can swipe down for access the notification window and various shortcuts. You can also swipe up for search function. The new thing offered in M6s is its navigation button. You can choose either use three buttons as usual, or just use Super mBack single button.

The mBack button actually make M6s more simple, but you need to adapt first to avoid the confusion. The reason is this single button has multifunction. You can pressed it for Home button function and lightly touch it for back button. While for Recent Apps access you can swipe up the edge from its chin. And change from one apps to another by swipe to left or right like this. Which one is more satisfying? it depends on your preference. We actually prefer the three conventional buttons because they feel more familiar Some of the features we like about this UI are: Game Mode, Kid Space-to limit children's usage, App lock, and a built-in screen recorder that can be accessed from the notification window.

One thing that probably will be complained from this smartphone is the screen resolution that only in HD+, whereas it has 5.7 inches in dimension.
Yes, it makes the screen's density look less solid. But beyond that matter, the Meizu M6s's screen can display satisfying colors with adjustable temperature. The quality is not cheap at all. Especially in the standby mode, the screen is totally black, and make it look like more expensive smartphone. It also convenient for outdoor use.
The most interesting thing about M6s’s hardware is its antimainstream chipset. Meizu combines 3 gigabytes of RAM with the Exynos 7872 hexa-core chipset. Because it is rarely used, the performance of this chipset is somehow mysterious. As always, we find out the performance via AnTuTu Benchmark version 7.0.4. The score is 91,000 points. Then we compare it with Snapdragon 625 on Redmi 5 Plus and Helio P23 on OPPO A83, the overall score is at the same level, but Exynos 7872 has higher CPU score. So you can already imagine, the hardware in Meizu M6s is actually great. Then how about the battery? The capacity is standard, only 3,000 mAh. But the SoT was not bad, it can get 5-6 hours. And it won’t take long time to charge the battery because It already support fast charging. We record the time to charge the battery from empty to full is only about 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Somewhat above our expectations, the main camera M6s can produce satisfactory photos. The 'satisfactory' mean is the shots result are very natural. So, do not expect to get photos with superficial colors. 16 MP camera character with f/2.0 aperture in Meizu M6s is quite like an iPhone camera where the shots color is similar to the original color.

This is occur both in light and dark condition. Even when taking pictures in low light, the noise is very minimal. And photos detail remain all right. For outdoor photography, the dynamic range is also great even without HDR mode. This neat-looking photo results is match with the file size. The average photo taken by the camera M6s is 8-10 MB, which very large and hasn't been compressed yet. But note that shutter lag was not fast enough. So it is difficult to capture a burst photo. And there are no many modes in it. The most often used is absolutely Auto mode and manual mode; where we can set the shutter speed 1/8000 to 10 seconds, ISO 50-1600, exposure, white balance, and manual focus. While for selfie there is 8 MP front camera.

Meizu provides a Smart mode with 5 levels beautify and Advanced where you can enlarge eyelids and reduce chin size. Plus there is one other interesting mode i.e Funny Snap to use cute stickers in your photo. For quality, the front camera result is very oppose with its main camera; it is very poor actually. Especially when there is less light. It will be full of noise. What Meizu has offered in M6s is succesfully make us quite interested in this smartphone. Especially because M6s have a premium body, great performance, and natural camera. Hopefully this smartphone can be sold in Indonesia with price that doesn't much different from the origin country, which is only 150 EUR