ASUS Zenfone 3S Max ( ZC521TL) – Review – The Duracell of Mobiles!

Asus has lauched a new variant of their Zenfone Max, the Zenfone 3S Max (X00GD). Mobiles with huge batteries seems to be everyone’s favorite. About 2 years ago, mobiles with such huge batteries, would be either too big or low on performance. Gone are those days. The Asus Zenfone 3S Max is a compact mobile and yet with a gigantic 5000 mAh battery. I have been using this mobile for about 2 weeks now and here is my thoughts on the Zenfone 3S Max.

Asus Zenfone Max started off a big revolution among the battery centric mobiles. Before the Zenfone Max, mobiles with large batteries used to be bulky and slow in performance. But now they are fast and slim like any other mobile. Zenfone did not stop with the Max and they kept introducing new mobiles every few months. The 3rd generation of the Max mobiles, Zenfone 3 Max, had two variants and now they have got a sibling. The Asus Zenfone 3S Max. Asus has sent us the review unit a few weeks ago and I have been using it as my daily driver since then. Let’s us read further to find out if the mobile is worth buying.

Design

The Asus Zenfone 3S Max looks nothing like its predecessors. It has a full metal body with a mildly thick profile to house the massive 5000 mAh battery. The back of the mobile has a 13 MP camera with a single LED flash. There is no laser focus sensor. The bottom has a micro USB port and mono speaker housing. The top has 3.5 mm audio jack. The buttons are at the right side and the hybrid sim slot is on the left side. The display on the front is a 5.2 inch IPS LCD panel and it has 2.5D curved edges. It does not have any branded glass protection. The fingerprint sensor is at the bottom, but the navigation keys are onscreen. The design is impressive and the mobile is handy and comfortable to hold in the hand. It feels and looks premium.

Display

The 5.2 inch IPS LCD panel is capable of 720p resolution. Though it is a 720p display, the images and pictures are crisp and clear. The screen is bright and the color levels are perfect. It has very good viewing angles. Asus has not included the usual app to control the screen color, but it still has blue light filter. Adaptive brightness is fast to react and adjust the brightness of the display according to the ambient light. 3s Max has got a very good display, but I wish it had a full HD display.

Hardware and Performance

Asus 3S Max is powered by a MediaTek 6750 octa core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz. It has ARM Mali T860 for the GPU and it has 3 GB of RAM. The 32 GB of internal storage can be expanded with SD card. The mobile is running on the latest version of Android 7.0. The performance of the mobile is good for a budget battery mobile. The hardware is just about able to cope up with Nougat and Zen UI. It occasionally lags and shows signs of struggle to open up apps or navigate the UI. The 3 GB RAM is good to keep the tasks running, but it is not able to prevent android from closing resource heavy applications when pushed to background. In a way it is good, because the system knows its potential and keeps the memory free for important applications running on the foreground. The mobile also manages to handle resource heavy games. Asphalt 8 game on medium graphics mode was smoother than in heavy graphics mode. Overall, the performance does not delight, but it depends on how you use your mobile. If you are an average user with battery life as your primary concern and you don’t use many apps or games, you will find the performance of the Zenfone 3S Max, just right for you.

Fingerprint sensor is a mechanical button on the front. It unlocks the mobile from lock screen and not from sleep screen. Fingerprint sensor is fast and accurate. Its placement is also convenient. But it must have been a capacitive button rather than a mechanical button. Also the menu keys are on-screen. I am used to having android menu keys next to the home button. The fingerprint sensor also doubles as a home button, but it does not have the menu keys flanking it. It is a matter of getting used to, but still, I wish it was taken care of. The mobile has single speaker on the bottom and it can easily get muffled when you are holding it while watching media or playing games. But the speaker is loud and clear. The mobile is 4G VoLTE capable. Telephony was good and it had no problem with network latching. It has FM radio as well.

Camera

Asus has masted the camera department. This mobile, though an entry-level device has amazing camera performance. It has 13 MP sensor on the back and 8 MP sensor for the selfies. The camera UI is the same we have seen in any Asus Zen UI powered mobile. It is simple and yet it has a bunch of features and interesting modes. Along with Manual controls, it offers a bunch of modes like HDR, Beautification, Super resolution, Children, Low light, Night mode, Depth of focus, panorama, GIF animation, miniature, time rewind, etc…

The quality of images is very good. The images have the right saturation and color reproduction capabilities. It has the right exposure and balanced contrast. focusing was fast, though the mobile does not have laser focus sensor. It performs good in low light as well. Thanks to Asus Pixel Master algorithm the mobile is a good performance under all light conditions. The selfies has good detail and brightness under good daylight, but performs below average under low light. I am delighted with the mobile’s camera performance and happy to see that Asus has become the zen master of photography in all mobile segments.

Software

Zenfone 3S Max is the first mobile from Asus to run on Android Nougat. But still it is heavily customized by Zen UI. There are many pre-installed applications that can hamper the performance of the mobile. Android Nougat gives a bunch of new features to the Zen UI. The settings page has now got a whole new visual design and user experience. Notification panel has notifications stacked by groups. The font size can be changed to suit your need. The quick toggles on the notifications has also got a visual overhaul. Apart from the visual extravagance, Nougat does bring about stability and performance to 3S Max.

Here is a mega list of Tutorials and Guides to do various actions on the Asus Zenfone 3S Max.

Battery

Most of you are here to read about the battery performance of this mobile. Asus Zenfone Max had 5000 mAh and now it has passed on that power to the 3S as well. On an average the mobile gives me 10 hours of screen on time. On my PC Mark test, the mobile lasted for over 15 hours. It can also do reverse charging for any other devices. I find this feature handy to recharge my bluetooth headset or fitness band. But the mobile does not have fast charging and it takes about 3 hours to charge from 10 to 100%. But once charged, the Asus Zenfone 3S Max goes on and on and on, like a Duracell.

Verdict

Asus 3S Max gives you a metal body design, decent display, good camera, latest Android version, everlasting battery and an average performance. It may not be the fastest mobile on the planet, but it has the largest battery on a 5 Inch mobile with Android Nougat out of the Box and a great camera under all light conditions. If battery and camera are your primary concerns, then the Asus Zenfone 3S Max would suit your budget. If you are looking for an all rounder within a budget, then you can extend a bit and buy Redmi Note 4 or Honor 6x. But I must say that under PC Mark battery test, the Redmi Note 4 gave me 11 hours of SOT, while the Asus Zenfone 3S Max gave me over 15 hours of SOT.

Pricing and Availability

The mobile is priced at Rs 14999 and will be available in all leading online and offline retail markets. It will be available in Black and Gold color variants. The Black looks stunning. The pricing is slightly on the higher side. The 15k market is crowded with mobiles that have huge battery life. I wish Asus has gone really aggressive and launched it at under Rs 10k, just like the original Asus Zenfone Max.

Updated: 7 Feb 2016