Price and main characteristics.

Don't you think that Meizu's lineup is overly bloated? It is easy to get confused in such diversity, and therefore it is necessary to bring some clarity.

• Meizu M3s mini is a compact budget phone that does not pretend to be high-performance, with a diagonal of 5 inches.
• Meizu M3 Note is a mid-range phablet, diagonal - 5.5 inches.
• Meizu MX5 is a flagship phablet with an emphasis on the camera, diagonal - 5.5 inches.
• Meizu Pro 6 is a flagship smartphone with an emphasis on sound, diagonal - 5.2 inches.

The upcoming flagship phablet Meizu MX6, expected to start sales in the fall, will also be 5.5-inch with an emphasis on the camera.

Overall: if you want a normal, productive smartphone, but not an outright shovel, then there is no alternative to the Pro 6 in the Meizu lineup now or in the near future. So it goes.

Pros of Meizu Pro 6

Close to ideal workmanship

About an hour of carefully examining the smartphone at the limit of human vision. Every square centimeter of surface, every element, every joint. And guess what? Nothing. There are no flaws in it.

It feels like Meizu Pro 6 was hand-assembled by a Swiss watchmaker from Swiss parts. We took the smartphone in our hands, squeezed it and squeezed it, but this thing does not give the slightest hint of flaws in the design. Thin at just 7.25mm thick, lightweight at just 160g but extremely durable.

Protective glass Gorilla Glass 3, made using 2.5D technology, harmoniously completes the streamlined frameless profile. It seems that you have a monolithic object in your hands.

Meizu Pro 6 may look like an iPhone, but Meizu designers are still great. What are these beautiful curved lines of the antenna plugs worth, repeating the roundings of the body? The smartphone is beautiful, and there is no point in arguing with it.

Optimal size

What we started the review with is actually very important. We are concerned about Android smartphone manufacturers' over-indulgence in large 5.5-inch devices. People's hands don't seem to have increased in size in recent years. Even the average male hand doesn't always comfortably hold a typical phablet.

It is much more convenient to work with a device whose display size is in the range of 5.0–5.2 inches. Especially with one hand.

Thanks to Meizu for leaving at least one flagship with an acceptable diagonal for most people.

Convenient fingerprint scanner

The fingerprint scanner on the front is awesome. You can quickly access the contents of the device, even if the gadget is lying on the table.

It’s even more luxurious when the scanner is the surface of a mechanical button. When the screen is turned off, your finger instinctively presses the button, simultaneously turning on the smartphone and unlocking it. When the screen is working, just touch the scanner and you can use it. All this happens at the level of intuition and is very convenient.

There are no complaints about the speed and accuracy of recognition. The print is accepted from any angle.

Just one system button

In the reference Android and many other assemblies, there are, as a rule, three system buttons: “Back”, “Home” and another one responsible for the application manager. Meizu not only took advantage of the mechanical button, combining the “Back” and “Home” actions on it via touch and press, but also managed to get rid of the separate application manager button, replacing it with a simple and intuitive gesture - swipe from the bottom of the screen. After such an unusual experience, Apple's approach with one button on the front of the smartphone seems much more obvious and convenient.

Perfectly smooth operation

Meizu Pro 6 is so responsive and smooth that after a while the brain begins to perceive the interface and system as something alive. Probably, the newest 10-core chip shouldn’t work any other way, but this is exactly the monster installed inside the smartphone.

Helio X25, 10 cores: four Cortex A53 cores with a frequency of 1.4 GHz, four Cortex A53 cores with 2 GHz and two more Cortex A72 cores with 2.5 GHz. With support for Mali T880 graphics, 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM and fast eMMC 5.1 flash memory (32 or 64 GB), the result is power that is more than enough not only for perfectly smooth operation of the system and applications, but also for many top games launched with graphics turned up to maximum.

Rational energy consumption

Helio X25 is not only productive, but also energy efficient due to the so-called three-cluster architecture. When running heavy resource-intensive applications, simple tasks continue to be processed by the first cluster, and the additional load is distributed between the second and third clusters. In the absence of heavy tasks, only the first cluster works, and the rest are turned off. The result is consistently sufficient performance with more rational use of charge.

All these tricky algorithms are difficult to understand in words, but easy to notice in real work. With a battery capacity of only 2,560 mAh, the smartphone lasts 40 hours in the “take it out, do something and put it away” mode.

In a more active scenario (30 minutes of calls, four hours of 4G use, eight hours of Wi-Fi, an hour of Google Music and YouTube, several photos), the smartphone lasted 15 hours. In real life, this means being able to go out early in the morning to run errands with a full battery and return home late in the evening with about 15-20% battery charge.

To put it simply, Meizu Pro 6 is guaranteed to last a day with moderate use (without getting stuck in Pokémon GO), and no one expects more from a modern productive smartphone. That is, of course, they are waiting, but so far everything depends on the limitations of lithium-polymer batteries.

Very nice Flyme

Meizu Pro 6 runs on the latest Android 6 Marshmallow, on top of which the Flyme shell is installed. Unlike its more publicized colleagues, Meizu does not load its devices with a bunch of useless software.

In this case, there is a minimum set of pre-installed applications to perform the most pressing tasks (alarm clock, calendar, notepad, video, music, explorer, etc.), as well as a cool comprehensive tool “Security Center” to keep the software component of the device in good shape.

In addition to the built-in antivirus, managing security settings and application permissions, the tool allows you to clean your smartphone’s RAM of junk in one tap, check applications for gluttony in terms of traffic and battery consumption, and generally optimize battery use.

Flyme is also trained in other small but useful tricks. For example, to open the notification curtain, you don’t have to swipe from the very top of the screen. The system recognizes the gesture anywhere on the display.

Such obvious things, but not implemented in default Android, certainly add convenience to Flyme.

Music lover's happiness

Meizu Pro 6 has a Cirrus Logic CS43L36 Hi-Fi converter inside, and it makes the sound magical. Naturally, to fully unlock the potential of this DAC, you will need at least somewhat normal headphones (at least the same HD50, if you don’t mind wearing large headphones on the street). You shouldn’t overestimate the capabilities of the converter and hope that with its help a no-name “something” for $2 will suddenly sound like Audio-Technica. Even the built-in speaker of the smartphone is supported by a dedicated third-generation NXP Smart PA chip.

It would seem, why separate hardware for this tweeter? But it is there because Meizu Pro 6 is a music flagship.

Decent cameras and flash

The front camera of Meizu Pro 6 is simply wonderful. The five-megapixel sensor, combined with enhancement software, produces excellent images even in less-than-optimal lighting. Instead of unnecessary words, we invite you to look at these wonderful selfies.

It is important that to take such pictures you do not need to configure anything, that is, the camera takes pictures straight out of the box.

As the main camera, Meizu Pro 6 uses a high-quality 21-megapixel Sony IMX230 sensor with improved PDAF autofocus and a powerful two-color ring flash as an assistant in low light conditions. It is protected by Gorilla Glass 3.

When testing the main camera, we encountered some problems outdoors. In automatic mode, the smartphone did not want to focus on a person in the shadows. Perhaps this is due to the excess light in the background? We hope that knowledgeable photographers will explain the reason in the comments.

When photographing indoors, no problems were observed, and you can evaluate the quality of the images yourself.

The smartphone shoots video with a resolution of up to 4K and supports slow motion mode.

Pressure detection and normal screen

Meizu made its own 3D Touch and called it 3D Press. The technology works in exactly the same way and allows you to trigger an alternative action using an enhanced tap on an element. True, this feature currently only works with shortcuts to native Meizu applications and, in fact, does not provide anything other than quick access to the main functions of supported applications.

Will this technology develop on Android? It is unknown, but without Google support, 3D Press functionality will remain limited. Will third-party developers add to their apps just to make Meizu Pro 6 users feel happier? Unknown.

In general, for now 3D Press is more of a bonus for “playing around” and catching up with Apple, rather than a serious function implemented at the system level.

We're tired of writing the same things about the same displays, but we have to. It seems that SuperAMOLED from Samsung is now installed in every second smartphone, Meizu Pro 6 is no exception. There is the same brutally bright, but not very reliable in terms of color rendering, 5.2-inch AMOLED screen with Full HD resolution (1,920 × 1,080 pixels, 423 ppi).

Those who are accustomed to this type of display rejoice, and those who are not yet accustomed to it get used to it and also begin to rejoice.

Fast charging via USB-C

Increased battery charging speed of Meizu Pro 6 is provided by mCharge 3.0 technology. In practice, the smartphone reaches 100% in 60 minutes, and when the current charge is low, replenishment occurs at a speed of 25% in 10 minutes.

Please note that USB-C is still quite rare. If you forget the cord at home, you will most likely not find someone who will help you out with their charger.

Service and support in Russia

Meizu has an official representative office in Russia, that is, service centers in all major cities and accompanying legal guarantees for users. If something happens to your smartphone, you will not be left alone with your sadness.

Those who want to save more and buy a smartphone directly from China should remember this important point: “MEIZU does not provide an international warranty option; smartphones intended for the Chinese domestic market are not serviced in Russia and do not have service support.”

Cons of Meizu Pro 6

The 10-core Helio isn't really very gaming-ready

If heavy 3D games are the only thing you are buying a smartphone for, then it is better to look towards models based on other chips.

No memory card slot

Another flagship that shot itself in the foot with the lack of a hybrid slot with the ability to exchange one SIM card for a memory card.

If you have a version of the smartphone with 64 GB of memory, this is not so scary, but still.

No NFC

Those who like to pay for purchases in supermarkets with their smartphones pass by.

No water protection

In the description of the smartphone there is no mention of dust and moisture resistance. You won't be able to swim with Meizu Pro 6.

Specifications Meizu Pro 6

Dimensions	147.7 × 70.8 × 7.25 mm
Weight	160 g
Battery	2,560 mAh
CPU	Helio X25, 10 cores: Cortex A53, 1.4 GHz - 4; Cortex A53, 2.0 GHz - 4; Cortex A72, 2.5 GHz - 2
Graphic arts	Mali T880
RAM	4 GB, LPDDR3
Internal storage	32/64 GB, eMMC 5.1
Sound	Cirrus Logic CS43L36, third generation NXP Smart PA
Display	5.2 inches, SuperAMOLED, Full HD (1,920 × 1,080), Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Front-camera	5 MP, f/2.0
Main camera	21.16 MP, f/2.2, PDAF, laser focusing, dual-color flash, Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Fingerprint's scanner	mTouch 2.1
Connection	2G GSM / GPRS / EDGE (900 / 1 800 / 1 900 MHz) 3G WCDMA / HSPA+ (900 / 2 100 MHz) 4G FDD-LTE (1 800 / 2 100 / 2 600 MHz) 3G TD-SCDMA 4G TD-LTE Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Bluetooth 4.0 GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS

Total

The official price of the Meizu Pro 6 model with 32 GB of memory in Russia is 33 thousand rubles. The 64 GB option will cost 36 thousand. It seems to us that in this case Meizu slightly bent the price, crossing the psychological barrier of 30 thousand rubles. If the younger Pro 6 was literally 3 thousand cheaper, the purchase decision would be much easier.

However, even at the current price, the user receives top-end hardware with a huge reserve for the future, powerful, energy-efficient, ideal for connoisseurs of smooth system operation, encased in an impeccably manufactured and assembled case. Photographers should probably wait for the MX6, but for audiophiles and simply lovers of high-quality sound, there is simply no alternative to the Pro 6 with a dedicated Hi-Fi converter. In general, Meizu has not betrayed itself, delighting us with another great smartphone at an affordable price.

The life hacker thanks the official representative office of Meizu in Russia for providing the device for testing.

Sound is the first thing I want to start this review with. Initially, the Meizu company was engaged in the production of high-quality MP3 players, so all Meizu flagship smartphones have a separate chip that is responsible for the sound quality of music in headphones. For the purity of the test, the site compared the Pro 6 with such giants as Marshall London (a smartphone from a famous music brand), LG G5 SE and Samsung Galaxy S7.

All compositions were listened to on expensive monitor headphones. The undisputed leader is Meizu Pro 6. It has the most pleasant bass, natural sound, and thanks to the emphasis on mid frequencies, the most pleasant vocals. It remains to wait for the LG G5 to go on sale to compare the sound quality of the Korean with the module from Bang&Olufsen.

If you are a music lover, then Meizu Pro 6 is a great option

The screen is excellent

The screen in Meizu Pro 6 can easily be called one of the best. There is a 5.2-inch Full-HD Super AMOLED matrix with support for 3D Press (analogous to 3D Touch). The screen recognizes pressure, just like the iPhone 6S. Without any doubt, this is very cool, but third-party application manufacturers do not yet support this feature. Therefore, you can appreciate the beauty of 3D Press only with standard pre-installed applications.

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I pressed the dialer harder and a window pops up, offering to immediately call selected contacts. Very comfortably! We hope that third-party developers will not stand aside and promptly update their applications.

The fact that they didn’t “shove” QHD resolution here is a separate plus. If you are not a fan of virtual reality, then you will not notice the difference between Full-HD and QHD (like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and LG G5).

The viewing angles are maximum, so correspondence on the subway will be available to the entire carriage. And you can watch videos comfortably in a large company. The brightness range of the flagship is very large. It is pleasant to use a smartphone at any time of the day: be it late at night or a sunny April day. The color temperature can be set in the settings - this is definitely a plus. It’s also good that there are no frames around the screen, like in Xiaomi Mi5.

The Pro 6's screen is one of the best among the competition, and the Full-HD resolution instead of QHD is a smart decision

The designers did their best

photos

photos

photos

Compared to its predecessor, the new product has become much smaller, so using a smartphone with one hand is a pleasure. The plastic inserts on the rear panel were replaced with curved strips. This solution looks harmonious: much nicer than the same iPhone.

The metal Pro 6 will turn out to be very bold: this is especially noticeable by the new flash, which looks more like an additional camera or even a fingerprint scanner.

There are no complaints about the assembly: no crunches, no creaks. And the Home button is nice and easy to press. For example, the competitor from Xiaomi - Mi5 - has a tight and narrow button.

The Meizu shell, in my opinion, is one of the best among Android smartphones. Everything works quickly and easily. And the aforementioned Home button is very multifunctional. If you hold it down, the screen will go dark, a simple press will return you to the home screen, and a light “tap” works like the “Back” button. Very comfortably.

How powerful is it?

Comparison of Meizu Pro 6 performance with competitors in synthetic tests. The higher the number, the better.

There is no need to worry about power. The device copes with any “heavy” games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 with a solid five. During a week of use, Meizu Pro 6 never slowed down and solved all problems effortlessly. This performance is achieved thanks to the ten-core Mediatek Helio X25 chipset and 4 GB of RAM.

Although the processor is one of the top ones, it is noticeable that not everything is perfect with optimization. The device heats up noticeably, although it doesn’t burn your hand, and in some games the number of frames per second sometimes drops. I'm glad that Meizu is famous for frequent updates and long-term support for devices, so let's hope that with each update it will become a little better.

There are no problems with the quality of communication: the network does not “fall off”, and LTE reception is excellent. I really liked the fast fingerprint scanner. When the screen is on, it generally works instantly, and it recognizes the owner’s fingers quite accurately. There is no slot for a memory card: you have to choose between 32 and 64 GB versions. But there is a slot for two SIM cards and an unusual USB Type-C. Leaving the charger at home is contraindicated; it is still very difficult to find a new one - the format is not yet very widespread.

The power of Meizu Pro 6 is enough to “chop” into the heaviest toys

Not a bad camera

photos Autonomy indicators are ambiguous. The battery in Pro 6 is 2560 mAh. This is not enough for a 5.2-inch smartphone. However, thanks to the AMOLED screen, which consumes little energy, the device plays Full-HD video for 14 hours, but you can only play toys for 3-3.5 hours. In mixed mode of use (social networks, correspondence in instant messengers, Youtube, music), the device can hardly survive until the end of the day.

When compared to its competitors, the Pro 6 isn't all that bad. It turns out that the autonomy indicators of the flagship Pro 6 are average.

conclusions

Meizu Pro 6 is a smartphone with top specifications, an excellent screen, better sound in headphones, a nice design and a good camera. In Russia, the device will cost approximately 35 thousand rubles for the initial version, which is significantly more expensive than in China. But even this price tag is not bad compared to competitors from A-brands, because for the Samsung Galaxy S7 you need to overpay 10-15 thousand rubles. Of course, the Korean is more interesting in almost everything, but a third of the price is serious, besides, Meizu has better sound, and Press Touch technology is still a rare toy in Android.

LG G5 SE is another alternative to the firmware. It has 3 GB of RAM (versus 4 for Meizu), worse battery life and a dimmer screen (but more pixels). Among the advantages of LG is a wide-angle camera and a modular design, that is, you can quickly replace the battery. But is it worth the overpayment of 10-15 thousand rubles?

A competitor from China, Xiaomi Mi5, costs significantly less, about 25 thousand rubles in Russia, but it does not have an official guarantee, its battery life, firmware, and sound are worse. But the processor power is noticeably higher: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 is a significant advantage.

pros

• Interesting design
• Top characteristics
• Excellent screen with pressure recognition
• Best sound quality on headphones
• Nice shell

Minuses

• In Russia the official price is too high
• Short working time
• The camera is inferior to competitors

It’s not surprising to get confused in the Meizu smartphone family - the company doesn’t have a flagship as such. Now this proud title is shared by devices of the MX and Pro series - they are close in both price and characteristics. The main family difference of the Pro, which is worth mentioning, is the serious DAC used in the latest version, which gives the smartphone a kind of audiophile flair. Otherwise, the differences “float”. For example, Pro 5 had a larger display diagonal than MX5, while Pro 6, on the contrary, had a smaller one. Pro 5 carried the Samsung Exynos system-on-chip, and Pro 6 received the Mediatek platform, like the MX5 at one time. Only new. And so on - in the “positioning” column for Meizu smartphones it is “everything is complicated.” However, this does not prevent the gadgets of this company from remaining very attractive in terms of characteristics and price.

The main features of the Meizu Pro 6, which I would like to mention at the beginning, are its compactness, which is atypical for a Chinese gadget, and a moderate display diagonal of 5.2 inches, a 3D Touch pressure detection system on the screen (about the same as on the latest iPhones) and an unusual ring flash. A very pleasing compact smartphone packed with technology. But, of course, you can’t call it cheap either.

⇡ Specifications

	Meizu Pro 6	Meizu MX4 Pro	Xiaomi Mi5	Huawei P9	Sony Xperia X
Display	5.2 inches, AMOLED, 1920 × 1080 pixels, 424 ppi, capacitive multi-touch, 3D Touch	5.5 inches, IPS, 2560 × 2536 pixels, 542.8 ppi, capacitive multi-touch	5.15 inches, IPS, 1920 × 1080 pixels, 427.75 ppi, capacitive multi-touch	5.2 inches, IPS, 1920 × 1080 pixels, 424 ppi, capacitive multi-touch	5 inches, IPS, 1920 × 1080 pixels, 441 ppi, capacitive multi-touch
Protective glass	Corning Gorilla Glass 4	Corning Gorilla Glass 3	Corning Gorilla Glass 4	Corning Gorilla Glass 4	Yes, manufacturer unknown
CPU	Mediatek MT6797T Helio X25 (two ARM Cortex-A72 cores, 2.5 GHz + four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 2 GHz + 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.4 GHz)	Samsung Exynos 5430 (four ARM Cortex-A15 cores, 2 GHz + four ARM Cortex-A7 cores, 1.5 GHz)	Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996 (dual Kryo cores, 1.8 GHz + dual Kryo cores, 1.36 GHz)	Huawei Kirin 955 (four ARM Cortex-A57 cores, 2.5 GHz + four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.8 GHz)	Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 (two ARM Cortex-A72 cores, 1.8 GHz + four ARM Cortex-A53 cores, 1.4 GHz)
Graphics controller	Mali-T880 MP4, 900 MHz	Mali T628 MP6, 600MHz	Adreno 530, 624 MHz	Mali-T880 MP4, 900 MHz	Adreno 510, 550 MHz
RAM	4 GB	3 GB	3 GB	3/4 GB	3 GB
Flash memory	32/64 GB	16/32/64 GB	32/64 GB	32/64 GB	32/64 GB
Memory card support	No	No	No	Eat	Eat
Connectors	USB Type-C, 3.5 mm minijack	microUSB, 3.5 mm minijack	USB Type-C, 3.5 mm minijack	USB Type-C, 3.5 mm minijack	microUSB, 3.5 mm minijack
SIM cards	Two nanoSIM	One microSIM	Two nanoSIM	One nanoSIM/two nanoSIM	One nanoSIM/two nanoSIM
Cellular connection 2G		GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
Cellular 3G		HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz	HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz	HSDPA 800 / 850 / 900 /1700 / 1800 / 1900 / 2100	HSDPA 800 / 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1800 / 1900 / 2100
Cellular 4G	LTE Cat. 6 (up to 300 Mbit/s): bands 1, 3, 7, 38, 39, 40, 41	LTE Cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbit/s): bands 1, 3, 7	LTE Cat. 12 (up to 600 Mbit/s): bands 1, 3, 7, 38, 39, 40, 41	LTE Cat. 6 (up to 300 Mbit/s): bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 26, 28, 38, 39, 40	LTE Cat. 6 (up to 300 Mbit/s): bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 19, 20, 26, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41
WiFi	802.11a/b/g/n/ac	802.11a/b/g/n/ac	802.11a/b/g/n/ac	802.11a/b/g/n/ac	802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth	4.1	4.0	4.2	4.2	4.2
NFC	No	Eat	Eat	Eat	Eat
Navigation	GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou	GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou	GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou	GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou	GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou
Sensors	Illumination, proximity,	Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope/pedometer, magnetometer (digital compass)	Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass), barometer	Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope, magnetometer (digital compass)	Illumination, proximity, accelerometer/gyroscope/pedometer, magnetometer (digital compass), barometer
Fingerprint's scanner	Eat	Eat	Eat	Eat	Eat
Main camera	21 MP, ƒ/2.2, hybrid (phase + laser) autofocus, LED flash (10 diodes), 4K video recording	20.7 MP, ƒ/2.2, autofocus, LED flash, 4K video recording	16 MP, ƒ/2.0, phase detection autofocus, LED flash, 4-axis optical stabilization, 4K video recording	Leica, dual module, 12 MP, ƒ/2.2, phase detection autofocus, LED flash, 4K video recording	23 MP, ƒ/2.0, hybrid autofocus, LED flash, Full HD video recording
Front-camera	5 MP, fixed focus	5 MP, fixed focus	4 MP, fixed focus	8 MP, fixed focus	13 MP, fixed focus
Nutrition	Non-removable battery 9.72 Wh (2560 mAh, 3.8 V)	Non-removable 11.78 Wh battery (3100 mAh, 3.8 V)		Non-removable 11.4 Wh battery (3000 mAh, 3.8 V)	Non-removable battery 9.96 Wh (2620 mAh, 3.8 V)
Size	147.7 × 70.8 × 7.3 mm	150 × 77 × 9 mm	145 × 69 × 7.3 mm	145 × 70.9 × 7 mm	142.7 × 69.2 × 7.9 mm
Weight	160 grams	158 grams	129 grams	144 grams	153 grams
Housing protection	No	No	No	No	No
operating system	Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Flyme 5.6 shell	Android 4.4.4 KitKat, Flyme 4.0 shell	Android 6.0 Marshmallow, MIUI 7.0 shell	Android 6.0 Marshmallow, own EMUI 4.1 shell	Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Sony Xperia shell
Current price	32,990 rubles (32 GB version), 35,990 rubles (64 GB version)	Out of stock	26,000 rubles (32 GB version), 32,000 rubles (64 GB version)	from 39,990 rubles	39,990 rubles

Meizu Pro 6 - information about the filling according to the CPU Z application

⇡ Appearance and ergonomics

The history of Apple imitation is a thing of the past - first of all, the company from Cupertino itself, which, starting with the iPhone 6, itself jumped on the wave of large smartphones with smoothed edges. Meizu, like many others, has been making similar gadgets for a long time. Now you can look for similarities in some details - two screws near the power connector, for example... No, this is still too far-fetched, Meizu Pro 6 is quite independent in terms of design, even if it does not have a recognizable appearance at first glance.

Its most characteristic features: an oval multifunction button on the front panel, plastic wiring for antennas of complex shape, a large circle of a ring flash on the back and a tiny circle of the front camera lens, indistinguishable from a light sensor. The remaining elements are designed in the spirit of the times: a metal body, an almost frameless display, and the main speaker placed on the bottom edge. The gadget looks very modern and very nice.

The edge of the lens, as again often happens, protrudes slightly above the body - sometimes it even seems that this is no longer a forced measure that engineers took when they were unable to place a large camera module in a thin body entirely, but a tribute to fashion.

Meizu Pro 6, on the right side there is a volume key and a power button, slightly recessed into the body

Dimensions Meizu Pro 6 - 147.7 × 70.8 × 7.3 mm, weight - 160 grams. It is quite compact, easily fits into any pocket and is great for one-handed operation - the latter can generally be called a key trend for 2016. And you know, the refusal to turn everything into phablets (even their names are stupid) is very pleasing. At the same time, Pro 6 weighs more than all its competitors, but not so much that it somehow affects the ease of use.

Controlling Meizu Pro 6 will take some getting used to - if you've never used Meizu before, of course. The proprietary Flyme shell does not imply the use of the “Back” and “Context Menu” soft keys, but it can distinguish between several degrees of pressing the central hardware key. A full press takes the user to the main menu (a typical “Home” scenario), a light touch sends the user to the previous screen. The list of open applications is called up by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. In principle, it’s nothing complicated, but it’s not like traditional Android, so Meizu’s features may turn some people off.

The fingerprint scanner is located in the same Home key. It works very quickly and confidently - as confidently as a capacitive sensor can work, which has incurable flaws in recognizing a damaged fingerprint. As soon as you scratch your finger slightly, the sensor begins to give a very high percentage of failures. However, this is a problem with all modern scanners used in smartphones - it will only be solved by a collective transition to an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, if that ever happens. If everything is fine with your finger, Meizu Pro 6 will recognize it instantly. There is no special functionality associated with this - just regular unlocking.

In general, Meizu saved on the hardware (with the exception of the cool 4 GB of RAM), which is why the new flagship actually works less stable than the old one. The results in the benchmarks are encouraging, but we managed to get them on the sixth attempt. Because Pro 6 immediately showed 60 thousand in Antutu and 4700 in Geekbench. You had to wait until the smartphone cooled down completely (and it is usually hot), set the productivity mode in the settings and hope for luck. There were no such hassles with all the other models in the table.

And in terms of speed when heating, it even loses to its predecessor. Anyone who is convinced that the numbers in benchmarks are self-indulgence will not notice the difference, because there is enough power for a Full HD display and current games. But the Helio X25 was and remains an unbalanced processor, the only advantage of which is its modest price for smartphone manufacturers.

Software

The Flyme branded shell is a charismatic thing. In the sense that it leaves no one indifferent. In the case of Chinese revisions, it can ruin the nerves of the smartphone owner with crooked implantation of Google services and incomplete Russification, which will have to be carried out by force. Meizu can also be upset by the clumsy update policy of Android itself - the Chinese argue that they first need to update Flyme and “make it beautiful for users,” and compatibility with the latest Google bells and whistles will wait. But for now there is nothing to complain about at all - our smartphone has Android 6.0 and Flyme version 5, and such a tandem will not be outdated for a long time. Among the innovations - pop-up notifications about calls or messages have appeared - it has become more convenient to respond to SMS or calls.

Meizu Pro 6 fits comfortably in one hand. In design, it is almost no different from its predecessors, but nevertheless looks stylish and attractive.

The dimensions of the smartphone are 147.7 × 70.8 × 7.5 mm, weight – 164 grams. So, it is slightly more compact than LG G5, but weighs about the same. Meizu Pro 6 is pleasant to the touch, its body is completely non-slip and therefore is unlikely to “slip” out of your hand.

In terms of design, this is a typical representative of the Meizu Pro line, with a metal body and screen. From the front, the smartphone is similar to both its predecessors and the iPhone 6 Plus, except that the “Chinese” has slightly narrower frames and a slightly different shape of the main button. Thanks to this, the ratio of screen area to total surface of Meizu Pro 6 was higher than that of Apple phones - 71.6% versus 67.7%. Hidden in the Home key is a fairly fast and sensitive fingerprint scanner. True, it does not always work the first time, mainly due to its small area. In the same Huawei P9 Lite, the scanner is almost twice as large, you will definitely hit the right areas of your fingertips. As is now fashionable, the edges of the glass on the screen are slightly curved - this is what is commonly called 2.5D glass. It looks stylish, but is even more reminiscent of iPhones.

The aluminum on the body is interrupted only on the rear panel, which is recognizable thanks to a pair of unusually shaped plastic inserts. They look like curves bending towards the edges of the phone, it looks fresh and unusual. All corners and ends are neatly smoothed, the camera only slightly protrudes from the body. Directly under the lens you can see an unusual ring of LED backlights - it looks original, but, in our opinion, not very nice, maybe even the opposite. As mentioned above, the body is made of metal and is of very high quality, practically does not bend, does not creak or play anywhere.

Meizu Pro 6 can be purchased in five colors: Gray, Gold, Silver, Flames Red and Rose Gold.

Screen - 3.6

Meizu Pro 6 has a high-quality, but not perfect 5.2-inch screen with a feature in the form of pressure recognition.

The display received Full HD resolution (1920×1080 pixels) and a Super AMOLED matrix. The image on the screen is quite clear, the pixel density is 423 per inch. The screen is good in almost everything - protective glass Gorilal Glass 4, the highest contrast, wide viewing angles, and it is also easy to read in the sun. In addition, it has a fairly effective oleophobic coating, it hardly collects fingerprints and is easy to wipe off. The brightness varies from 3 to 380 cd/m2, the screen will not dazzle in the dark and looks quite bright. But the color accuracy turned out to be average for smartphones, about 4 units (we expect no more than two from flagships). The image on the screen has some kind of bluish-green tint. This can be partially cured by manually adjusting the color temperature in the settings (set it to “warmer”), although the manufacturer could do this on their own.

The most unusual thing about the new product is support for 3D Press, an analogue of the 3D Touch function (pressure recognition, like in). Moreover, you can adjust the trigger strength yourself (strong, normal, soft), and also turn it off. This function works the same way as on Apple devices - it can be compared to right-clicking on a laptop. The main problem is that Android does not yet support such a function, that is, using 3D Press you can only control a set of pre-installed applications in the original Flyme firmware. And these possibilities are not at all impressive.

Camera

Meizu Pro 6 shoots at the flagship level and can easily replace a budget camera.

The cameras of Meizu Pro 6 and its predecessor Pro 5 are identical - the same Sony IMX 230 sensor (size 1/2.4") of 21 MP and a front camera of 5 MP. The phone combines phase and laser focusing systems. In addition, an unusual feature is a ring of 10 LED illumination under the lens, they are used as a flash when shooting. But if focusing really works perfectly, then you shouldn’t expect anything unusual from the flash; it’s no worse or better than on other smartphones (because it’s not the number of LEDs that determines its quality).

The camera interface is simple and clear, similar in appearance to that used in other Android smartphones. As expected, the camera has an HDR mode, panorama shooting and a separate mode for macro photography. The manual settings options are quite wide; you can adjust many parameters:

• ISO (100 to 1600)
• focus (from macro to infinity)
• exposure (−3 to +3)
• shutter speed (from 1/1000 to 20 seconds)
• saturation (low, medium, high)
• contrast (low, medium, high)
• white balance (5 options).

Not such a wide range, only the shutter speed range is impressive. The smartphone takes pictures with high quality, but almost the same as its predecessor. Nevertheless, this is enough to replace your point-and-shoot camera or create a high-quality selfie. In our opinion, in daytime photos, Meizu Pro 6 is almost not behind leaders like the Galaxy S7, but is inferior to them in evening shooting. As a rule, the camera focuses quickly and correctly, shows high detail and sets the white balance correctly. The only things that could be corrected would be the slight “noisiness” of the pictures, the extremely long HDR mode and the slight blurriness at the edges of the frame, which is often found in cameras with such a large number of megapixels.

The main camera can shoot high-quality video up to 4K resolution. What we didn't like is that the tracking focus is too sensitive when shooting; it can suddenly jump from object to object and ultimately ruin the video.

Photo from camera Meizu Pro 6 - 4.1

Photo in HDR format from Meizu Pro 6 - 4.1 camera

Photos from the front camera of Meizu Pro 6 - 4.1

Working with text - 5.0

On Meizu Pro 6, you can initially choose one of two keyboards: your own (system) or TouchPal. Both are quite convenient, but TouchPal likes to annoy you with a bunch of pop-up messages and prompts you to update or adjust something. The native keyboard has markings for additional characters (it disappears somewhere in the Russian layout). And TouchPal seems to have everything, including continuous input (Swype). The capabilities of this keyboard are wide, for example, you can adjust the size and design of the keyboard, there is even a speedometer to display your typing speed.

Internet - 3.0

Meizu Pro 6 uses a fairly advanced and convenient proprietary browser. It is somewhat reminiscent of Safari on the iPhone 6 in terms of the layout of the controls, even the reading mode is almost the same. Moreover, the icon for switching to it looks almost the same and is located in the same place - next to the address bar of the page. In terms of functionality, the browser on Meizu Pro 6 is not much different from mobile Safari, except that there is a transition to the full version of the site, a night mode and a “landscape only” mode for viewing pages. The only thing missing is that the text automatically fits the width of the screen.

Communications - 5.0

Meizu Pro 6 received a typical flagship set of wireless communications:

• high-speed dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 (a/b/g/n/ac) with Wi-Fi Direct
• Bluetooth v4.1 with A2DP profile
• fast LTE Cat.6 (up to 300 Mbit/s), available on both SIM cards
• A-GPS with GLONASS and Beidou support
• NFC chip.

As has become fashionable lately, the phone does not have an FM radio. There is also no slot for a memory card, although the predecessor had one. The smartphone supports two NanoSIM cards, and instead of the usual MicroUSB connector on the body there is a newer USB Type-C with fast charging capabilities (like the Huawei Nexus 6P).

Multimedia - 4.4

Meizu Pro 6 showed good results in terms of sound quality and support for audio and video codecs. The smartphone calmly “chewed” all the videos, except for a couple of test ones in MKV format. Even audio was played in AC-3, which is not typical for mobile devices.

Meizu Pro 6 comes pre-installed with its own, nice-looking music player with an equalizer (adjusting sound by frequency, works only with headphones). The video player turned out to be quite simple, there is only rewind and volume adjustment by “swiping” across the screen and a viewing mode in a separate window on top of the desktop or other applications.

Performance - 4.1

Meizu Pro 6 works quickly and smoothly when solving everyday tasks, but in heavy games the frame refresh rate frankly sags. This is a little sad for hardware that claims to be top-end.

The new 10-core MediaTek Helio 25X chipset is responsible for the performance of the new product - two cores operate at a frequency of 2.5 GHz, four cores - up to 2 GHz, and the remaining four - up to 1.4 GHz. The amount of RAM is impressive - 4 GB (like the HTC 10). In general, the smartphone works quickly and smoothly when solving most tasks, but in popular games like Asphalt 8 and NOVA 3 the picture openly jerks. In various synthetic performance tests, it is quite comparable to other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S7 or LG G5. But in graphics tests, the new product is already noticeably inferior to most of them and shares positions with Huawei P9 and other solutions with the same chipset. It's funny that although Meizu Pro 6 received higher scores in tests than Meizu Pro 5, it is still inferior to it in 3D tasks. This means that in some heavy games the new product will be worse than its predecessor. As for the scores in the benchmarks themselves, they are as follows:

• Geekbench 3 - 6401, slightly higher than Huawei P9 (after all, 10 cores are rated at once)
• AnTuTu 6.2 – 95430, higher than 2015 Android flagships, for example Motorola Moto X Force
• Ice Strom Unlimited from 3DMark - 15916, comparable to the LG Nexus 5X, the “flagship for the budget conscious,” or the Galaxy Note 4, an older phablet.

The body of the smartphone does not heat up that much during operation - after half an hour of racing, its temperature did not exceed 39.5 degrees.

Battery - 3.5

The operating time of Meizu Pro 6 turned out to be average, even mediocre, which is not what you expect from a flagship model. Although in some individual tests it showed very good results.

The smartphone received a non-removable battery with a capacity of 2560 mAh - an average figure for its diagonal, but low for hardware that claims to be top-end. In the video test (watching HD video at maximum brightness in flight mode), Meizu Pro 6 performed well thanks to the economical AMOLED display matrix - 10 and a half hours. This is an above-average result, comparable to the long-lasting Lenovo Vibe P1m. But in music player mode, the phone, roughly speaking, failed, having worked for only 39 hours - a result typical for a budget model like the Microsoft Lumia 550. In other tests, Meizu Pro 6 showed good times. For example, an hour of battery benchmark work from GeekBench 3 dropped the battery by 12% (almost like the Huawei P9), shooting a 10-minute Full HD video - only 5%. In Asphalt 8, the phone was already discharged quickly - 30% in an hour, the result is slightly worse than average. In daily use, the Meizu Pro 6 was enough for us for a day at most, although sometimes it could run out of power in just half a day of fairly intensive use (Wi-Fi on, calls, downloading a large number of applications, active testing).

The manufacturer claims support for fast charging, but the kit comes with a simple 2A adapter. For such current and battery capacity, it took a long time to charge the smartphone, a little more than two hours.

Memory - 3.5

You can choose the Meiza Pro 6 smartphone in two versions: with 32 or 64 GB of permanent memory. In the 32 GB version, 24.9 GB is available to the user. For most users, this will be enough unless you shoot a lot of 4K video. For some unknown reason, the manufacturer forgot to add a slot for a memory card, although its predecessor had one. Apparently, they were so carried away by copying the iPhone that they even adopted its disadvantages - it will not be possible to expand the original volume.

Peculiarities

Meizu Pro 6 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow and the proprietary Flyme 5.2 OS interface. It is not yet clear whether the phone will eventually receive an update to Android 7.

What’s special about the smartphone is the interface, pressure recognition on the screen, an AMOLED display, a fingerprint scanner and a ring of LEDs for illumination on the back of the case. The proprietary Flyme OS is compared to iOS, but in appearance it still looks more like Android, with some rather childish-looking icons (in the spirit of Alcatel). What this interface has in common with iOS is, rather, the control method - there is only one control key, so the manufacturer draws back and forth moves on top in the form of arrows and pointers, as on the iPhone 6s and any other Apple phones. The proprietary feature with pressing force on the screen looks interesting, but there is simply nowhere to use it. Even on iPhones, they don’t really use it, and it’s not worth expecting that developers will waste time on this feature for the sake of one Meizu Pro 6 (with a couple of other Android smartphones, for example, Huawei P9 Plus).