Phones have become cheaper to buy, and you can now find several new ones under $200. While sub $100 phones may be harder to find, ZTE believes that its new zmax pro is going to be the benchmark for this price range. The first order of business with the design is its size, which is arguably going to be the biggest deal breaker for people. This is a big phone that pushes it well into the phablet category. Unless you have larger than average hands, you’re going to be finding yourself stretching your fingers a whole lot.
Besides that, it has a pleasant design that makes it look and feel that it’s priced higher. You have a soft touch matte finish with the rear combined with a full-metal vessel, and this combo pushes it beyond the context of being cheaply made. That’s a good thing because normally, you tend to find phones in this price range to be poorly constructed and just inferior with their designs.
The phone is slapped with a giant six-inch 1080p TFT LCD display with Gorilla Glass 3. It’s nice that they offered to go with 1080p resolution just because we’d normally see 720p in other phones. It’s efficient for detailed work, plus there’s a ton of real estate to work with. However, the phone has an extremely cold color temperature of eight thousand Kelvin, which makes whites appear bluish in tone. It’s also not color accurate, as you can see in the sRGB color chart. The display just seems to have a washed-out tone.
In testing, it’s obvious that the display here, the ZTE zmax pro, isn’t quite up to snuff with the type of results we tend to see with some of the higher-priced smartphones out there. But then again, are we surprised by this? It’s no surprise that there’s a Snapdragon 617 chip and two gigabytes of RAM. This combo makes perfect sense and suffices with the basic stuff, but it’s really not suited to do things that are more intensive like gaming, where it exhibits too much choppiness to enjoy for hardcore gamers.
For $99, you get 32 gigabytes of internal storage with expansion via its microSD slot. You also have the fingerprint sensor in the back of the phone, which is an unexpected treat quite honestly, since it’s uncommon in entry-level phones. It works well and adds that extra layer of security, but it could also be programmed to open up an app, take a photo, or even answer a phone call. There are three capacitive buttons beneath the display, unfortunately, the two dots flanking the home button can’t be programmed for anything else besides acting as the back and recent apps functions.
Finally, we have the speaker grille in the back. It emits a decent volume output, but there isn’t much substance when listening to music. So for me, the single most underrated part about the handset has to be the battery life. There’s a 3,500 milliamp hour battery cell in there, and I gotta say, I’m impressed. It managed to get me at least two days of normal juice from a full charge and got to the beginning of a third day, but by then, it was pretty much gone. The recharge time is actually pretty good for given its size. It’s at 125 minutes with the new USB type-c connection. It’s not the fastest, but then again, it’s not the slowest either.
For its cameras, the combo here with the ZTE zmax Pro is a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing one. There’s nothing fanciful about them, seeing they’re just as ordinary as any other low-priced phone. The camera app has a decent mixture of modes and options like its manual mode, which people will probably appreciate having in a phone like this. Sadly, there’s nothing spectacular about the performances. You tend to see a noticeable level of oversharpening which seems to try and compensate for the rear camera software. Details capture under low-light details become even more speckled, and the same can be said about its video capture.
The ZTE zmax Pro is mostly running a stock-experienced Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow to be exact. Yes, there are some bloggers from MetroPCS, but it’s pretty straightforward for the most part. Users will probably feel that it won’t be up to snuff with their demands just because you won’t find any other enhanced features here. The biggest question with the phone, much like most budget stuff, is whether or not it will get upgraded to the next version of Android in a timely manner.
Phone calls are a breeze with this one. You have a loud volume output with its earpiece and speakerphone while voices sound clear and distinctive on the other end line. Our callers didn’t have any problems discerning our voices. Owning a cheap phone no longer means you’re getting a cheap phone. The $99 price tag of the ZTE zmax pro is without a doubt an aggressive move on its part, especially more given its phablet s stature and its fingerprint sensor.
You tend to not expect them in the phone in its price range, but that’s the beauty about it. You do get them while pricing is quite favorable here. There are some other factors that influence your decision to buy. First of all, this is strictly a MetroPCS exclusive. This is arguably a factor that will be limiting its reach to consumers. Secondly, there are still some subpar qualities about it like the inaccuracy is with the display and the offer of sharpening effects with its cameras. These are compromises that can be overlooked due to its price point. At the end of the day, it’s a worthy recommendation if you’re on a tight budget.