Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL preview: A closer look

Software and Performance

The Zenfone 3 Max ships with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with ZenUI 3.0. The thing with ZenUI is that it is well designed and has some genuinely useful features. Unfortunately, what ruins it is the number of pre-installed apps that it comes with, both from Asus and third-party developers such as Facebook.

What Asus really needs is restraint in this department. They should probably make most, if not all of these apps, optional so users can choose if they want to have them or not. It takes a while to uninstall, hide, and disable many of these apps and also some of the annoying features of ZenUI and only then does it become usable. Unfortunately, most people will never go through the trouble of doing this so their user experience will forever be marred by these unnecessary apps that add very little value to the phone.

Asus Zenfone 3 Max user interface

In terms of performance, the Zenfone 3 Max performed respectably in daily use. Despite rocking only a Snapdragon 430, application performance was perfectly usable and many apps opened, closed, and scrolled smoothly. Even in Chrome, only the heaviest of web pages with a lot of ads would bog it down.

Asus Zenfone 3 Max UI settings

Unfortunately, the lack of performance is felt while gaming, where the Snapdragon 430 on the Zenfone 3 Max has nothing on the Snapdragon 650 on the Redmi Note 3. While the latter can play any of the modern 3D games just fine, the Zenfone 3 Max struggles in most of them, with only the most basic 2D games being playable.

The multimedia performance was also more or less satisfactory. The display is good enough for watching your movies and TV shows on the go and the headphone audio quality is also just fine. The loudspeaker sounds tinny and doesn't even get particularly loud but is fine in a pinch when you just want to watch a YouTube video in a quiet place.

GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL
  4053
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  2040
• Lenovo K6 Note
  2027
• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  1944
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  1822

GeekBench 4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL
  843
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  669
• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  641
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  641
• Lenovo K6 Note
  635

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  76186
• Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL
  63358
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  49094
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  45190
• Lenovo K6 Note
  44972
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  43957
• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  43344
• Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro
  34937
• Oppo F1s
  30657
• Asus Zenfone Max ZC550KL
  25778

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  1426
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  1007
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  799
• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  794
• Asus Zenfone Max ZC550KL
  624
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  295
• Lenovo K6 Note
  288
• Oppo F1s
  269
• Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro
  262

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14717
• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  7604
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  7510
• Lenovo K6 Note
  7480
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  6380
• Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro
  5427
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  5383
• Asus Zenfone Max ZC550KL
  1844
• Oppo F1s
  419

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14
• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  14
• Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro
  11
• Oppo F1s
  10
• Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL
  9.7
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  9.5
• Lenovo K6 Note
  7
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  6.9
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  6.6
• Asus Zenfone Max ZC550KL
  3.9

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Redmi 3s Prime
  10
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  9
• Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL
  6.1
• Oppo F1s
  6
• Lenovo K6 Note
  4.4
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  4.4
• Asus Zenfone 3 Max ZC553KL
  4.4
• Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016)
  3.2