Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 hands-on review

Software

The ZenFone Max Pro comes with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. Unlike previous ZenFone devices, this phone comes with a near stock build of Android, which is quite rare in this price range.

Android 8.1 Oreo

The software looks and feels pretty much like stock Android on Google Pixel or Android One devices for the most parts. ASUS does pre-load some third party applications but all of them can be entirely uninstalled from the device to get a minimalist setup.

Apart from those there are also some other minor additions made by ASUS, such as the aforementioned color temperature option under Display settings and a custom software update installer. There are some ZenMotion gestures that let you double tap or swipe on the screen to turn it on or off and draw letters on the lockscreen to launch apps. Then there are also apps from ASUS, such as Camera, Calculator, FM Radio, and Sound Recorder that are custom.

ASUS customizations

ASUS has also added a face unlock mode. In our testing, it didn't work very well in low light and only worked outdoors. ASUS did tell us that it is working on improving the feature in future updates.

Overall, though, this still feels overwhelmingly like a stock Android phone from Google and if someone were to cover all the badges it would be hard to guess this was made by ASUS.

Benchmark and performance

The ZenFone Max Pro is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 with a choice of 3GB or 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 32GB or 64GB of eMPC storage. That is largely on par with its rival, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro. As such, we were expecting the performance to be on par, and unsurprisingly, it was.

While we will get to the benchmarks in a moment, and they are fairly impressive numbers, it's worth mentioning that the ZenFone Max Pro feels fast in everyday use as well. The problem is that the default animation speeds are just a tad bit too long but once we dug into the developer settings and reduced them from 1x to 0.5x, the phone felt extremely quick. One could go ahead and disable the animations entirely but then it feels a bit jarring so we'd recommend 0.5x.

Once that was done, the ZenFone Max Pro was a pleasure to use. Applications open and switch rapidly, scrolling was smooth and it was hard to tell at times this wasn't an expensive, flagship device. The combination of a powerful chipset and a lightweight UI is quite potent and makes using the phone a breeze.

Gaming performance is good too. However, there is one flaw in the OS; there is no way to set the scaling of applications in stock Android. This means there is no way to prevent applications from taking up the entire display. For regular apps, this isn't a problem; you want them to take up the entire display. However, most games are still being designed for 16:9 displays and end up losing chunks of the app area when they are made to go fullscreen on an 18:9 display. It's the same thing that happens when you make a 16:9 YouTube video fullscreen on an 18:9 display. This is something Google will have to build into the OS as realistically you can't expect that every single developer will update their apps for 18:9 displays. This is one thing custom ROMs have as they let you set the scaling factor for the apps from settings.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Oppo R11s
  5907
• Nokia 7 plus
  5893
• Oppo R15 Pro
  5809
• ASUS ZenFone Max Pro
  4910
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  4696
• Motorola Moto G5S Plus
  4331
• Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus
  4309
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  4225
• Moto G5S Plus
  4193
• Samsung Galaxy J7 Max
  3509
• LG Q6
  2244

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Nokia 7 plus
  1634
• Oppo R11s
  1614
• Oppo R15 Pro
  1612
• ASUS ZenFone Max Pro
  1340
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  1327
• Samsung Galaxy J7 Max
  888
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  882
• Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus
  874
• Motorola Moto G5S Plus
  848
• Moto G5S Plus
  843
• LG Q6
  652

AnTuTu 7

Higher is better

• Oppo R15 Pro
  146526
• Nokia 7 plus
  140820
• ASUS ZenFone Max Pro
  115509
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  107737
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  90918

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo R11s
  23
• Nokia 7 plus
  23
• Oppo R15 Pro
  22
• ASUS ZenFone Max Pro
  16
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  14
• Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus
  9.9
• Moto G5S Plus
  9.8
• Motorola Moto G5S Plus
  9.8
• Samsung Galaxy J7 Max
  9
• LG Q6
  5.8

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Oppo R11s
  23
• Nokia 7 plus
  21
• Oppo R15 Pro
  19
• ASUS ZenFone Max Pro
  15
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  15
• Moto G5S Plus
  10
• Motorola Moto G5S Plus
  10
• Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus
  9.4
• Samsung Galaxy J7 Max
  8.9
• LG Q6
  5.4

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Oppo R11s
  2499
• Oppo R15 Pro
  2438
• Nokia 7 plus
  2376
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  2030
• ASUS ZenFone Max Pro
  1893
• Nokia 6 (2018)
  1517
• Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus
  1226
• Moto G5S Plus
  1176
• Motorola Moto G5S Plus
  389
• Samsung Galaxy J7 Max
  379