LeEco Le Max 2 review: L'etranger

Introduction

To get the disclaimers out of the way, this is obviously not coming straight from Beijing's Latin Quarter. Although a certain penchant for all things French is not entirely incredible, you can bet LeEco has a keener eye on neighboring India - probably its biggest potential source of revenue after the home market.

The brand's ascension to prominence was perhaps faster than anything we've seen - although obviously China's growing and outward-looking industry has been supplying more than enough examples to follow.

There's always a first time but consider this: it is only a phone from an obscure Chinese company - yet pretty soon you may end up reading first reviews of le what's electric car. Yes, LeEco is all over the place from digital content and film production to smartphones and autonomous vehicles.

And yes, we may have passed on the Le 1s and the original Le Max, but there was no way we miss the opportunity to review the Le Max 2.

Although it's not the big mac on LeEco's menu - the original Le Max still standing at a staggering 6.33" tall - the Le Max 2 is almost every bit as impressive on paper. It's an all-metal smartphone with a massive 5.7" Quad HD display, powerful Snapdragon 820 chip with 4 or 6GB of RAM, great imaging capabilities and a custom eUI launcher on a Marshmallow core, a combo that did manage to surprise us.

Key features

• 5.7" 1440p IPS display of 515ppi
• Heavily customized eUI 5.6 on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow
• Snapdragon 820 chip: quad-core Kryo processor (up to 2.15GHz), Adreno 530 GPU, 4GB or 6GB of RAM
• 21MP Sony Exmor RS IMX230 camera sensor with a dual-tone LED flash, phase-detection AF, optical image stabilization; 2160p video recording @30fps
• 8MP front-facing camera with 1080p@30fps video recording
• 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage
• Dual SIM functionality
• Cat. 12 LTE (600/150Mbps); Dual SIM; Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; Bluetooth 4.2; NFC; IR blaster; GPS/GLONASS/Beidou; USB Type-C port, USB On-The-Go
• Rear-mounted fingerprint scanner
• Active noise cancellation via a dedicated mic
• 3,100mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0

Main disadvantages

• Sealed battery
• No memory expansion (no card slot)
• Lacks a 3.5mm audio jack

The sealed battery and absent microSD slot are the rule that makes exceptions that much sweeter, so we are not going to spend too much time on those. Duly noted, let's move on.

Our bigger concern is the battery. Even with Marshmallow pulling the strings, we're not convinced it's enough for such an ample phablet with such a pixel-rich screen and powerful chipset. Of course, we would love it if the LeEco Max 2 manages to put our doubts to rest.

We are definitely not fans of ditching the 3.5mm audio jack either, especially in a phone that's obviously not even trying to break any slimness records.

Yet, the Le Max 2 is ready for our detailed hardware checkup and will get every chance to justify all the design choices. We're pulling it out of the box to spin it around right after the break.

Special thanks to HonorBuy.com for providing the review unit.