Meizu MX4 Pro review: Sharpened up

Retail package

The retail package of the Meizu MX4 Pro is a minimalist (on the outside) white box with various compartments inside for the supplied accessories. The device itself is packed into a booklet-style holder with descriptions of the phone's key features.

Underneath the booklet, there's a microUSB cable and a 2A socket plug, each in its own compartment.

There's one for a headset as well, which in our case was not provided - funnily, we got a Headphones Not Included tag instead.

Retail box

Meizu MX4 Pro 360-degree spin

The Meizu MX4 Pro isn't the biggest of phablets out there. The phone measures 150.1 x 77 x 9mm and weighs a solid but not overwhelming 158g. It isn't much bigger than the Meizu MX4: 6.1mm taller, 1.8mm wider and just a single millimeter thicker. The Pro has 11g on its sibling.

The Meizu MX4 Pro (right) next to the Meizu MX4 (left)

Compared to the 5.5" OnePlus One the MX4 Pro is a little shorter and a little lighter. It's smaller overall than a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or an iPhone 6 Plus, but nowhere near an LG G3, which also features a 5.5" screen.

Design and build quality

Design-wise, the Meizu MX4 Pro is almost identical to the MX4, except a little bigger. The curved sides and rear are reminiscent of the HTC One (M8). It's a mix of influences actually, the iPhone clearly has inspired the design of the front - barring the square Home button. The precision-drilled speaker grille is borrowed from Apple too.

Whether you can spot the resemblances is subjective but we have to give Meizu credit for the great build quality - the Pro's near seamless construction can easily pass as unibody. It's not - the rear cover is removable. You'll only ever need to open it to put a SIM card in. The battery is non-removable.

You can get the MX4 Pro in four color schemes: gray, gold, white on black and white on silver.

At the front, a flat piece of Gorilla Glass 3 covers the 5.5" display. Above it, next to the earpiece, there's a 5MP front-facing camera. The 5MP front-facing camera is an upgrade over the MX4 Pro' 2MP.snapper.

The Home key is no longer capacitive - the new hardware button doubles as a fingerprint scanner, which Meizu calls mTouch.

Meizu MX4 Pro

It works similarly to Apple's Touch ID - the button has a metal frame to detect fingers, sapphire glass cover and a 360-degree sensor underneath. Meizu claims it will unlock the MX4 Pro within 0.5s.

Fingerprint scanner

Just like the MX4, the Pro has a metal frame wrapping around the entire phone's body. The frame starts (or ends) sharply at the front and slopes gently toward the plastic back panel.

The metal frame has a lighter gray hue than the plastic rear cover the difference is very subtle, almost impossible to notice.

The design is simple but elegant. The curved sides and rear make it comfortable to hold despite the large size and the metal frame adds to a very sturdy construction.

Metal frame

The phone has decent grip but doesn't lend itself to comfortable one-hand operation. The Meizu MX4 Pro isn't particularly slim at 9mm but at that size it doesn't come across as chubby.

Handling the beast

The sloping edges indeed allow a very comfortable to hold and feel extra pleasant to slide your palm against. Curved screen edges would have been nice as well - they make a good deal of difference on the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, which are about the size of the Pro and do help on-screen gestures.

But we're not taking points away from Meizu for the flat front of the MX4 Pro.

Controls

The main attraction on the front of the Meizu MX4 Pro is the new 5.5" 1536 x 2560px IPS LCD of an impressive 546ppi. Above it are the earpiece, proximity and ambient light sensors and the new 5MP front-facing camera in the right corner.

Below the screen sits the mTouch fingerprint scanner/ Home button. It's ample and solid to press. The flat glass surface feels nice and smooth under your thumb and the button is adequately placed for easy fingerprint-unlock.

Front controls

Aside from a volume rocker, the Meizu MX4 Pro has no controls on its sides.

Sides

At the bottom, the Meizu MX4 Pro has cutouts in the metal frame for the single loudspeaker grille, the microUSB port, the main microphone and the tiny slit to lift the back panel open.

The top offers the 3.5mm headphone jack, a second noise-reducing microphone and the power button. A top-placed power button on such a device is never a good idea but Meizu has thankfully added a convenient way to unlock and even lock the MX4 Pro without ever needing to resort to the button.

You can swipe upward on the screen to unlock it, double tap to light it up, swipe to pull down the notification area and even paint a symbol that the phone will recognize and perform different actions.

A press and hold on the home button will lock the MX4 Pro and you can always just unlock the phone by pressing once and waiting for your finger to be recognized.

One small gripe we have is that the mere act of lifting the phone and gently touching the screen with a finger can unlock the Meizu MX4 Pro, which isn't ideal if you just want to pick it up to put in your pocket. Meizu allows you to disable the swipe unlock gestures if that's too big of a deal.

Top and bottom

The back is where we find a Sony-made 20.7MP camera under a sapphire-glass lens accompanied by a dual-tone LED flash.

The back

Undoing the back panel reveals the microSIM card slot and the 3,350mAh non-removable battery.

Under the back panel

The Meizu MX4 Pro is laid out exactly like the MX4, the construction is top notch and the quality of the materials used is very good.