Meizu Pro 6 review: Changing lanes

Unboxing the Meizu Pro 6

The Meizu Pro 6 comes in a big black box made of matte plastic, which contains the USB Type-C cable and the charger. In our unit, the dedicated headphone compartment contained just an Earphone Not Included note.

The USB cable is packed quite nicely, while the charger is a 24W one for fast charging the Pro 6.

The retail pacakge

360-degree view

The Meizu Pro 6 stands at 147.7 x 70.8 x 7.3mm and weighs 160g. Its screen diagonal is half an inch smaller than the Pro 5's, which results in the Pro 6 being a centimeter shorter and narrower than its predecessor. The difference in terms of thickness and weight is negligible.

Design and build quality

The Meizu Pro 6 sticks to the established design of the series, not without trying to refine some of the details. The Meizu Pro 6 is made of metal, while its AMOLED screen is protected by a piece of Gorilla Glass 4.

Meizu Pro 6

The seamless aluminum unibody is, as usual, interrupted by two antenna strips but this time around those are a little less prominent and go close to the top and bottom. Even better, they feature some kind of convincingly metal-like cover and the curved line turns them in a good design accent. Indeed, this has made the Pro 6 a little more stylish.

The curved sides and subtly chamfered edges nicely complement the 2.5D glass.

Meizu Pro 6

It's good to see manufacturers trying to do something about the compromised design of plastic antenna strips and blending them into the metal unibody. This complicates the manufacturing process but produces a more stylish and complete design.

Meizu couldn't fit the entire camera setup into the body and our only issue with the Pro 6 design is the tiny camera hump on the back. On the other hand - the 10-LED ring flash looks just great.

The camera setup

The Meizu Pro 6's handling is by the book: the solid feel is matched in terms of construction, the body allows a secure grip thanks to the matte finish and the overall experience in hand is quite pleasing. The reduced footprint due to the smaller screen definitely helps too. There is nothing we'd change in the Pro 6 (well, maybe the camera hump), and we easily give it an excellent mark.

Handling the Pro 6

Controls

Above the screen, the 5MP selfie snapper and a couple of sensors are placed on either side of the earpiece. Below the screen is the mTouch 2.1 sensor embedded in the Home key.

The front of the Pro 6 • the earpiece • the mTouch key

The Pro 6 has just a single UI control, the 3-in-1 Home button. On tap it acts as Back, while on press it doubles as a Home button. Finally, when the phone is locked, it acts as a fingerprint scanner. It's a setup we love and once you get used to it, you may never want to go to a different key configuration.

The left side of the Pro 6 houses a SIM tray, which takes two nano SIM cards for dual-SIM telephony. The right side features the volume rocker and the power/lock key, both made of metal.

The left side • the SIM tray • the right side • the volume rocker

The Meizu Pro 6's top has nothing but the secondary mic. The bottom is quite busy though - here we find the audio jack, the primary mic, the USB Type-C port, and the loudspeaker grille.

The top • the bottom • the USB Type-C port

Finally, the 21MP Sony IMX230 camera lens is on the back, righ above the dual-tone 10-LED ring flash. The 10 LEDs circle the focus-assist laser.

The rear side