ZTE Axon 7 review: The brightest sound

Camera

The Axon 7 features a 20MP snapper with the very popular Samsung Isocell 16:9 ratio sensor with f/1.8 aperture. The frontal lens is made of sapphire to prevent scratches and there's OIS as well as on-sensor phase detection autofocus.

The camera interface is very well laid out. On the right side you have a large, iOS-like shutter button with shortcuts to Live photos and different filter effects. On the left side, there's the button to toggle the 8MP front-facing camera, the Settings menu and the HDR (Auto) toggle.

The camera interface is intuitive and well laid out

The Settings menu doesn't offer a lot of options. In fact, you can choose only the resolution, shutter tone, geo-tagging and anti-banding optimization.

This is where the Manual mode comes into play. Turn it on, and you have access to a plethora of settings including shutter speed, ISO, exposure, white balance and depth of focus. Under Manual mode, there's an updated Settings menu which holds metering, composition, gradienter and histogram options.

The photos produced by the camera are with good dynamic range, although the camera tends to favor exposing the shadows, leaving some of the bright areas a little overexposed. There's a lot of detail and the photos are very sharp.

Contrast is also great with saturated colors. White balance is on point, too.

ZTE Axon 7 camera samples

The HDR photos have very subtle difference compared to the non-HDR ones. Mainly, they just bring back some of the highlight detail.

HDR off • HDR On • HDR off • HDR On

The 8MP front-facing camera captures great, very detailed 8MP selfies. And its wide angle lens captures more in the frame, which is always welcome.

8MP selfie samples

Things go downhill when you shoot panoramas. We wouldn't rely on it as the samples are short on detail and the stitching is poor.

Panoramas

We pitted the Axon 7 against the OnePlus 3 and the Huawei Honor 8 in our photo compare tool so you can compare their camera performance directly.

ZTE Axon 7 vs OnePlus 3 vs Huawei Honor 8 in our Photo quality comparison tool

4K video recorder

The ZTE Axon 7 records video at 4K UHD (30 FPS), but 1080p modes are available as well (at 30/60fps). You can shoot slow motion videos at a max resolution of 720p HD (240fps).

Anyway, the 2160p videos are captured at 42Mbps bitrate and have rock solid 30fps. The audio is stereo captured at 96KBps bitrate.

Video camera interface

The video quality is very high and offers very accurate, albeit a bit oversaturated colors. There's plenty of detail and dynamic range, while the audio is rich in detail.

1080p videos are also good, but not as good as the 4K ones. Still, you're in for plenty of detail and great contrast.

You can also download the 4K@30fps (10s, 52MB) and the 1080p video (10s, 25MB) samples taken straight off the ZTE Axon 7.

And here's the 240fps slow-motion video show with the Axon 7.

Finally, the Axon 7 enters our Video quality comparison tool against the OnePlus 3 and LG Nexus 5X in both 4K and 1080p video quality.

ZTE Axon 7 vs OnePlus 3 vs LG Nexus 5X in our Video quality comparison tool