BY. www.gizmochina.com
Meizu made a breakthrough in the market by announcing the two new affordable yet powerful smartphones, Meizu M1 Note and the 5-inch Meizu M1. Both the devices bring tremendous value in this once boring low end segment. Only a few other smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 2 and a handful of Chinese phones, can even come close to the value for money quotient that these devices bring to the table.
Since, both the devices are from the same family and even looks similar, we decided to review them together. So, lets take a look at the Meizu M1 Note vs Meizu M1 comparison.
Like always, we will take a look at a number of parameters such as the design, display, hardware, battery, camera and even software.
DESIGN
Well, both the Meizu M1 Note as well as the Meizu M1 have derived inspiration from the two smartphones in the Meizu’s top end lineup, the Meizu MX4 and the Meizu MX4 Pro. In fact, the design is a very good indicator of the phone’s brand. If you have ever seen the Meizu MX4, you’ll instantly recognize that both the M1 Note and the Meizu M1 come from the same family.
Meizu M1 Note, like the name suggests is the bigger model of the two. It comes with a 5.5-inch display, which makes it even bigger than the flagship MX4. The measurements of the M1 Note comes to 150.7 x 75.2 x 8.9 mm which is pretty decent for a phone with a 5.5-inch screen. On the other hand, the M1 comes with the measurements, 140.2 x 72.1 x 8.9 mm. As you can see, both the models have the exact same thickness, 8.9mm.
Since the M1 Note is larger, it feels as though the device is narrower than the M1. But as you can see from the measurements, the phone is indeed a bit more broad around 3.1mm. This makes the M1 Note look more like the MX4 Pro and the M1 like the Meizu MX4.
On top of both the device’s displays, you have the exact same components. So, there’s the receiver mesh and sensors and front camera on the right. One thing to note here is that the front camera on both the models are exactly the same – OV5670 5-megapixel sensor, F / 2.0 aperture and wide-angle 69 ° lens.
Even below the display, things are similar. So, you have the trademark Meizu round home button with a breathing notification light. The bezels on the phones are pretty thin considering their competitors. They are narrow and blend well with the display.
The sides are a bit protruding on both the phones which can actually save your display from directly hitting the ground if its falls. While this may cause some issue while using the touch screen display, we think its actually a better design especially when it can save the display.
The back cover is made of polycarbonate material on both the devices. This gives it a very appealing look, which is something that’s not usually found on phones in this price range. However, you will have to be careful while handling the device, especially if you have sweaty palms. Also, the Meizu M1 being the smaller model, is more comfortable to hold as compared to the M1 Note.
On top of both the devices lies the 3.5mm headphone jack, a microphone opening as well as the power button. At the bottom, you have the speakers, microUSB and microphone.
On the left side, you have the volume keys while on the right, you have the slot for the SIM card slot(s). Now, here things get interesting. Meizu M1 Note comes with NO MicroSD card slot. Instead, the slot on the right will habor two SIM cards making it a dual SIM dual standby supported phone. On the other hand, the 5-inch Meizu M1 comes with a MicroSD card slot too (Yay!) but then supports only one SIM card. It was essential for M1 to come with a memory card slot since it features just 8GB of storage. On the other hand, the M1 Note comes with 16GB / 32GB storage options.
Overall, both the phones look well built and premium. However, if we had to change one thing from both the devices, it will have to be the power button on the top. It simply doesn’t feel natural to reach out to the top side just to power on the device. This is especially a big problem when the phone becomes larger like in the case of 5.5-inch M1 Note. But its not something we couldn’t manage and hence, we feel a few hours of use will make the action more natural.
DISPLAY
This time, we could analyze the display to a great extent on both the devices. First of all, we have two other top end flagship phones for comparison with these two Blue Charm devices namely the Meizu MX4 and the HTC One M8. This should give you guys a better idea as to how these budget phones compare with those two top end phones.
The Meizu M1 Note comes with a 5.5-inch IGZO display with a full HD 1920 x 1080p resolution. On the other hand, the Meizu M1 features a 5-inch 1280 x 768 resolution TFT capacitive LCD display. Both the displays are protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. The M1 Note features a screen to body ratio of 72.9% while the Meizu M1 sports a ratio of 69.9%. Interestingly, the Meizu M1 features dual domain pixel technology on its display which will help in improving the viewing angles of the phone.
Coming to the screen contrasts, the four models that we will be comparing use different display technologies. As a result, don’t expect similar results and any difference that you may see could be just because the phone uses a different panel.
Have a look at the images below. On top row there is the Meizu MX4 and the HTC One M8 on the right. At the bottom row, there is the Meizu M1 Note and then the Meizu M1 lying on its right.
Here are some images displayed on these devices.
HARDWARE SPECS
Meizu M1 Note naturally comes with the better hardware of the two. The phablet features the recently announced MT6752 64-bit octa-core processor from Mediatek clocked at 1.7GHz. On the other hand, the Meizu M1 features the 64-bit MT6732 quad-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz. Both the processors are based on ARM’s Cortex A53 architecture and comes with Mali T760 GPU.M1 Note has an additional RAM module, which adds up to 2GB as compared to M1’s 1GB RAM. Also, the storage is much higher, 16GB / 32GB options as opposed to Meizu M1’s 8GB storage. However, as mentioned above, the for the slightly additional storage and Dual SIM support, you’ll have to live with whatevery storage that comes inbuilt on the Meizu M1 Note, as there’s no slot for a memory card.
Performance wise naturally Meizu M1 Note outdid the MT6732 quad-core processor on the M1 by a considerable margin. In the AnTuTu test we consistently got around 41,000 points on the M1 Note. On the other hand, the M1 could only score upto 30,000 in the same test.
You will experience some slight lag while using the M1, but its only when there are a lot of heavy duty applications opened. Under normal usage, the device performed pretty well. We could get a maximum of 568MB RAM free on the device at any time. This reduced to around 100-150MB when we opened up a new app. However, in practical usage, it doesn’t cause much issues. Like we mentioned above, just make sure you don’t open a lot of apps and things will be pretty smooth.
Coming to the MT6752 octa-core M1 Note, we had no issues with this device. Everything was butter smooth and apps too opened up very quickly.
Connectivity features are exactly the same, except for Dual SIM support on the Meizu M1 Note. The supported network bands are as follows:
| Meizu M1 NOTE | Meizu M1 | |
| 2G bands | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 – SIM 1 & SIM 2 | GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
| 3G Network | HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100 | HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100 |
| 4G Network | LTE 1800 / 2100 TD-LTE 2500 / 2600 (Bands 1, 3, 38, 41) |
LTE 1800 / 2100 TD-LTE 2500 / 2600 (Bands 1, 3, 38, 41) |
| Speed | HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps, LTE Cat4 150/50 Mbps | HSPA 42.2/5.76 Mbps, LTE Cat4 150/50 Mbps |
CAMERA
Camera is one of the most important features that users look for in a smartphone these days. In this regard, both the phones does not disappoint. You will be happy with its camera if you are reasonable with your expectations. To be frank, you won’t get Galaxy Note 4 like picture quality and that’s acceptable. What you will get though is decent image quality especially when there’s enough light. There is noise prevalent on images captured on both the devices, but then Meizu is not really famous for its stellar camera phones and hence, it isn’t surprising.Moreover, the rear camera module is the same on M1 Note as well as the M1. So, you get the Samsung’s 13 million-pixel CMOS sensor size of 1 / 3.06 inches with F / 2.2 aperture. So, camera performance under normal lighting conditions should be more or less the same. But it will differ a bit at night shooting as the M1 Note comes with dual LED Dual Tone flash as opposed to the single LED flash on the Meizu M1. The rear camera module is capable of recording 1080p videos at 30 fps. However at this resolution, the video files tend to be quite large, which will definitely be a concern on the 16GB Meizu Blue Charm Note without expansion slot!
We have already specified the details about the 5MP front camera, but in case you skipped that part, here are the specs: OV5670 5-megapixel sensor, F / 2.0 aperture and wide-angle 69 ° lens.
Here are some samples for you to see of both the devices.
Macro shots on the Meizu M1 came out pretty good.
BATTERY
Both the phones feature non-removable batteries. The Meizu M1 Note comes with a 3140 mAh battery which is actually pretty good for a device in its price range. On the other hand, the Meizu M1 features a 2500 mAh battery. The capacity was initially 2160 mAh but Meizu recently reduced it to 2500 mAh.The battery life on both the phones are pretty good. You get a day’s usage with moderate usage. To give you a figure, expect around 4.5-5 hours of dscreen on time on the Meizu M1 Note and a slightly less figure on the Meizu M1.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to test out the battery, so this is all we could get from our initial tests.
SOFTWARE
Both the phones come with the company’s latest Flyme 4.2.0 version which is based on Android 4.4 KitKat OS. Meizu has improved the Flyme OS considerably in the past few months and you can instantly see the difference. The transition effects were pretty smooth and so were the other animations.
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