There’s been much excitement surrounding the launch of the entry-level Xiaomi Mi Max phablet some six months ago. Oliver Ong Chor Yew bought one online to review it below.
Editor’s note
Xiaomi’s reputation for selling well-spec’ed phones at super low prices manifests itself in the Mi Max, offering huge value to the consumer.
I tried out the phablet too and found it was indeed slightly unwieldy to use one-handed.
But its huge and bright screen is great for reading ebooks, watching videos and surfing the Web.
And the battery life is the longest I’ve encountered – only the ASUS Zenfone Max is comparable.
You won’t get the same quality and feature set of the Samsung’s unfortunate flagship Galaxy Note7 – but at only a fraction of the price, Xiaomi’s Mi Max presents itself as an extremely value-for-money alternative to grab part of the market share vacated by the Note7.
Hence, I’ve included the Xiaomi Mi Max in the tech4xmas gift list.
Read Oliver Ong Chor Yew’s review below.
The Xiaomi Mi Max fresh out of the box (left), and the home screen (right).
My Mi Max is a 6.44inch large-screen phablet with android 6.0 and MIUI 8.0 interface.
Overall verdict
With the $259 price tag and the huge screen size, the Mi Max is a good budget phone for every use.
The camera image quality is quite good.
Fingerprint sensor is extremely responsive and the device build quality makes this phone worth buying.
It is powered by a 4850mAh non-removable Li-Ion battery which is a standard for mid-range to high end phone nowadays.
The Mi Max has a Qualcomm snapdragon 650 chipset with Hexa-core processor (4 x 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 & 2 x 1.8GHz Cortex-A72) and 3GB RAM.
This model I am reviewing is the 32GB variant which costed me S$259 on Qoo10 at the time of this review was written.
There is a 64GB variant with Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 Octa-Core processor.
First impressions
The device is quite huge and it is quite difficult to use with one hand.
The build quality is quite sturdy and it feels like I am holding a premium device.
Sample shot of the cloudy blue sky, taken using the Xiaomi Mi Max.
