Acer at IFA 2016: Liquid Z6 and Z6 Plus hands-on

Acer Liquid Z6 Plus hands-on

The Acer Liquid Z6 Plus is an impressive upgrade over the regular Z6 and if it wasn't the mediocre chipset we might have considered it a proper midranger.

The Z6 Plus is made of metal which is a perk in that price bracket. There are noticeable plastic strips around the back to hide the antennas, which stand out a little unpleasantly.

Acer Liquid Z6 Plus

The Acer Liquid Z6 Plus, as the name suggests, is the bigger one with a 5.5" IPS 1080p display, enhanced with a 2.5D curved glass. It is powered by a snappier MT6753 chip with a quad-core 1.3GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, Mali-T720 GPU, and 3GB of RAM.

There are other upgrades too, worth the extra cash and the Plus moniker. The Liquid Z6 Plus comes with 32GB of expandable storage, a fingerprint scanner, a 13MP main camera, a 5MP selfie shooter, and a beefy 4,080mAh battery.

The main camera is now 13MP

The IPS matrix upgrade allows for better viewing angles and greater contrast, while the colors look even punchier. The screen bezels are nothing to talk about, but we like the accented Home key, which doubles as fingerprint scanner.

The battery is sealed, quite expectedly because of the metal shell, and once again no surprises in the layout of the phone's controls.

Acer Liquid Z6 Plus keys

Handling the Liquid Z6 Plus is a pleasure given its metal exterior. It's big at 5.5" and yet single-handed operation is comfortable enough. The thin shell helps the handling too, but the grip is compromised by the curved profile.

Indeed, Acer upped the screen size and resolution, upped the camera resolution on both sides, there is a faster processor and GPU, triple the RAM, double the storage and double the battery.

The substantial upgrade has its cost though - the phone will be sold in the EMEA region starting December for €249 ($280).