Just in: Meizu M5 hands-on

A crate arrived at our doorstep the other day chock-full of Meizus. Naturally, we all flocked around the Pro 6 Plus flagship and we already shared our initial thoughts about it, but it is this M5 here that will be outselling the top model who knows how many times - its price starts at CNY 699 or just $100.

The M5 is the successor to the M3, and you may wonder what happened to the 4 in that sequence. Well, 4 is considered an unlucky number in Chinese culture, so as is often the case in product lineups (Wikipedia tells us), Meizu skipped it.

The M5 is not unlike the M3, by the way. That's a roundabout way of saying it's actually more or less the same phone with just a few differences - the most obvious one being the 5.2-inch display. So far the base M-series models have always had 5-inch screen, but this forth-gen Meilan (as it's also known) bumps the diagonal a little. Resolution remains 720x1,280 pixels.

Battery capacity has been upped to 3,070mAh - a 7% increase for an 8% increase in display area. Okay, perhaps we should refrain from such pointless math from now on. More importantly, the growth hasn't made the phone all that bulkier - a few mm along the X and Y axes and a whopping 6g of extra weight can hardly be felt in practice. It's a fraction of a mm thinner too.

For a device that costs $100, the M5 sure is attractive. It's not metal though the fine satin finish of the polycarbonate back may fool you at first glance.

The front is all black regardless of which of the four color options you choose, making for a stealthy look. The 2.5D glass adds a premium touch and the home button has a nice positive click to it. There's a fingerprint reader in there as well.

Ticking inside is the Mediatek MT6750 chipset, the same one from the M3, so nothing fancy, but you shouldn't have expected otherwise. Two versions are available, one with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage (CNY 699, $100), the other - with 3GB/32GB (CNY 899, $130). There's a microSD slot for expansion. too. The camera department remains entirely unchanged - a 13MP f/2.2 primary shooter with phase detection on the back and a 5MP f/2.0 front facer.

The Meizu M5 is joining our queue of review devices and we'll be sure to run the full battery of tests once we find the time. Mind you, with CES 2017 behind the corner, that may be a while.