Meizu m2 note review

8. Camera, image quality, video recording

Capable 13MP snapper with a dual-tone LED flash

The Meizu m2 note has a Samsung 13MP sensor that's capable of capturing some huge 4192x3104px snaps in 4:3 aspect - the same we met within the m1 note. There's also a dual-tone LED flash that should allow for more pleasing colors in low light flash photos.

The camera interface by default launches into Auto mode where the camera determines the shooting parameters. You have the option to turn on HDR (but no automatic HDR), gridlines for the viewfinder and a level gauge so that your horizon isn't off tilt. There's also an option to enable a timer of either 3, 5 or 10 seconds.

Available shooting modes include Auto, Manual (where you can set the shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation and even the focus - from macro to infinity), Beauty (which can make eyes bigger, face slimmer, skin smoother and lighter), Panorama, Light field (which is Meizu's refocus app allowing you to defocus any part of the scene), Scan (for QR and barcodes), and Slowmotion.

Camera • Manual mode

The Meizu m2 note snaps very good 13MP shots. The samples have plenty of resolved detail, the dynamic range is very good and the noise levels are kept quite low though at the expense of some of the fine detail definition. The contrast is very good, too. We remember the m1 note resolving more detail than the m2 note, but to be honest once you downscale those 13MP shots to you won't notice a difference.

Meizu m2 note camera samples

The HDR mode is meant to get a more even exposure of a scene - bringing back detail in the highlights and the shadows. On the Meizu m2 note it does very good job of bringing back detail in both and sometimes even produces more accurate colors than the Auto mode.

HDR Off • HDR On • HDR Off • HDR On

Panoramas aren't too impressive on the Meizu m2 note. There is plenty of resolution and good overall exposure but the resolved detail is far too low.

Meizu m2 note panorama sample (5000 x 2400 px)

Finally, you can check out a 5MP image taken with the front-facing camera of the device. It doesn't shine with too much detail but it would do a great job for selfies.

Front-facing camera sample

You can compare the Meizu m2 note to any of the smartphones we've tested so far in our photo quality comparison tool.

Meizu m2 note in our photo compare tool

1080p video recording at 30 fps

The Meizu m2 note shoots videos up to 1080p resolution at 30fps. There's no 60fps smooth motion option but you do get a 720p@100fps slow motion shooting mode that is rendered for playback as a slow motion 25fps video.

All videos from the m2 note camera are stored in MP4 containers, the video bitrate is about 17Mpbs and the framerate is stable. This time around the audio is stereo - it uses an AAC codec with 128 Kbps bitrate and 48 KHz sampling.

Framerate stays firmly at 30fps and we got almost no dropped frames. The resolved detail is just fine and the dynamic range is quite good although the videos have a somewhat soft contrast feel. Here is sample we've uploaded on YouTube.