The front of the Meizu MX3 features a 2MP front-facing camera, proximity and ambient light sensor and the tiny earpiece. Under the screen there's the capacitive Home button only.
The right side of the Meizu MX3 features no controls, while the left hosts the single piece volume rocker.
The power button is placed on the top right side, which is not the most comfortable position - with the Home key handling both lock and unlock this is nothing to fret over. The only other thing at the top is the 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The bottom is where the main microphone is next to the microUSB port for charging and data transfers.
At the back of the Meizu MX3, we find the 8 MP camera lens, the noise-reducing microphone and the single LED flash. There's a Meizu logo on the back and finally a small opening at the bottom for the loudspeaker grille.
Removing the back button, fiddly as it is, reveals the smallish in appearance 2,400 mAh battery. The battery cannot be removed or replaced.
The display on the Meizu MX is a 15:9 LCD with the resolution of 1080 x 1800 resulting in crystal clear 412ppi on the 5.1" diagonal.
Colors look great and sharpness is no issue. The viewing angles are also quite good, with the relatively high reflectivity the single noteworthy issue.
We took a picture of the display matrix under a microscope - the screen has an RGB matrix with the red, green and blue subpixels aligned in a typical fashion.
Meizu MX3 display matrix under a microscope
The screen on the Meizu MX3 showed good contrast and decent brightness levels throughout. It's nowhere near the top screens in business, like the HTC One or LG G2, but still looks quite pleasant and is sufficiently bright.
Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | |||
Meizu MX3 | 0.11 | 104 | 995 | 0.53 | 526 | 991 |
HTC One Max | 0.14 | 224 | 1591 | 0.40 | 629 | 1572 |
Samsung Galaxy Note 3 | 0 | 149 | ∞ | 0 | 379 | ∞ |
Sony Xperia Z1 | - | - | - | 0.38 | 580 | 1513 |
Sony Xperia Z Ultra | - | - | - | 0.47 | 467 | 1001 |
Sony Xperia Z | - | - | - | 0.70 | 492 | 705 |
Huawei Ascend Mate | 0.23 | 222 | 982 | 0.67 | 711 | 1053 |
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 | 0.12 | 160 | 1364 | 0.32 | 440 | 1379 |
Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4 | 0 | 201 | ∞ | 0 | 404 | ∞ |
HTC Butterfly S | 0.15 | 165 | 1117 | 0.43 | 451 | 1044 |
HTC One | 0.13 | 205 | 1580 | 0.42 | 647 | 1541 |
Moving on to our sunlight legibility test, you can see how contrast suffers from the screen being exposed to strong light. The MX3 is very far from the likes of the Apple iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy Note 3, clearly not the best screen to work with in the sun.
The battery in the Meizu MX3 is a 2,400mAh Li-Po unit quoted at around 430 hours of stand-by in 2G and 393 hours in 3G. Official talk time figures specs are 12 and 14 hours respectively, with 40 hours of continuous music playback.
Our own tests revealed that the MX3's battery can't quite handle the ample screen and capable chipsets the way some of its high-end rivals do. The talk time endurance was good, and so were the web browsing times, but video playback disappoints. There's also very high stand-by power draw, which results in an overall unimpressive score of 36h.
Meizu MX3 battery life test scorecard
Learn more about our batter testing procedures Next Page » 4. User interface
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