Le Max 2 – pushing power to the max (Review)

I use OnePlus One as my primary mobile. I have been using it for over 2 years now and I have made up my mind that I am not going to buy a mobile bigger than 5.5 inch. But when I used the 5.7 inch LeEco Le Max 2, I realized that it is no bigger than any other 5.5 inch device. OnePlus has now come up with its flagship device, the OnePlus 3. The Le Max 2 competes head on with the OnePlus 3. I haven’t laid my hands on the OnePlus 3 yet. So this is not going to be a comparison in any way. Lets look at the Le Max 2 as a Snapdragon 820 powered flagship from LeEco. My review unit is the 6 GB / 64 GB variant and lets also see how relevant is a 6 GB mobile in reality.

In the retail box, apart from the Le Max 2, you get a silicone case, USB-C cable, Quick charger and USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter. It does not include any headset, though I would have preferred a CDLA headset bundled along. The design is a slight deviation from the first generation Le Max. But it is very much in line with the Le 1s and even more closer to the Le 2 design. It has an all metal chassis. It does not come with any sort of water resistance.

Design

The metal body feels solid and premium in the hand. It is not slippery. The speaker grills are at the bottom and is loud enough. The noise cancelling mic deserves a special mention, so lets talk about it later. The mobile has done away with 3.5 mm jack. The IR blaster is on the top.The USB port is on the bottom flanked by speaker grill. The display is 5.7 inch and it has the front 8 MP camera and notification LED above it. The navigation keys are backlit, but they light up only when touched. The display has very thin bezels and that gives the mobile a very elegant look. The back has the 21 MP camera, noise cancelling mic, dual tone LED flash and finger print sensor. It has a striking resemblance with Le 2 but slightly bigger. A bigger phone is not easy to handle with single hand. Having used the 5.5 inch OnePlus One, I felt really comfortable using the Max 2, thanks to its ultra think bezels.

Display

LeEco has not shied away from 1440 x 2560px QHD resolution unlike many flagship devices out there. It is 5.7 inch diagonally. It has good viewing angles and the picture quality is great. The screen is very bright and has excellent contrast ratio. The color reproduction is natural but the black and white calibration seems to be a bit off the mark. sunlight readability is average. The text and images are crisp and pleasant to look at. Overall, the display is a bit above average but it appeals to me because of the QHD resolution.

Hardware and Performance

Now let’s talk about the juicy portion. Le Max 2 is powered by the flagship processor from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 820. It comes in 4 GB and 6 GB variants. It also has the Adreno 530 which is currently the most powerful graphics processor on mobile. With no doubt, I can say that the Le Max 2 runs on the most powerful hardware spec available today. The fingerprint scanner in the Le Max 2 was sluggish and LeEco confirmed that they are working on the issue and will soon come out with a OTA fix. The speakers are loud and have decent audio quality. The noise cancelling mic does a stupendous job in recording noiseless audio. I was totally stumped by the quality of audio recorded.

With the inviting QHD display, I spent about an hour on gaming and there was practically no change in temperature. To test the limits, I loaded 9 graphic intensive game titles on the mobile on the same time. My review unit is the 6 GB variant and the mobile did not shut down any of the 9 games running parallelly with Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. But after a few minutes of inactivity, the apps did get shutdown. During game-play none of the games showed any signs of stuttering or framedrop. The display was responsive and I kept hopping between games without any hiccup. Le Max 2’s hardware performance is truly impressive.

Camera

Le Max 2 has a 21 MP Sony IMX 230 sensor at the back. It employs both phase detection and contrast for auto focus. The Camera UI is simple and it has a few interesting filters for your snaps. On the face of it, the UI offers toggle between Photo, Video, Slo-Mo, and Panorama mode. The settings give you control over ISO, White balance exposure and other image settings. But the UI does not offer pro mode. There are a few scene modes like Landscape, Beach, Sports and Snow.

Images shot with the 21 MP sensor show good amount of details and has a wide dynamic range. There is no unusual softening or noise reduction algorithm. Color reproduction is natural and the white balance is spot on. The 8 MP front facing camera has fixed focus. It gives you some nice selfies, but I did notice pixelation along the edges in most of the images shot with it. Le Max 2 can shoot videos up to 4K resolution (3840 x 2160px) at 30fps and 1080p videos at 30fps. The quality if video recorded is decent and the absence of image stabilization is prominent. Overall, the Le Max 2 has a good camera hardware and with a few tweaks on the software layer, it can be a very good secondary, go-to camera for you.

Check out the camera samples below.

Software

Just like the Le 2, Le Max 2 runs with eUI 5.6 on top of Android 6.0. Here is an excerpt from my review on the Le 2 software.

eUI has no major changes from its previous versions, but it has now got all the entertainment services on the home screen. The Live app watching live TV and LeVidi for movies are apps that are highlights of the eUI 5.6. Also the extreme left home screen would have a list of curated video content. Hungama music app integration is yet to come and will be available soon via OTA. The control center is something that I got used to and now I cannot live without it. It gives me access to quick settings and on the same screen I can see all the running apps and a toggle to clear them from memory.

Le 2 or any other LeEco devices don’t have any gesture based features like tap to wake-lock. But a large screen mobile like Max or Max 2 definitely needs such gestures and is missing. With similar software and a better hardware internals, the Le Max 2 handles the UI with ease.

Battery

Le Max 2 has a 3100 mAh battery which is sealed inside the metal body. It supports QuickCharge 3.0 and in 30 minutes I was able to charge from 8% to 52%. My regular usage would include a few minutes on call everyday, constantly checking social media updates, 4G always on, connected to WiFi 10 hours a day, watching video clips and listening to music for a few hours. With this usage, the mobile lasted for 16-20 hours (Average 18:45 hours) on a single charge. On intense usage, the mobile runs out of juice in less than 14 hours. So the battery performance is average but considering the fact that it is a 5.7 inch screen with QHD resolution and a powerful processor, the battery performance was expected. I wish LeEco has squeezed in a beefier battery inside the Le Max 2.

Verdict

LeEco is relatively a new player in the field and they have the motive to own the field. They haven’t tried anything new with Le Max 2. They have played it safe. Le Max 2 does not come with any new ground breaking killer feature. It is a powerful mobile with no compromises on the hardware specifications. It has a stupendous QHD screen, premium metal body design, fast and stunning camera, latest version of Android and a killer price. The 4 GB RAM / 32 GB ROM variant is priced at Rs 22999 while the 6 GB / 64 GB variant is priced at Rs 27999. As Le Max 2 does not have expansion slot, I would go for the 64 GB variant rather than the 32 GB variant, though the 6 GB RAM is an overkill. Now the obvious question in everyone’s mind is about comparing the OnePlus 3 and Mi 5 Pro with Le Max 2. Mi 5 isn’t available in India and there is no assurance that Xiaomi will be selling it anytime soon. Le Max 2 does have a few glitches like the slow fingerprint scanner, which will be eventually fixed as it is a software issue. But OnePlus 3 is the real deal here and is a worthy competitor. It is also priced similarly and the specifications are also equally matched. OnePlus 3 may have better benchmark scores, but Le Max 2 has better battery, RAM management and display.

Le Max 2 is a truly deserving flagship phablet from LeEco and if you are looking for a powerful and stylish mobile, go for it.