ASUS has been known for offering smartphones with big battery life in their ASUS Zenfone Max line and one of the latest smartphones in the Zenfone Max lineup is the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite. It’s an affordable smartphone that features a 4100mAh Battery. So what do I think about the smartphone? Check it out in our review below.

Design and Hardware

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite features a similar design to the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max but this time, the Lite version now has a smaller 5.2-inch display and a slower Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor inside with 2GB of RAM.

We have solid body and design here. Despite being one of the most affordable ASUS smartphones out there, I was happy with its build quality and despite having a large 4100mAh battery capacity, the smartphone is still handy to the hand and it’s not that really thick.

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite still uses a Micro USB port that can also support reverse charging. It means that you can use the smartphone as a power bank. How? Just use a Micro USB OTG and then plug in your device to the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite to charge it. It’s a really awesome feature especially if you use the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite as your secondary smartphone.

The smartphone also features a fingerprint scanner which also serves as the home button of the smartphone and I was quite happy with its speed. Unfortunately, the smartphone doesn’t support Face Unlock.

Another bummer in this smartphone is that the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite only has a small 16GB of Internal Storage. That might not be enough when you want to install heavy games and a lot of multimedia files but thankfully, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite has a triple card tray slot which means that the smartphone can use two Sim cards and also a MicroSD card simultaneously.

Display

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite only has a 5.2-inch HD Display. By today’s standards, the display of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite is quite small. Yes, it’s fine to use in most basic applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram but it’s quite small when you play MOBA or FPS games.

The display of the smartphone isn’t really the most ideal that you can see on an ASUS smartphone. It lacks some colors but it will do just fine in most cases. Since the smartphone only has a 5.2-inch display, the display looks sharper than I expected.

The display of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite isn’t that good but it isn’t that bad either. The display of the smartphone is what you can expect from a smartphone with a long battery life and affordable price tag

Battery life

Again, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite sports a 4100mAh battery. That’s a big capacity for its size but it is smaller than the 5000mAh battery of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max. Nonetheless, the results that I got from the smartphone was really respectable.

In the PCMark Work 2.0 Battery Life test, I got a respectable score of 12 h and 44 min. That’s quite long and In real life usage, the smartphone was able to last 2 days of average use without charging. That’s really long and I’m really happy about it.

Software

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite is running on Android 7.1.1 with Zen UI. Well, the smartphone is easy to navigate and easy to understand however it still does come with a lot of bloatware. The smartphone also comes with Selfie Master which lets you do beautifications on photos, videos, and even on live stream applications.

Probably the most useful application that you can use in the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite is the Power Master. This application lets you see the status of the battery of the smartphone. You can see the remaining battery time of the smartphone and there’s a shortcut for doubling the battery lifespan by turning off some features. You can also optimize and boost your smartphone in this application and also use different battery modes for longer battery life or better performance.

Performance

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite isn’t really the most powerful smartphone in its price range. You got a Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 processor inside along with 2GB of RAM and also 16GB of Internal Storage. Well, I was really happy that ASUS choose a Qualcomm Processor for this one as the Snapdragon 425 processor is really efficient and really optimize. I was happy that most of the time that I use the smartphone in different applications and navigating, it was fast and smooth. However, the RAM is a little bit too small for me but don’t worry, it will do just fine most of the time.

When it comes to gaming, the smartphone can handle most games that are available on the Play Store however, you must set the graphics settings lower to have a better frame rate. I’ve tried Rules of Survival on the smartphone and also PUBG Mobile and I was able to play both games, however, there were occasional frame drops.

Camera

One of the biggest features of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite is its camera. ASUS still managed to have a dual rear camera in which one of them is a wide-angle lens. Surprisingly, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite has a better camera compared to the previous smartphone that we’ve reviewed before – the ASUS Zenfone Max Plus M1. We got some decent shots whether I’m using the standard lens or the wide-angle lens. Check out the shots that I took using the smartphone.

It’s not the best camera in its price range but the results that I got was better than I expected. It’s actually great.

Verdict

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite is probably one of my favorite smartphone in its price range. We got a decent Snapdragon 425 processor inside which can run most applications just fine, an optimized and smooth software experience, a long battery life, and surprisingly, a good camera. It might not be the most powerful smartphone in its price range but I’m pretty sure that the smartphone does have a long battery life and it can still do some gaming.

The ASUS Zenfone 4 Max Lite is now available for Php7,995.