The Chinese manufacturer such as Meizu and Xiaomi continues to increase their fame. But! They’re not the only one in providing high-end smartphones. Leeco, formerly known as LeTV, released their premium flagship newest terminal is known as Leeco Le Max 2 – the predecessor of Le Max. Sadly, the Chinese company isn’t that much famous and still struggling to make a name not only in the Chinese market but also internationally.
With the arrival of Leeco Le Max 2, reputable corporations like Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi might have to struggle a little bit. The Leeco Le Max 2 is the top model of the new smartphone series. For about 350 €, the mobile phone provides a Snapdragon 820 processor, a 5.7-inch 2K display, 4 or 6 GB of RAM, Android 6.0 and a 21 Megapixels camera. With is hardware it could be the world’s fastest phone. In short it’s a high tier phone ready to rock. But how does it feels while in practice? Let’s find out in this review:
What’s in the Box?
Inside the package, along with Leeco Le Max 2 following items are also delivered:
- USB Type-C cable
- Power Plug (Chinese)
- SIM slot opener
- A 3.5mm adapter
- Manual (Chinese)
- Protective Plastic Case
Leeco Le Max 2 Review
While using, the first glance of Le Max 2 for us was unexplainable. Seriously, a premium unibody metal built using aluminum perfectly packed in the stunning package. Only two thin edges above and below on the back are made of plastic in order to ensure good reception. But, they are appealing and hardly distinguishable from the metal. Moreover, the metal frame is sanded on the edges further explicating its beauty. Sadly, the back can not be opened, thus making the battery non-removable.
The phone we are examining is in rose gold color – probably a little bit feminine. Speaking of the button placement, power, and the volume controls are located on the right side and like the skeleton of the phone are built of aluminum and have a good pressure point. So, there’s no ‘tick’ sound and the pressing is effortless. Meanwhile, on the left side SIM-card slot is present. Moving to the back is the camera that protrudes 1mm far out of the smartphone. Right next to it is the dual-LED flash and below the camera, the fingerprint sensor.
It can be considered a phablet due to its length and width which is 16 cm and 7.5 cm, respectively. A small con of Leeco Le Max 2 is its thickness (8.3mm), slightly more than the most of the terminals and difficult to operate with one hand.
The display nearly spreads the entire front of the smartphone, a negligible margin of 2.2 mm wide is seen when the display is turned on. Oh! Another important thing is the use of 2.5D glass, making it look completely frameless. The display makes thereby a sharp impression. Even the Corning Gorilla Glass is utilized to protect your phone. Below the display, are the three touch-based buttons and on the above of display a notification LED is present.
The most noticeable attribute in Le Max 2 is that it doesn’t have any 3.5 mm jack. Music is transmitted only through the USB Type-C connector on the bottom. A suitable adapter for 3.5mm headphone is however included. The reason for neglecting the jack is to introduce a new era, a new method of music listening “Continual Digital Lossless Audio ‘( CDLA) , a lossless audio experience. Through CDLA, both Leeco Headphones (1 x in-ear + 1 x Over-ear with noise canceling) can be connected directly via USB Type-C. Music is then decoded by a decoder chip in the headphones themselves, eliminating the need for extra power for noise canceling, which the USD Type-C will already be providing. Did you get it? To enjoy the seamless music, you can also buy Leeco headphones.
This is 2016! So why use old 1080p display? One of the selling points of the product is its glorious 5.7-inch, 2K display with a resolution of 2560 × 1440 resolution. This enables the pixel density to be an enormous 515 ppi, making it impossible to locate an individual pixel on the screen.
As far as the other values are concerned, Leeco Le Max 2 never disappoints you. The brightness is high with 450 cd/m². The smartphone can also be easily operated in strong sunlight. The colors appear extremely high luminosity and natural. The phone has a very good black and white contrast. LCD and Digitizer are manufactured in one piece (OGS display) to ensure a super viewing angle stability. In the display settings, you can choose between different color temperatures to adjust the display to your preferences.
The heart of the phone is the latest and the world’s fastest SoC known as Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. Unlike the Xiaomi Mi5, even the standard version of Leeco Le Max 2 comes with the fastest Snapdragon 820. In the CPU four Kyro come cores are used, which consist of performance clusters and an energy saving cluster.
The Performance Cluster has a clock speed of 2.16GHz, while the energy-saving cluster clocked at 1.6GHz. In practice, the Snapdragon 820 means one thing above all when combined with 4/6 GB of RAM and Adreno 530 GPU: A damn fast performance. A bit annoying thing while gaming is the placement of the speaker at the bottom enabling it to block sound during gameplay. The heat dissipation during gaming is also very good! After a full hour of intensive gaming (Asphalt 8) Le Max 2 reaches only 36 °C.
It also leaves a good impression on the benchmarks, which clearly justify the actual performance and importance of Leeco Le Max. On Antutu, it scores the most with some surprising results – 138000 points. Beware! Xiaomi Mi5 (136700) and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (134500) you have got a competitor. The RAM speed which is 15 GB/s also seems fantastic.
The internal memory (32GB) is really fast and takes its place in the benchmarks between the Galaxy S7 and the Xiaomi Mi5. With a read speed of 430MB / s and a write speed of only 134MB / s, the memory is slightly slower than that of the Xiaomi Mi5 and about as fast as the Galaxy S7 (360MB / s and 140 MB / s). Unfortunately, there is no microSD slot for memory expansion of Le Max 2 available.
Le Max 2 has a 21 megapixels camera with an aperture of F / 2.0. The camera shoots razor-sharp, detailed images with a very good color rendering. The PDAF autofocus works so quickly that you no longer perceive the focusing. In addition, the phone has an optical image stabilizer, like Mi5. Therefore, no blurred images are seen. The images can easily keep up with the Xiaomi Mi5 and convince with a consistently good quality in all lighting conditions.
Even images at night are still sufficiently sharp and show only a low image noise. In the built-in camera app, numerous settings and filters can be set. Videos can be recorded with the camera with 4K resolution. A slow-motion mode is available. The videos are of good quality, although the Le Max 2 cuts here not as good as in the recordings of photos.
Meanwhile, the front camera is 8 megapixels with beauty mode on it.
Thankfully, Le Max 2 is a dual SIM phone with dual 4G LTE support. While all the other high-end smartphones are not equipped with Volume 20 (800MHz), Le Max 2 is owned by the 4G network on the road. In the SIM slot on the right side, there a place for 2 x Nano Sim cards. The network coverage is strong and there throughout our test phase never problems with reception. Le Max 2 can especially score in terms of call quality. The smartphone boasts a crystal clear on both sides transfer that works perfectly even with the use of, speakerphones.
The Wi-Fi reception is also powerful. The dual-band AC module is compatible with 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks and radio without interruptions with consistently strong reception. The Snapdragon 820 continues the new Wifi Direct technology. If you have a compatible device, it can reflect the screen contents of Le Max 2 wirelessly with full resolution and without delay to a different display. Even the Bluetooth reception of Le Max 2 is strong. With our headphones Le Max 2 holds up to 12 meters upright stable transmission.
Pros and Cons:
Pros:
- 2K display
- Matchless Performance (Snapdragon 820 and 6GB RAM)
- 21 Megapixel rear camera
- Full LTE…
