Meizu M3 Note vs Xiaomi Redmi Note 3: Can this new Kid on the block beat the Segment King?

By Sayan

| Updated: Tuesday, May 10, 2016, 14:55 [IST]

Meizu m3 Note, the latest budget phablet offering from the Chinese smartphone maker is now official and aims to provide a stiff competition to the present segment king aka the Xiaomi Redmi Note. In an attempt to do so, Meizu has priced the device highly competitively at 799 Yuan (Rs 8,000 approx.) and 999 Yuan (Rs 10,000 approx.) respectively.

On the other hand the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 retails in India at a price of Rs 9,999 and Rs 10,999 for the base and premium variant. While much is common between the two smartphones including the all metal unibody design, FHD display, presence of Fingerprint Sensor etc; there are still a few differences.

In fact these differences will take a key factor is deciding the best bet among the two smartphones. So let's begin with the similarities first and then move on to the differences.

#1

Just the flagship Meizu MX5 and then Meizu Pro 6, the m3 Note smartphone comes with an all metal unibody design. In fact it would be fair to say that the Meizu m3 Note is a clone of the slightly costlier Meizu Metal which was launched late last year. The m3 Note comes in two colour variants - white and black front with gold and silver rear plates respectively.

#2

As expected the Meizu m3 Note sports a 5.5 inch Full HD (1920x1080p) display upfront. It's worth noting that panel used is an IPS one and not the LTPS one found in the costlier Meizu Metal. On the other hand the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 comes with a similar 5.5 inch display. So it's hard to differentiate between the two phones depending on this criteria.

#3

Like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, the top end variant of the Meizu m3 Note comes with 3GBRaM on board. This accompanied by the presence of 32G of internal storage. There is also a base variant of the smartphone which comes with 3GB RAM and 16GB memory.

#4

These days batteries are becoming the bottleneck of each smartphones available in the market. However the same can't be stated for the Meizu m3 Note as it comes with a whopping 4100mAh battery on the inside. This can drive the device through a day and half of heavy to moderate usage. Jus to recall the Redmi Note comes with a similar capacity cell on the inside.

#5

Unfortunately the Meizu m3 Note doesn't run on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 our of the box. Instead it makes use of a highly customised Flyme OS running on top of Android Lollipop 5.1. It's worth noting that the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 to runs on the same version of Android.

#6

The chipset is the area where Meizu seems to cut the cost of the smartphone. It is powered by the latest Mediatek Helio P10 octa core chip with cores clocked at 1.8GHz. This is coupled with a Mali T860 GPU. On the other hand the Indian version of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 comes with a 1.8GHz octa core Snapdragon 652 chip. While the specs may look same on paper, the Snapdragon 652 is markedly faster thanks to the Cortex A72 cores on the inside.

#7

Unlike the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, the Meizu m3 Note comes with a 13MP rear camera which comes equipped with an LED Flash. This camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos and has no support for 4K. On the other hand the Redmi Note 3 makes use of a 16MP camera equipped with PDAF Sensor and LED Flash.

#8

Unlike the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, the Meizu m3 Note has a Fingerprint Sensor embedded within the home button. This means that you can use the home button on this smartphone both as a Touch ID and as a capacitive buttons. Besides that the placement of the fingerprint sensor on the front makes it convenient to unlock the smartphone.