Snapdragon 430 Still Puts in the Work
One thing that many of you may clamor for on this device is a better SoC, after all, the Snapdragon 430 is a little over two years old now. One thing you do have to remember though is that the 430 used to be the darling in the mid-range segment and to have in a device that’s just below Php 9k is still acceptable at this point in time. It handles the day-to-day without any major issue and just a few hiccups every now and then.
If you’re looking to game with the Max M1 that’s completely possible as well just as long as you’re not expecting to play on the highest settings. Let’s take a look at the gaming benchmarks.
Overall, you’re getting a pretty good gaming experience on this device and we’ve managed to score a couple of Chicken Dinners at PUBG Mobile as the game wouldn’t stutter during key moments. The stability on Tekken may be a little alarming but the major dips often came at initial loading screens, where there happens to be a ton in this game. Expect a few frame rate drops but it’s completely playable.
ZenUI 5.0 is Lighter
The Zenfone Max M1 ships with Android Oreo 8.0 out of the box with the newest version of the Taiwanese brand’s UI overlay ZenUI 5.0 and we’re happy to see that we’re seeing less and less bloatware with each new iteration. There are only a handful of apps from Asus themselves plus Facebook, Messenger, Instagram aside from the usual stuff from Google. After all the pre-installed software, you’re left with 22GB of storage to play with.
