Chinese smartphone maker Meizu is one of the players in the budget segment. The M5 is Meizu’s latest entrant and the phone comes in two variants — 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal memory, and 3GB RAM with 32GB of memory that can be expanded up to 128GB.

The test mule I got was the 16GB variant, which is priced at roughly ₹7,490. At this price, it competes with the 2GB version of Xiaomi’s Redmi 4.

The M5 feels plasticky and doesn’t have a very striking design. Its rounded edges and 2.5D curved-edge glass still offers a comfortable grip. The bottom part of the phone hosts the fingerprint sensor that doubles up as a home button. However, you have to wake up the phone before using the scanner, so you can’t simply place your thumb on the button and wait.

The 5.2-inch screen was bright enough to use outdoors on a sunny day, which is all you can ask for at this price. The 720 x 1,280-pixel resolution is fine for the size and price.

There aren’t any navigation keys at all as Meizu has its own navigation scheme – you have to tap/swipe the home button to go back. If you are used to the convenient back button that comes on most other phones, you will find this irritating.

The volume and power buttons are placed on the right, and they’re easy to use. The hybrid dual-SIM tray is placed on the left. The speakers and headphone jack are on the bottom rim.

The M5 is powered by a MediaTek MT6750 chipset with an octa-core 1.5GHz Cortex A53 processor and Mali-T860 MP2 graphics processor. It runs on Meizu’s own Flyme operating system, which sits atop Android 6.0.1 that seems archaic, now that the latest Nougat is finding its way to other phones. The phone comes with Flyme’s own app store, which contains a good number of apps. There’s no app drawer and your homescreen may fill with apps that you may not even use regularly.

The M5 gets a 3,070mAh battery, which I was able to squeeze to just about a day with regular use, so battery performance is average.

The M5 sports a 13MP, f/2.2 aperture rear camera and clicked decent pictures during the day and does well with good lighting. There is nothing wrong with it considering its price. However, much like other budget phones, low light images are prone to noise and blurring. The front camera, with 5MP, clicks decent selfies.

The Meizu M5 is a decent budget phone, but it fails to stand out in any area. It faces competition from similarly priced phones from Xiaomi, Lenovo and Motorola, which are better-designed, offer a longer battery life and a superior camera too.

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