At the end of March this year, Meizu mobile phones returned to the public eye after an absence of 525 days. They returned to the world with a brand-new “unbounded” design, which reminded us of the Meizu 20 series mobile phones with the most unique design. This year is also the 20th anniversary of the founding of Meizu. As the end of the year approaches, with the arrival of the third-generation Snapdragon 8, Meizu has once again found the right time to launch a new generation of flagship phones – Meizu 21, inheriting the classics of the Meizu 20 series. The “unbounded” design introduces the new generation of Snapdragon 8 Gen3 performance iron triangle and challenges the world with an ultra-narrow physical quadrilateral of 1.74mm.
It has obtained the Meizu 21 Unbounded Black color in advance, and we will conduct a detailed and comprehensive review of it next.
First, let’s take a look at the main features and detailed parameters of Meizu 21.
1. The third generation Snapdragon 8 performance iron triangle
As the flagship product in 2023, Meizu 21 is undoubtedly equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, supported by the TSMC N4P process, ensuring the release of energy efficiency and high performance.
Secondly, the combination of LPDDR5X and UFS4.0 fast flash memory brings a flagship level beyond the past with Flyme’s all-around optimization from software storage to game operation. Reading and writing, application opening response is faster, and transmission is more efficient.
2. The 200 million ultra-high-pixel main camera brings 3 types of image quality experiences
As a standard mobile phone, Meizu 21 uses a 200-megapixel ultra-high-pixel main camera, with three image quality outputs: 12.5MP default, 4-in-1 50MP, and 16-in-1 200MP.
In other words, we can choose the appropriate output mode based on the actual scene, and with OIS optical image stabilization and the powerful computing power of the third-generation Snapdragon 8, taking pictures in 200 million mode is fast and stable, and the film yield rate rises linearly.
3. The ring flash is greatly upgraded and integrated with the Aicy smart ring.
Meizu’s ring flash is derived from the PRO 6 released in 2016. It uses multiple LED lamp beads as the light source to make the shooting flash and ambient light brighter and the light more uniform.
This time, in Meizu 21, this function has been innovated again, adding a versatile display to the lamp beads, and giving the phone the ability to interact with the ring flash. Meizu calls it Aicy smart ring, which can be used in different scenes. , the flash will automatically match the light source and dynamic effects, bringing a smart interactive experience.
Design and Appearance
Meizu 21 is equipped with a 6.55-inch Samsung AMOLED screen on the front, with a refresh rate of 120Hz and supports an instantaneous touch sampling rate of up to 1500Hz. The surface of the screen is covered with a Corning Gorilla Victus panel, which is hard and wear-resistant. The phone is not afraid of being hit by sharp objects when placed in a trouser pocket. scratches.
We checked the screen pixel arrangement of Meizu 21, the Samsung E6 luminous panel, the proper diamond arrangement, and the resolution is 2340×1080.
This time, Meizu 21 has the world’s narrowest physical quadrilateral. The width of the four sides of the screen is reduced to 1.74mm. The visual effect is equivalent. The moment the screen is lit, it looks particularly comfortable. The rounded corners form a centrally symmetrical aesthetic. Design, the front of Meizu 21 has simply cured my obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Coming to the back of the Meizu 21, the phone continues the well-received unbounded design of the previous generation and has been upgraded to version 2.0. It has a simple independent three-camera star ring design. The front and rear faces are slightly curved with the middle frame, forming an aesthetic and feel Parallel unique design.
The back of the mobile phone is made of soft sand star flash glass back panel, which has a frosted feel, feels delicate and soft, and avoids fingerprint contamination.
The three cameras of Meizu 21 are a 200-megapixel main camera, a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 5-megapixel depth-of-field lens. The outer ring of the depth-of-field camera is surrounded by four single-color temperature LED ring flashes, inheriting the Meizu tradition. classic design elements.
What needs to be mentioned here is that the ring flash on the rear of the Meizu 21 is officially called the Aicy smart ring. It is not only a flash but also has a variety of built-in colors. It can automatically match different colors according to different usage scenarios. Flashing rhythmically, such as music playback, game lighting effects, incoming call reminders, red envelope reminders, screen volume adjustment, etc., can show smart effects with various colors and animations. This flash is played by Meizu.
The four sides of Meizu 21 are made of high-strength aviation aluminum metal middle frame. The top of the phone has an infrared remote control sensor and a noise-reduction microphone. The bottom is a speaker, microphone, Type-C charging headphone two-in-one interface, and SIM card slot. Meizu 21 comes standard with an 80W fast charging charger set.
Performance and Gaming
As the flagship of the year, there is no doubt that Meizu 21 must be equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, based on the new generation TSMC N4P process, the new Kyro “1+5+2” three-core architecture, dual new technology blessings, whether it is daily It is still used for heavy gaming, and the experience is smooth and fun to play.
The Meizu 21 we have has built-in 12GB LPDDR5X memory and 512GB UFS4.0 flash memory.
Next, we conducted a set of theoretical performance and game performance tests on it. During the test, in order to ensure the accuracy of the test data, we adjusted the screen brightness of the phone to 50% and turned off automatic brightness and memory expansion. In the mobile phone manager Turn on high-performance mode for testing.
Performance Testing
We first conducted a single theoretical test of the CPU. In the Geekbench 6 test, the CPU single-core score reached 2160 points and the multi-core score was 6493 points. Compared with the previous generation Meizu 20 equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen2, the single-core performance increased by 9.4%, and the multi-core performance increased by 9.4%. An increase of 23.3%.
Next is the GPU test. Under continuous testing conditions, the results of GFXBench’s six 1080P projects are as follows:
- Aztec Ruins OpenGL: 172FPS
- Aztec Ruins Vulkan: 187FPS
- Racing chase frame rate: 133FPS
- Manhattan 3.1 off-screen: 218FPS
- Manhattan off-screen: 299FPS
- Tyrannosaurus Rex off-screen: 436FPS
Compared with the previous generation of Snapdragon 8 Gen2, this generation of Snapdragon 8 Gen3 also has obvious advantages in graphics rendering capabilities, with an improvement of up to 65%. In theory, the smoothness of the game will bring about a huge improvement.
Game testing
To explore the true strength of this third-generation Snapdragon 8 in Meizu 21, we selected three popular mobile games, namely “Honor of Kings”, “Peace Elite” and “Original” in an office environment with a room temperature of 26 degrees Celsius. “God”, select the highest frame rate under the highest image quality (with image quality first) for game testing, and record the frame rate, power consumption, energy efficiency ratio and body temperature performance during the game.
1. King of Glory
The first is the test of the basic game Honor of Kings. Meizu 21 can run at up to 60 frames under extreme image quality. After a game, the average frame rate is 60.1FPS, with an average fluctuation of 0.1FPS. The power consumption is 2.138W, which is not high for the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 model.
In terms of temperature, the front of the fuselage reaches a maximum of 35.8 degrees Celsius, and the back reaches a maximum of 35.3 degrees Celsius. You can hardly feel the heat during gaming.
2. Peace Elite
Then we tested the medium-load mobile game Peace Elite, with smooth image quality and 90 frames mode. After a fierce team battle, the average frame rate was stable at 89.7FPS, which was close to full frame, and the frame rate fluctuated by 4FPS.
In terms of power consumption, the average is about 3.5W, which is nearly 0.2W lower than Snapdragon 8 Gen2. The frame energy consumption is 39mW. The frame rate is stable and the power consumption is still low.
In terms of temperature, the maximum temperature on the front of the fuselage is 39.2 degrees Celsius, and the maximum temperature on the back is 38.4 degrees Celsius. The temperature is suitable and the gaming experience will not be poor due to excessive heat during gaming.
3. Original God
Finally, we came to the heavily loaded Genshin Impact mobile game test. In the highest image quality + 60 frames mode, we were running and fighting monsters. At this time, the resolution we captured was 884P, which is a little higher than the rendering pressure of other 8 Gen3 mobile phones. , but it is still able to stabilize the output at 59.5FPS, and the average fluctuation is maintained at 1.2FPS. During the game, releasing the ultimate move is surprisingly stable, with almost no frame drops.
In terms of power consumption, it is only about 4.47W. Not only does it not reach 5W, it is not even 4.5W. This really shocked us. The energy efficiency ratio of the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 is lower than that of the Meizu 20 series last year. 8 Gen2, about 14% higher.
Thanks to the large heat dissipation area of 37,345 square millimeters stacked inside the Meizu 21 fuselage, when playing heavy-load mobile games like Genshin Impact, the maximum temperature of the fuselage is nearly 1 degree Celsius lower than that of the Snapdragon 8 Gen2. Although the temperature during the game is still You can feel the heat gradually accumulating, but compared with the previous generation Meizu 20, it can really be said to be stable and cool.
Cameras
Meizu 21 has three rear cameras. The main camera uses Samsung S5KHP3 CMOS, a 1/1.4-inch photosensitive unit, with a default output of 125,000 pixels and a single pixel of 0.56μm. It can quickly output 50-megapixel ultra-clear images through four-in-one. It can achieve up to 16-in-1 200 million pixel direct output.
The ultra-wide angle is a 13-megapixel Samsung S5K3L6 sensor with a 122° field of view.
The other lens is a 5-megapixel depth-of-field camera with a Samsung S5K5e9 sensor. Its main function is to cooperate with the main camera to achieve a blur effect.
Main photo sample
Given how helpful this 200-megapixel camera is for imaging, let’s first test the resolution of Meizu 21 in three image qualities. We used the three image qualities of Meizu 21 to shoot pictures of a fixed scene. After zooming in and comparing, we can see that the default 12.5MP shoots Chinese characters on buildings. It can be recognized after zooming in, but the resolution is insufficient and the writing is very blurry. The picture captured by 50MP is good and the handwriting is much clearer.
The text under 200 Megapixels is not only visible but after magnification, you can even see the ravines next to the writing. For comparison, another set of proofs captures the text above the building. The 12.5MP proofs show that the fonts are blurred after enlargement, and the air conditioning well grille next to it is blurry.
After enlarging the 50MP sample, the details of the fonts are more in place, and the air-conditioning well grille begins to become clear. At 200MP, the light lines leading next to the word “Macro” can be seen, and even the gaps between the air-conditioning well grilles can be vaguely visible.
In this set of proofs, under 200 million pixels, the outline of the four words “No going into the river” is clearer, and the edges of the surrounding bricks are also clearly visible.
In the daytime proofs, Meizu 21 restores colors more accurately without overly bright colors. The picture presented finds a good balance between reality and vividness. This balance makes the picture both realistic and vivid. Without losing the beauty. Especially in the sky, the layering of cumulus clouds is very rich, as if you can feel the thickness and density of the clouds.
Night images
Under the night scene, the highlight suppression of the pictures taken with long exposure is very good, and the light and shadow, light and dark details can be accurately recorded. However, the red light sign will still be slightly whitened, but the overall sample quality is not bad.
It should be noted that the exposure time of Meizu 21 in night scene mode will be slightly longer, so it is more suitable to use a tripod for shooting.
Super wide-angle sample
The 122-degree ultra-wide-angle lens can correct distortion by default, but there will be some blurring at the edges of the picture, causing both sides of the picture to look slightly blurry.
Fortunately, the colors displayed are more realistic, and the viewing angle is wider than other mobile phones of the same level. There is not much pressure in daily shooting.
Battery
Meizu 21 has a built-in 4800mAh large-capacity battery, and the charging power has been increased from the previous 67W to 80W.
In this regard, we also tested the charging capacity and battery life of the Meizu 21.
Charging test
After actual testing, the battery started charging from 1%, charging to 39% in 10 minutes, charging to 65% in 20 minutes, and charging to 82% in half an hour, and then gradually entered the trickle charging mode, and finally fully charged in 43 minutes.
Endurance test
In the test items, the 20% power test will be performed by default. At the same time, all test items including CPU high voltage, CPU multi-threading, AI recognition, picture browsing, video playback, and web browsing will be checked to simulate user usage scenarios. , to restore the real load to the greatest extent and be infinitely close to the real power consumption.
During the test, to keep the environmental variables tested for all models consistent and ensure the accuracy of the test results, Battery Dog will automatically adjust the screen brightness to 50%, turn off automatic brightness, and adjust the volume to 30%.
After continuous uninterrupted testing by Battery Dog, it took 9 hours and 46 minutes for the power to be consumed from 100% to 20%. After conversion, the full battery life can reach nearly 11 hours. As the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 flagship machine, it is a proper battery life artifact. Daily users can use it for a day without any problems.
Read Also: Meizu Flyme 10.5 Private test recruitment opened: Meizu 20/PRO/INFINITY first to participate!
Verdict
The appearance of Meizu 21, based on adhering to the “unbounded” design of the front seat, further narrows the four borders to achieve a truly equal-width visual effect. Compared with those “visually equal-width” mobile phones, the Meizu 21 no matter which way you look at it Looking at it from different angles, there is a sense of extremely symmetrical beauty. Virgos and patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder will sigh “Perfect” when they see it .
Secondly, the 6.55-inch small-sized screen can be easily held by girls with small hands with one hand. Coupled with the upgraded Samsung E6 screen, the text is not blurry, the pictures are not distorted, and the colors are accurate and the picture is fine, eliminating the problems of the previous generation. That graininess.
It is worth mentioning that Meizu 21’s unique Aicy smart ring can achieve different colors and dynamic effects in different scenarios. This function can bring us the most direct information feedback with the most intuitive interaction logic, even on mobile phones. With the screen turned upside down on the table, you can tell at a glance what’s going on with your phone. Once you use this feature, you can’t go back.
Aicy smart ring can be described in one sentence: it not only inherits the classics but also transcends the classics.
Equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8, the performance of this small-screen mobile phone is directly maximized, laying the foundation for smooth daily use and high-intensity gameplay. In our actual tests, Meizu 21 played the highest graphics The quality of Genshin Impact is stable at 59.5FPS and the power consumption is within 4.5W. This game performance is outstanding among small-screen flagship phones.
In terms of imaging, the 200-megapixel ultra-clear camera greatly increases the resolution of the pictures taken. If you want to record beautiful scenery when traveling daily, high pixels come in handy. It is perfect to zoom in to see the details.
However, large pixels will have a certain impact on the brightness of the picture, so it is recommended to use ultra-high pixels under good lighting conditions.
Finally, there is the same line of ultrasonic fingerprint recognition , which is not dazzling to unlock at night and can be easily unlocked with wet hands. So far, no mobile phone manufacturer has used ultrasonic fingerprint recognition in its standard version of flagship mobile phones, but Meizu has used it. The 2004 and fourth-generation products have truly brought mobile phones to a new level that is hard to come back from once used.
To sum up, this generation of Meizu 21 inherits the classic design and functions of the past. It not only makes breakthroughs in performance and imaging, but also brings us novel interaction methods, and has the world’s narrowest 1.74mm. Bian’s innovative aesthetic design has created this new generation of dream machines in Keyou’s mind, which also corresponds to Meizu’s saying: “Pursuit comes from love.”
If you are a fan of small-screen mobile phones and have relatively high requirements for details, performance, screen, and quality, then Meizu 21 can be included in your purchase range.