ASUS launches Zenfone Max Plus M1 for RM899
Asus’ latest phone the Zenfone Max Plus M1 aims to tick off on the wish list of everything that most smartphone users want in a phone as it comes with a crisp widescreen display, dual rear cameras and a hefty battery to boot at a sub RM-1K price tag. In Malaysia, Asus is selling the Zenfone Max Plus M1 for just RM899.
Asus has also changed their naming conventions as well with the launch of the Zenfone Max Plus and have added an M1 suffix to indicate that it’s the first of its lineage with subsequent successors to the product line getting incremental model numbers (M2, M3 and so on).
Intended as a midrange phone, the Zenfone Max Plus M1 comes with a 5.7-inch Full HD LCD display with a crisp 2,160 x 1080 pixel resolution that has a massive 80% screen-to-body ratio crammed into a 5.2-inch casing. This screen-to-body ratio even manages to top the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro that was launched several months ago which had a slightly smaller 76.7% screen-to-body ratio.
In terms of hardware, the Zenfone Max Plus M1 sports a relatively power efficient MediaTek MT6750T 1.5GHz octacore processor paired with a Mali-T860 GPU along with 4GB RAM and 32GB of expandable storage via a triple card slot. This effectively allows you to cram in two SIM cards and a microSD card at the same time. The rear dual camera array consists of a 16-MP camera with an F/2.0 aperture as well as PDAF and an 8-MP camera with a wide angle lens. The front comes with a single 16-MP camera with an F/2.0 aperture for self portrait shots.
In terms of security, the phone offers face unlocking up front, which is a rarity seeing phones in this price range as well as a rear mounted fingerprint reader that unlocks the phone in 0.3 seconds.
Keeping it powered is a massive 4,130mAh battery that offers a whopping 67 hours of standby time and about 13 hours of video playback or about 21 hours of Wi-Fi enabled web browsing. The phone also comes with a 5V/2A fast charger for fast top-ups in the field.
The Asus Zenfone Max Plus M1 hits retail on 20 December and is up for preorders in Malaysia starting tomorrow and comes in three colours – Sunlight Gold, Azure Silver and Deepsea Black. To make things interesting, Asus is offering both online and offline preorder discounts to the tune of RM200, driving the original RM899 price tag of the phone further down to RM699.
Users preordering it online on Lazada from 14 to 19 December get an RM200 rebate voucher which can go towards buying other products online on Lazada. Offline buyers who swing by authorised resellers simply have to trade in an old phone irrespective of whether it works or not to be entitled to the RM200 rebate. For more details swing by Asus’ official Facebook here.