Maze is a newcomer to the smartphone game and they have made one of the best-looking budget phones. Is this device worth your attention? Learn more in the full Maze Blade Review.
VIDEO REVIEW
UNBOXING
The phone ships with all the usual stuff, no extras included.
DESIGN and DISPLAY
The design is one of the key selling points of the Maze Blade. We have glass on the front and rear, metal chassis, metal buttons and the phone looks more expensive than it is.
Obviously, the glass back attracts smudges quickly but that is a case with all glass-made phones.
However, I found that the volume rocker rattles just a bit. Also, there is a programmable key, which can be mapped to almost any app you want and it will open it from the standby mode. Also, this button works as a shutter key in the camera app.
I found the 5.5” 1080p display to be pretty sharp and vibrant for everyday use.
Also, we have a notification LED light, which sits next to the 8MP selfie shooter and nicely backlit capacitive keys. The fingerprint scanner is accurate and it unlocks the phone straight from the standby mode.
As for optics, we have a 13MP shooter with a dual LED flash.
The loudspeaker quality does not really impress like on most of the budget phones.
HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
The Maze Blade has pretty good specs for the price that includes an octa-core MTK6753 chip, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of expandable storage.
These specs assure a smooth user interface performance but when it comes to gaming, you should expect some skipped frames and stutter in some games. However, Asphalt 8 runs quite ok on medium graphics but the phone gets warm very quickly.
BENCHMARKS
USER INTERFACE
The Maze Blade ships with a pretty much stock-looking Android 6.0 out of the box but there are some added features and customization options.
There are quite a few gesture and motion controls that work quite well but some of them are quite slow to respond.You can also change the colors of the LED notification light, use a one-hand operation mode that works quite well or use the fingerprint app lock feature to lock certain apps. Most importantly, the user interface performance has been smooth and fluid, no complaints here.
IMAGE QUALITY
Maze Blade can take decent daylight images considering this is a cheap phone. Sure, the level of detail could be higher, the dynamic range adjustment could be more accurate but in general, you can take some decent-looking daylight images.
The low-light camera performance does not impress like on most of the cheap phones.
Selfie pictures will definitely do the trick for social media needs but there could slightly more detail.
The 1080p video quality is above average. Surprisingly, the sound recording quality is decent for a cheap phone. Selfie video quality is again, kind of mediocre but it is possible to use the camera for video chats or other stuff.
Download full resolution camera samples
CONNECTIVITY
What surprised me most was a really good call quality. Other features like Wifi, Bluetooth work fine and even GPS is quite accurate for a cheap phone.
BATTERY LIFE
The 3000mAh battery performs quite well. I was able to get almost 5 hours of screen-on time, which is a good result considering the fact that the phone has a 5.5” display.
CONCLUSIONS
The Maze Blade is one of the better-looking budget phones out there. It has decent specs, it is fast on the daily basis and cameras can take decent-looking daylight pictures.
Obviously, you should consider some caveats like rattling volume rocker, mediocre gaming, and low-light camera performance but in general, the Maze Blade is a decent offering for the price.
