Xiaomi Mi Max 4GB 128GB

One of the largest phones you can buy today, with a battery to match.Easy enough to hold in one hand, but you'll need two hands for active use.The screen gets good marks on image quality, sharpness, and brightness, sunlight legibility isn't great amazing battery life with one and two SIMs, 108h/102h Endurance; the web browsing time is particularly impressive, one of the best we've tested.Customized Android 6.0 Marshmallow looks different but functions the same.

Great performance for the class, even for the Snapdragon 650 version; the UI is smooth with 3GB RAM; since the S652 model has the same GPU, so splurging on the S652 chipset and more RAM is mostly for enthusiasts.Loudspeaker performance is Average, many 6+ inch phones do better than that Wired audio is perfect - loud and with very little distortion even with headphones. The good 16MP camera can benefit from lowering the sharpness setting; Handheld Twilight mode improves low-light performance; Good selfie camera, panorama shows good stitching but resolution could have been higher 2160p video can use some work (issues with unstable bitrate); FoV narrower than 1080p (no bitrate issues here).

The 6.44-inch display is good, but not remarkable. It has a 1080 x 1920 resolution, which suffices, but its colors are on the colder side and appear darker than they actually are. The viewing angles are solid, but the display left us squinting badly to make out something on a relaxed sunny day, despite its strong brightness output. Overall, the display quality is acceptable, but not exemplary.The Mi Max ships running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow customized with Xiaomi's lively and highly-customizable MIUI 7 interface.The Mi Max can handle everything but the most demanding 3D games.

Also, the phablet comes with up to 128GB of expandable internal storage, but the 32GB and 64GB models (we tested the latter) ought to handle almost everyone's needs.Still, the Mi Max captures a nice amount of detail in good light conditions, but if the light is less than stellar, the heavy-handed sharpening can make photos unpleasant to look at up close (zoom in the photos from the park).With its generous 4850 battery, the Xiaomi Mi Max lasted 12 hours and 2 minutes of constant on-screen use in our test, which is an excellent result.