Meizu mBlu 21 Review

The Meizu mBlu 21 is a freshly launched entry-level smartphone with an attractive price range under PHP 4,000USD 69INR 6,063EUR 66CNY 504. This device is one of two offerings that have sparked Meizu’s comeback in the Philippines.

Given how much it costs, expectations shouldn’t be that high. But you never know, it could provide end users under a budget with more than meets the eye.

And that’s why we’re here today! Let’s dive right into what makes the Meizu mBlu 21 tick.

Design and Construction

We got our review unit in Titan Black, which is mostly made out of polycarbonate material. It features what Meizu calls Prism Edge design. It’s essentially just a faint shining effect seen along the back panel when hit with light.

It’s a muted and minimal design that’s quite appealing under this segment. It’s still subjective, but we’ve noticed that a handful of phones under this price range tend to lean on louder designs.

You’ll notice that it also houses two sensors and a LED flash on the upper left of the back panel. Notably, the phone only has a single main shooter. This makes the other an auxiliary lens, but we’ll discuss how they fare later.

At the front, we have the phone’s display and its front camera situated in a hole punch notch. The bezels are a bit thicker than we’d prefer, making it feel outdated in terms of design language.

For buttons and ports, we have the volume rocker and power button on the right side. These are quite tactile, and the latter works as a fingerprint sensor as well.

On the left, we have the dual nano-SIM tray which is also a hybrid slot for using microSD cards. I like how the hole for the SIM ejector is placed outside of the tray. This is because material used for the tray can at times be fragile and broken off easily.

At the bottom, there’s a 3.5mm audio port, a microphone, a USB Type-C port, and one of two speakers. Users can find the other speaker on top of the phone.

By the way, the phone isn’t certified for an ingress protection rating. Users should keep this in mind for any activity yielding notable contact with dust and water.

Generally speaking though, this device was fleshed out well. It comes off as a common find as it doesn’t really stand out with its simple design. Then again, less is more to some people.

Display, Multimedia, and Biometrics

Running it back, the mBlu 21 has a 6.79-inch LCD panel that has a refresh rate of 90Hz. While it only supports HD+ resolution, we’re not complaining considering how much the phone is. Audio output options include its stereo speakers and a 3.5mm audio port.

The display is decent for indoor use whether you’re scrolling or streaming videos online. However, it can struggle under direct sunlight outdoors. Users could max out its brightness as a quick fix at the expense of using more power.

We’ve leveraged the screen mostly for browsing, multimedia consumption, and a bit of gaming. Fairly enough, it does provide end users with good color accuracy. Our only issue with the viewing experience is how thick the bezels are as it takes up screen space.

The speakers aren’t too great though. They work as intended, but the quality just isn’t there. We recommend users to just use earphones or connect a pair of earbuds via Bluetooth instead. It’s kind of odd though that the mBlu 21 has stereo speakers while the Note 21 doesn’t.

For biometrics, the phone comes with face unlock and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor. The face unlock enrollment feels a bit scuffed, but it works well once it’s set up.

Meanwhile, the fingerprint sensor is very sensitive. I had no gripes with registration and unlocking the device. However, I noticed that it timed me out one time without me really trying to unlock it. It turns out that it kept scanning my unregistered index finger as I was just holding it with my off-hand.

Cameras

For optics, the phone has a 13-megapixel main camera and an 8-megapixel front camera. The other sensor seen on the back panel is just an auxiliary lens which won’t really be used.

To elaborate, the main camera is alright when users shoot on default of 1x zoom. Zooming any further leads to a heavy dip in quality that can worsen even more with absence of light.

The saving grace for the cameras are its color reproduction and subject separation. These work pretty well, selfies and video recordings included. However, we can’t really ignore that it’s not that good at preserving details either.

Of course, you guys could always tell us otherwise. We’ll leave the samples for you guys here.

For what it’s worth, it’s decent at best. We’re sure people really aren’t looking for devices that are optimal for photography under this segment. It’d be a nice bonus should it be possible.

To be fair though, it’s usable. It just takes a bit of work and some mindfulness to take lighting conditions into account.

OS, Apps, and UI

As the global version of the device, our unit shipped with Android 14 out of the box. While there’s not much to unpack here, the biggest pleasantry would be the absence of bloatware.

My only gripe with this is the lack of a dedicated photo gallery. Yes, users have to go into files to check on their recently taken photos, screenshots, etc.

Anyway, users will find Google’s suite of apps which include YouTube and Drive pre-installed on the device. The user interface is straightforward as well, featuring the usual gesture functions for Android devices. Pulling up brings up the app drawer, while pulling down shows users quick toggles and notifications.

Some users might find this clunky due to how bare the interface feels, which is understandable. Personally, it makes me wonder if the experience would change with Flyme OS, which is Meizu’s native skin.

Performance and Benchmarks

Under the hood, the Meizu mBlu 21 is powered by a UNISOC T606 chipset. This comes with eight cores and a Mali-G57 MP1 GPU.

For reference, our review unit came with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Plus, it supports microSD cards via a hybrid slot on its SIM tray for extra space.

We’ve used the phone for browsing the web, streaming videos, and some gaming on the side. Of course, that didn’t stop us from seeing if it could handle resource-heavy apps.

We found that it could handle Genshin Impact with the lowest graphic settings enabled. However, expectations should be leveled as optimal gameplay isn’t really possible.

Users can certainly run the game, but this comes with frame drops. At its best, it should only be used to get your dailies out of the way. At the very least, it doesn’t tend to heat up even an hour into gameplay.

All things considered, gaming with modern titles won’t give users a seamless experience. Keep in mind, the minimum memory requirement for devices today is 8GB of RAM.

As an alternative, users could also opt for lighter game titles to enjoy. Our recommendations for this are Teamfight Tactics or Mobile Legends. The latter game only has a minimum RAM requirement of 1GB, so it shouldn’t be too taxing.

Meanwhile, Teamfight Tactics runs with 30 frames anyway. It’s a relatively popular game that isn’t too heavy.

It’s also odd that the mBlu 21 supports 3D Mark Wild Life while the Note 21 doesn’t. We’ll leave the benchmark scores for the Meizu mBlu 21 in a table below for those interested.

Battery and Connectivity

This phone packs a 4,900mAh battery and charges via USB Type-C. We got the unit without its box, so we’re assuming that only a charging cable comes with it.

As mentioned, we’ve used the phone with a handful of tasks that range from light to heavy processing power. Still, it’s fitting that we put it to the test with our usual benchmarking tools.

In PC Mark’s Battery Test, the phone had an uptime of 14 hours and 20 minutes. This test was taken with the phone on 50 percent brightness, in airplane mode, and with muted volume.

For our proprietary video loop test, the phone gave us 24 hours and 4 minutes of playback. This test was taken with the same variables mentioned prior while playing a full HD movie.

From the tests, we can infer that multitasking isn’t a strong point for the device, providing us with pretty standard uptime. However, it seems to excel in streaming videos. This is likely due to how its chipset works as we’re assuming it doesn’t really need much resources to run videos.

It’s not bad, but it’s not an advantage either. Summing it up, users can still look forward to it being usable for most of the day. However, going beyond that is being optimistic.

For connectivity, the phone has 4G, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5, and supports dual nano-SIM. These work pretty well, with no gripes on our end in terms of connection stability.

For calls, it’s pretty standard as it also works as intended. This is with either Wi-Fi or a connection via a mobile network provider.

Pricing and Conclusion

The Meizu mBlu 21 has a budget-friendly price tag of just PHP 3,999. As we mentioned, expectations weren’t that high for how much it is.

As for what it offers, it’s a bit all over the place with pricing being its main advantage. Other pros include its design, great display, clean software albeit being stock Android, and decent battery life.

However, we can’t really deny that there’s not much to work with the device either. It struggles under performance, making it less than optimal for those that want to use modern resource-intensive apps.

Still, it’s not bad for general or relaxed usage. We recommend that it’s used for streaming videos and browsing. I mean, it has a sizable display to match it.

At the end of the day, it’s an affordable pickup. We appreciate how Meizu’s return gives us more options that could work to fit our budgets. After all, we at YugaTech believe there’s something for everyone.

What we liked:
* Price
* Design and construction (back panel, I/O placement, tactile buttons)
* Display (multimedia experience, preferably with earphones)
* Absence of bloatware
* Battery life (better over video streaming)

What we didn’t like:
* Display (thick bezels)
* Speakers
* Cameras
* Fingerprint sensor sensitivity
* Performance (incapable of multitasking/using heavier apps)

Meizu mBlu 21 specs:
6.79-inch HD+ (1640 x 720) IPS LCD
90Hz refresh rate
UNISOC T606 (12nm, up to 1.6GHz)
2x Cortex-A75 (1.6GHz)
6x Cortex-A55 (1.6GHz)
Mali-G57 MP1 GPU
6GB RAM (+6GB extended memory)
128GB internal storage
microSD card support (hybrid slot)
13MP main camera (f/2.2)
8MP front camera (f/2.0)
3.5mm audio port
Stereo speakers
Dual nano-SIM
4G VoLTE
Wi-Fi 5
Bluetooth 5
GPS
USB Type-C
Android 14
Face unlock
Fingerprint sensor (side-mounted)
4,900mAh battery
78 x 170.8 x 9.35 mm (dimensions)
196 grams (weight)
Ocean Blue, Diamond White, Titan Black (colors)