It’s time to analyze coolpad Max, a high-end, high-end mobile with good value for money that promises to seduce you by its premium design, huge screen or powerful camera among other features.
Coolpad raises its bet
Despite appearing on the list of the ten largest smartphone manufacturers in China, Coolpad was until quite recently an unknown brand for the Spanish public. This situation is on track to change, little by little, with the foray of the brand in our market with a determined commitment to offer mobiles with a good value for money.
The path of the brand has been ascending since the arrival of Modena, Torino S or Torino, an interesting option below 200 euros. Coolpad now raises the bar with its – for the moment – top of the range that we review in this analysis of the Coolpad Max, a recommended mid-range mobile – at least on paper – on paper by introducing some features reserved until recently to the high end.
We are talking about a terminal with premium design, fingerprint reader, eight-core processor next to 4 GB of RAM and a camera more than enough in view of the specification sheet. And the best is missing, the price of the Coolpad Max marked at 399 euros that takes it away from terminals of first brands with similar features.
Will this new Coolpad terminal be able to meet expectations? What are your strengths? How much autonomy does it offer? How good are your photos? In these lines we will try to answer these and many other questions in the analysis of the Coolpad Max.
Design
The unboxing of the Coolpad Max is up to everything described above thanks to an elegant and successful packaging in which in addition to the terminal we find a fast charging connector, a USB cable of a much higher quality than what we are used to in this price range and acceptable headphones.
At first glance the coolpad Max’s design is quite attractive, with a golden tone and rounded lines that bring you closer to the high end, a design that is sometimes reminiscent of HTC or Apple products.
Its nomenclature may lead to confusion, but this terminal does not become among the largest – or heaviest – on the market as it stays in about 5.5 inches recommended for lovers of large screens. In the hand it is quite ergonomic and offers a pleasant touch with a hardened and anodized aluminum chassis that affects its premium appearance.
The glass with curved edges on the front features Gorilla Glass 4 protection, the most advanced made at the time of the phone’s launch. Above the screen we have the main headset, the main camera and the LED Flash, while under it we can see the Coolpad logo.
On the left side we find the volume controls in a rather ergonomic position for both right-handers and left-handers. On the other side we have the removable tray in which we can insert two SIM cards or a SIM card and a microSD to expand the internal memory of the phone.
Just below is the other physical button of the terminal, the on/off button, which as the volume button has a slight relief that will help us to operate the phone in the dark, something that in the day to day can be quite practical.
At the top we have only the output for the headphones while at the bottom edge we can see the microUSB port flanked by the speakers.
Good sensations are repeated when reviewing the back of the device, with a rather good matte finish and pleasant to the touch. The camera, centered on the top, protrudes slightly but is well protected by a metal ring. Next to it we find the dual tone LED flash. We have the antenna bands and the fingerprint reader – which does not button – in the right position.
In short, the design of the Coolpad Max is remarkable, with good manufacturing materials and a rather acceptable ergonomics of such dimensions although it is obviously not the lightest device on the market and still stands a step below the most well-known flagships.
With the increase in the consumption of multimedia content the screen has become a central element when choosing a mobile phone. More if possible in the case of a 5.5-inch terminal that seems designed to satisfy video lovers.
In this analysis of the Coolpad Max we have found that your screen is up to the price and the expectations generated. We are talking about an IPS panel with Full HD resolution that offers a density of 401 pixels per inch, with the addition that the design gives us a terminal almost without bezels.
However we do find a negative aspect on the screen of this terminal, a problem that we have seen repeated in other terminals of the company and in much of the devices launched during the last year: the screen is surrounded by an excessively large black frame, especially at the top and bottom of it.
Either way, the display is crisp and bright, with fairly natural colors and remarkable viewing angles, reinforced by the anti-fingerprint coating film that the panel boasts.
On the other hand, the brightness level of this Coolpad Max is set to the remarkable one, according to its price, while the tactile response does stay a little further away from what the higher-end terminals offer.
Hardware
Underneath this imposing aluminum case we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 eight-core processor also present on the Moto G4 or HTC A9 with more than acceptable results.
In this case we have no less than 4 GB of RAM that we have seen in this review of the Coolpad Max help to offer remarkable performance in most scenarios, being enough for the vast majority of the public.
Performance tests and benchmarks place you in the expected position, in battle with terminals such as the Honor 7 or onePlus 2 but away from the Xiaomi Mi 5 that mounts the powerful Snapdragon 820.
When it comes to running the most popular video games on the market you won’t have any problems, but during our tests to write this analysis of the Coolpad Max we have detected some lag and slightly elevated loading times when managing the most complex apps and games, which disappears if we go to the high-end terminals.
On occasion when we force the machine to the maximum we may notice some overheating, although the terminal does not take long to recover its normal temperature.
Finally we have to talk about the coolpad Max’s fingerprint reader, an interesting element that is reinforced at the software level with the possibility of establishing – at our option – a different action for each of our footprints: one finger to simply unlock the terminal, another to open the camera, a third to open the private space and another – for example – to run Facebook.
Software
We start with the news. At the software level the Coolpad MAX features Android Lollipop 5.1, a clear weak spot in the specification sheet on terminals of the same price range that already mount Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with the new version of Android Nougat just around the corner.
The terminal comes with a complex customization layer called Cool UI in its version 8.0 in which we have found some interesting aspects and several points to improve. Among the noteworthy we have the secure dual space, a completely private – and encrypted – area of the phone in which we can save from documents to images or videos of prying eyes.