Meizu m1 metal review: Glitter in the dark

Capable 13MP camera with a dual-tone LED flash

The Meizu m1 metal has a 13MP camera sensor that's capable of capturing 4208x3120px snaps in 4:3 aspect. There's also a dual-tone LED flash that should allow for more pleasing colors in low light flash photos.

The camera interface by default launches into Auto mode where the camera determines the shooting parameters. You have the option to turn on HDR (but no automatic HDR), gridlines for the viewfinder and a level gauge so that your horizon isn't off tilt. There's also an option to enable a timer of either 3, 5 or 10 seconds.

Available shooting modes include Auto, Manual (where you can set the shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation and even the focus - from macro to infinity), Beauty (which can make eyes bigger, face slimmer, skin smoother and lighter), Panorama, Light field (which is Meizu's refocus app allowing you to defocus any part of the scene), Scan (for QR and barcodes), and Slowmotion.

Camera • Manual mode

We find the 13MP shots that the Meizu m1 metal snaps to be subpar. The resolved detail is compromised by a blurry spot here and there and the high levels of noise. Sometimes we needed to focus manually because the autofocus failed to do a proper job.

On the positive side, the dynamic range is OK and the colors, contrast and white balance were quite accurate.

Meizu m1 metal camera samples

The HDR mode is meant to get a more even exposure of a scene - bringing back detail in the highlights and the shadows. On the Meizu m1 metal it does a very good job of bringing back detail in both and sometimes even produces more accurate colors than the Auto mode.

HDR Off • HDR On • HDR Off • HDR On

Panoramas aren't too impressive on the Meizu m1 metal. There is plenty of resolution and good overall exposure but the resolved detail is far too low.

Meizu m1 metal panorama sample (5000 x 2400 px)

Finally, you can check out an 8MP image taken with the front-facing camera of the device. It doesn't shine with too much detail but it would do a great job for selfies.

Front-facing camera sample

1080p video recording at 30 fps

The Meizu m1 metal shoots videos up to 1080p resolution at 30fps. There's no 60fps smooth motion option but you do get a 720p@100fps slow motion shooting mode that is rendered for playback as a slow motion 25fps video.

Camcorder UI

All videos from m1 metal camera are stored in MP4 containers, the video bitrate is about 17Mpbs and the framerate is stable. This time around the audio is stereo - it uses an AAC codec with 128 Kbps bitrate and 48 KHz sampling.

Framerate stays firmly at 30fps and we got almost no dropped frames.

The resolved detail is quite poor though, the additive noise is once again getting in the way and makes the samples unpleasantly grainy. We noticed some oscillation on the videos as well, which just add to the overall poor quality. Here is sample we've uploaded on YouTube.

You can also directly download the 1080p@30fps video sample.