Mlais MX Base review 4200mAh 2GB budget mobile
I’ve recently reviewed several Mlais phones and found them to be generally solid budget choices. Mlais has been in the game longer than most current popular China brands and have a fairly strong following in China. They also usually put out at least a couple of update ROMs for each device they manufacture which is a nice bonus in the China phone business.
Up for review today is the Mlais MX Base. This phone is Mlais entry in the mega-battery category that’s seen a lot of contenders of late.
Mlais MX Base review OS performance
The OS on the Mlais MX Base is Android 5.1. To put it bluntly, the speed and snappiness of the MX Base is outstanding. If you were tempted to think the 4-core MT6735 couldn’t possibly compete with MT6752 or Snapdragon 815, you’d be wrong. This mobile is as quick a phone as I’ve ever used and it goes to show that we don’t need high-end SoC or 45k Antutu scores to run Android smoothly.
That is, at least not with 720P, but even when comparing the MX Base with other 720P phones with much more powerful GPUs and CPUs, the MX Base still meets or exceeds their performance in terms of OS quickness. Not only is the OS very snappy, it also performs all system animations fluidly and without any stutter or fault.
Apps not in memory are opening very quickly, within a second or two in most cases.
Apps in memory instantly come to the forefront when tapped in recent apps list. Memory performance is excellent, with apps staying in memory for many hours without issue, allowing you to multitask between a plethora of apps without losing your spot.
There were no force closes and all of my testing apps performed without issue. There were two OTA updates from Mlais and both of these installed without a problem. Play Store works great, with no issues updating Google Services.
The internal storage is relegated to a single partition, so there’s tons of room for downloading many hundreds of apps.
Mlais MX Base Antutu
Antutu on the MX Base is 28k, with a 3D score of 6500. This is powerful enough to run most modern 3D games smoothly.
Mlais MX Base display
The 720P IPS OGS display on the MX Base looks very good, with rich, popping color, and good whites. Minimum brightness is a somewhat bright 47 lux and a very bright 450 lux at maximum brightness.
There is some minor brightness unevenness, with the bottom 5% of the LCD being slightly brighter than the rest of the display, but only the most extreme OCD persons will be put off by this.
Overall the display is very good, and beyond what you’d expect on a phone of this price.
Mlais MX Base review build and style
The MX Base takes a rather laid back approach to styling. It’s a somewhat thickish phone due to it’s huge battery, but it doesn’t look bad by any means.
Shunning fingerprints, the back piece is matte and looks almost rubberized, but is clearly plastic upon touch. The fit of the back piece is as tight as it gets, requiring you to run a fingernail along three edges until you can pull it off without snapping it. This is a good thing, as you know it will remain tight and creak free for a long while to come.
à la THL 4000, the sides are brushed plastic. This style looks very good and is far more scratch resistant than metal sides.
Mlais MX Base camera
According to Mlais, they’re using the Sony 219 in the MX Base. This camera has a 1/4″ type sensor, which is about as small as it gets.
The MX Base takes decent shots adequate for smallish prints and social sharing, but it’s not going to compete quality wise with the likes of Sony 135/214, or OV8865/OV16825. These very small sensors crave light and do fine if there’s enough of it. One thing I noticed is its ability to focus closer than the aforementioned cameras.
As always, the shots are 100% unedited other than re-sizing and cropping.
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Mlais MX Base review battery
The Mlais MX Base battery is a huge 4300mAh. Coupled with a 720P 5.0″ display, this should make the MX Base a great mobile for battery hounds.
In this, it did not disappoint, reaching 11 hours in our 140 lux 720P WiFi YouTube video test.
The battery is fully saturating to a solid 4.3A, which means a strong charging system and quality battery.
Charging took about 4 hours, which is near what I expected, and given the excellent battery life and budget price is nothing to frown about.
Mlais MX Base accessories
The MX Base has quite a few accessories made specifically for this model, including soft skins, flip cases, very inexpensive digitizer+LCD replacements and inexpensive extra/replacement batteries.
Those of you coming from main brand mobiles may think this odd to mention, but in the China phone world it’s often the case that these items aren’t available, or are prohibitively priced, especially when it comes to replacing broken displays.
Mlais MX Base frequency support
- 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
- 3G: WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100MHz
- 4G: FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600MHz
Good to see some mobiles still with quad-band WCDMA. Recently quite a few models released with 900/2100, 850/1900/2100, or the bizarre 900/1900/2100. Mlais decision to go with worldwide 3G is commendable.
Mlais MX Base review components
- there is an infrared port on the MX Base which has been confirmed working by several owners of MX Base. Confirmed working are Sony, Samsung, Philips and LG TV’s, as well as satellite tuners.
- auto-brightness is working without issue, detecting varying lux levels and adjusting display brightness appropriatly
- compass is working without issue
- the mic is picking up sound and transmitting with appropriate loudness
- the earpiece is transmitting sound with appropriate loudness
- the external speaker is beyond adequate, allowing me to listen to a movie with my head directly next to a fan without any problem
- OTG working no problem
- GPS is great on the MX Base, cold locking within several seconds to eleven satellites and maintaining mid-30’s to low-40’s SNR on five at any given time
- Mlais MX Base WiFi is excellent, reaching the full 150ft / 46m with a cinder block wall between the $20 home router and the phone and remaining at top speeds
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The only proverbial fly in the ointment here is the camera which could be a step or two better, but this is a budget phone and they had to cut corners somewhere. The camera can also be considered fairly typical or better than similarly priced mobiles.
It’s quite surprising that Mlais was able to put together such a strong package at this price point. So strong, that several components such as WiFi, GPS and OS snappiness exceed that of models costing far more.
If you don’t require a great camera, the excellent WiFi and GPS strength, 2GB RAM, stable 5.1 Android, appropriate background app memory performance, popping display, worldwide 3G, solid build and huge battery make the Mlais MX Base a phone I can easily recommend. Come by the Mlais MX Base forum and give us your thoughts and experiences with the MX Base.
This is it, the review I had been waiting for! About its only weak point: camera, how is it compared to Xiaomi Redmi 1S/2 cameras? Better? On par? Or worse?
Hello Teguh,
I would say worse than Redmi 2. Redmi 2 camera is quite good though. I don’t know about Redmi 1/S.
Still, take a look at the pics in the gallery. Fine for most social sharing. And the phone is great in all other areas.
So it is worse than Redmi 1S camera too since both Redmi 1S/2 use same sensor OV8825.
It’s not a big problem for me though. I can live with average camera phone since I’m not really into photography nor selfie.
Thanks once again for the review, Damian!
P.S. You guys don’t have discount code for this phone?
Hello Teguh,
Please check your email. Regards.