After the ample testing time we had we the Acer's Liquid Zest Plus, find the rest of our findings in this review. I'm sure most social media guys who wants big battery capacity on a budget will be interested with this device.
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| Acer Liquid Zest Plus review! |
For the review part 1: Acer Liquid Zest Plus Unboxing And First Impressions - Big Battery And More?
Display Quality
With the use 5.5 inch HD screen w/ on-cell display tech and Zero Air Gap, the Liquid Zest Plus sports is a tad above the average (in its class) in terms of quality. Colors are warm, vibrant enough, and far from oversaturated. Blacks are deep, viewing angles are great (thanks to Zero Air Gap tech), but it isn't just the sharpest around at 267 pixels per inch.
Pixels won't be visible though naked eye unless you use the VR cardboard glasses in the package.
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| Standard 5 points of multitouch |
Display can go really bright which is legible enough at 50% even under for outdoor use. It also has an accurate adaptive display sensor, the Bluelight shield is useful when reading in dark places, and has an average 5 points of multi touch.
Audio Quality
Boasting a DTD HD audio premium sound brand behind, it suggest that the Liquid Zest Plus is a capable audio device. It's single speaker behind sounded fairly clean and musical enough. There's also minimal distortion on max volume. However, its output is weaker than what we expected to hear.
Speaker audio out is crisp, but weaker than my liking.
Checking its headphone out quality, we enjoyed its output and we didn't find its software enhancement unnatural sounding. It's crisp enough (for a low priced device), musical, and engaging. It's also flat to neutral sounding with clean midrange that has minimal grains. It's also fairly detailed across the spectrum.
This phone is also designed to drive most earbuds, in-ear monitors, and low powered headphones sufficiently. However, distortion is hearable at roughly around 80% of the volume.
Tip: Enhance treble level at 2 and bass level at 3 using DTS Premium Sound software for a more dynamic listening experience.
For the microphone quality, it has one below for calls and another one at back. Calls and recording are good and it can record your surroundings with less noise quite nice.
Battery Life
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| Over 15 hours of battery score! |
The main highlight of the Acer Liquid Zest Plus is its use of the HUGE 5,000 mAh of battery. That's really large for a phone with this setup that only has an HD screen which isn't so power hungry.
The result, this device delivered the longest battery from all the sub PHP 10K handsets we tested this year. It clocked a score of 15 hours and 7 minutes at PC Mark's battery test, gave us a screen on time (w/ 4G data on) at 11 hours, and straight gaming with max volume at around 8 hours.
It has an insane battery life, the longest from all the sub PHP 10K handsets we tested this year!
It also has reverse charging tech (powerbank mode) that can charge your other devices when in need. It also has 2 hours and 50 mins of charging time which is fast for a phone with 5,000 mAh of juice.
Camera
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| 13 MP main camera shooter behind |
The other highlight of this handset is it is the most affordable phone in the country right now that's using a main camera with Tri-focus tech. in particular, it has three AF systems that consist of laser, phase detection and contrast detection on a 13 MP f/2.0 lens.
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| Manual controls |
Taking a look at its software, Acer also improved its interface and features. It's now easier to use and has more modes. To me more precise, the Liquid Zest Plus has auto, HDR, professional, panorama, beautification, night shot, smile shutter, presentation (power point captures), and gourmet (food) mode.
Then the pro-mode has grids, white balance, up to ISO 1600, exposure value, metering, brightness, contrast, and sharpness adjustments. It just don't have manual focus and shutter speed settings, but at least there's still some adjustments to play around with. On top of that, its use of the Tri-focus tech made its focus speed really fast on most conditions. Doing macros on subjects 3 inches near is also possible with this one.
This phone can focus quite fast!
In terms of quality, it is great for its class! As long as you're in a spot with natural lighting or a well lit place, your shots will be respectable! Colors are close to accurate and bright enough. Sharpness level is decent, but it is soft and lacking for some. HDR mode is hit or miss as it might only blow the highlights out and make your shots grainy at times.
In lowlight, it's far from good, but at least it can see some things at night with the use of its night mode. It's flash isn't if you won't get close to your subject.
Rear Camera Samples
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| Great daylight shot in HDR |
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| Pretty macro shot with decent background blur |
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| Indoor lowlight |
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| Outdoor night |
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| Outdoor macro flash |
For selfies, the 5 MP f/2.4 camera w/ 85 degrees wide angle lens. It has most of the modes from the main camera with an additional "Surround Light" feature for taking selfies in lowlight conditions. However, still expect noise all over.
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| Manual on selfie mode? Yes! |
Selfie Camera Samples
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| Natural light selfie |
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| Groufie in beautify mode |
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| Selfie screen flash |
For videos, its main camera is capable of shooting up to 1080p videos at 30 frames per second. In front, it has an up to 720p support. Both also has software stabilization to minimize shake.
Performance
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| Benchmark scores! |
It's a given fact that its use of an MT6735 chip paired with Mali T720 GPU, 2 GB of RAM , and 16 GB of expandable storage isn't the highest at this price point.
At first we feared that it might cause some jitters, but fortunately that wasn't the case. This handset performed well and speedy for social media use, taking photos, shooting videos, and YouTubing. Like the Vivo Y55, as long as you don't have much background apps, it'll be smooth for general use. It also doesn't heat up that much compared with other MT6735 devices we tried in the past.
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| Playable settings at NBA 2K17 |
In gaming, we didn't set our expectations high as this isn't designed to be a gaming device. However, it proved us wrong. Running Asphalt 8 in high settings is playable and turning it down to medium settings made the gameplay great. On NBA 2K17, turning most of the settings low would make the game smoother. You may also try to use the GameZone to optimize some games, record your screen and be on DND mode to disable SMS notifications and calls.
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| Acer's easy to understand Android UI |
In terms of software, the skin used by Acer is fairly easy to use and understand. Transitions are also swift and doesn't lag. However, there's a lot of pre-installed apps or bloats that eats space.
Connectivity-wise, its telephony is good, WiFi is stable, 4G signal is strong as long as you're in the right spot, and Bluetooth connectivity is nice as well. Then it has OTG for attaching USB devices such as game controllers, storage devices, and etc.
It even has a gyroscope sensor for your basic VR experience that can be used with the basic VR Box included in the package. It's decent in quality in viewing VR contents, but expect pixels to be visible due to its lack of use of a sharper LCD.
Pros - Outstanding battery life, decent overall performance, bright and vibrant screen, good main camera for photos and videos, VR ready
Cons - Pixels are visible on VR mode, several bloatwares, reddish front camera, weaker than expected audio
Verdict
The Acer Liquid Zest Plus is the best phone at this price range who wants extremely long battery life. It also has a great main camera for daylight photography and has decent performance all over. Even with its few shortcomings, this ranks among the nicest big battery phone that's officially available in the country as of this writing.
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