Mlais M52 Red Note Review

There is a lot of excitement around the Mlais M52 Red Note. It is has just exited the pre-order stage and is very, very hot. Why? It is a very cheap MTK6752 device that has very good specifications all round. It can be bought for just $150USD, which is insanely low considering its specifications. If the Mlais M52 Red Note can live up to its hype and its specifications, I predict that Mlais will create very significant waves in the chinese phone industry. You can get the phone here: Gearbest – Mlais M52 Red Note. With the coupon code “GBM52” you can get the price down even further to $136USD! Crazy. Keep on reading after the break!

Key Specifications
5.5″ 1280×720 IPS Display	MTK6752 Octa Core 1.7GHz
2GB RAM + 16GB ROM	13MP + 8MP Camera
Android 4.4.4 Kitkat	GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Bluetooth, GPS	WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100
3200mAh Battery	FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600
SIM, MicroSIM, MicroSD	166g, 152 x 7.8 x 8.2mm

Unboxing the Mlais M52 Red Note

The Mlais M52 Red Note came from GearBest in a plain brown box. It contained the blue Mlais box as well as some protective bubble wrapping. It had the usual contents, earphones, a microUSB cable and a charger. It seems like all the pre-orders have been given extra goodies as well! I got 2 extra removeable back covers as well as a flip case which can be seen in the picture above. If they continue to do this for all orders, that is a lot of value in this little box.
Note: Instead of giving me a North American charger, they gave me a European charger instead.

Hardware

The Mlais M52 Red Note’s design certainly doesn’t make you think of the word “beautiful”. However, it definitely isn’t ugly either and doesn’t attract undue attention to itself. In fact, it seems that Mlais is trying to make a copy of the Xiaomi Redmi Note. At 152 x 78 x 8.2 mm, the Mlais is very close in size to the Xiaomi. The design of the phone is square, with rounded corners. It has 3 capacitive buttons below the screen that look suspiciously similar to the Xiaomi Redmi Note’s capacitive buttons. The buttons light up bright red in colour.

The power button and the volume button are located on opposite sides of the phone and they feel firm and snugly fit into the body of the phone. It has the benefit of not feeling like it will break after pressing it 50 or more times.

The back of the phone features its 13MP camera, the LED flash and the Mlais logo at the bottom. Mlais continues the trend of having the camera protrude from the back of the phone, forcing you to be more careful to avoid damaging the camera. However, it protrudes a lot less than other phones like the Ulefone Be Pro, so its not as bad as other cell phones.

The removeable back cover is made of glossy plastic that is of average quality and somehow feels rubbery as well. While most glossy plastic found on smartphones feel cheap and low quality, the plastic on the Mlais surprisingly doesn’t feel too bad. However, like most glossy plastic, it captures and retains oil from your hands very easily, after using this phone for a day, the back felt sticky and yucky. However, the phone is easier to grip because of the rubbery texture the glossy plastic contains. Removing the back cover reveals the SIM slot, the MicroSIM slot, the SD card slot and the removeable battery.

There is a decorative speaker grille across the back of the phone while the speaker itself is only on the left side.

The Mlais feels quite well made and feels quite good as well. The 5.5″ screen again is a little large for my small hands but still feels quite comfortable due to the curved edges. However, the bezels are a little large, making the phone look quite chunky and the glossy plastic is an oil magnet. The phone itself has pretty good build quality and feels very durable. This phone definitely won’t win any beauty contests (is there even a beauty contest for cell phones?) but it’s build quality isn’t bad at all.

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