Introduction
Creating sub-brands has been one of the preferred strategies used by Chinese manufacturers lately and in today's case ZUK has been backed by none other than the Chinese giant Lenovo with their logo proudly sitting on the ZUK Z1 box.
Indeed, smartphones have complicated family trees these days. In the case of the ZUK Z1, the company would be quick to testify that even though the technological heritage is there, having a new company run things promises a fresh take on things in a market where new models are barely different from the last. Most importantly, the new tech economy demands a shift in focus towards some unconventional sales channels.
As part of a general push towards Western markets, the number of available Chinese brands of smartphones making their way to Europe and the Americas has been slowly but steadily on the rise. Buying a Chinese brand smartphone no longer means you’re shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to warranty servicing and aftersales support.
The influx of Chinese brands has slowly changed our perceptions and high-profile products have helped change the image of Chinese technological products in the eyes of the conservative European user. So the door is wide open for adventurous undertakings such as OnePlus and ZUK and they are not wasting any time.
Key features
- Machined aluminium frame
- Dual-SIM dual-standby capability
- 5.5" 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 401ppi
- Quad-core Krait 400 CPU at 2.5GHz, Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB of RAM, Snapdragon 801 chipset
- 64GB of built-in storage
- International version: Cyanogen OS 12.1 based on Android 5.1 Lollipop; Chinese version: ZUI (5.1-based)
- 13MP camera with OIS (Sony IMX 214 sensor), f/2.2 aperture
- 1080p@30fps video capture
- 8MP front camera, 1080p video recording
- Cat. 4 LTE (150/50Mbps); dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, hotspot, Wi-Fi direct; Bluetooth 4.0; GPS/GLONASS; USB 3.0 Type C
- 4,100mAh battery capacity
- 3.5mm headphone jack, active noise cancellation with a dedicated mic
- Fingerprint sensor
Main disadvantages
- No NFC
- No microSD card (but 64GB base storage sounds great)
- Non-removable battery (but 4,100mAh capacity is plenty)
- No fast battery charging tech
While Lenovo serves as the parent company its plan is to let ZUK be its own brand. And ZUK is certainly doing its own thing, the Z1 is based on reliable, proven technology instead of trying to reinvent the wheel for the sake of flashy marketing.
What the ZUK Z1 lacks in buzzwords it makes up for with trusty workhorses. The Snapdragon 801 chipset was chosen as the heart, and Cyanogen OS as the brain.
Cyanogen OS is still making its first steps but those are promising and the company has been pretty active and ambitious with its own fork of Android AOSP. The chipset used is well proven and an excellent performer.
The old-but-gold theme continues with the camera - Sony's IMX 214 sensor is already used by pretty much every self-respecting mid-ranger, but the ZUK Z1 boasts optical image stabilization to make its camera stand out.
The ZUK Z1 is not afraid to experiment too, and the company has been quick to jump on the USB Type C bandwagon that has been picking up speed lately.
It's rare to see so many caveats in the disadvantages section. No microSD slot is an automatic point against, but we felt a little bad putting it on the list. It's greedy to want more from a $300 phone with 64GB storage. Same for the battery - it's non-removable, but makes up for it with capacity.
Now that we've properly introduced our guest with a strangely sounding name,we should waste no more time but check up what it has to offer.
Note: we're reviewing the international version of the ZUK Z1, which runs Cyanogen OS. In China, the Z1 will be sold with ZUK's custom ZUI software, which includes a different software package.
Display
The ZUK Z1 has a 5.5" 1080p screen, which under Chinese influence has been turning into the the new golden midrange standard. At 401ppi the screen is sharp and doesn't tax the chipset or the battery like QHD would have.
Resolution aside, ZUK did plenty to optimize image quality. We measured the screen at 396 nits and a contrast of about 1,000:1, which is average.
Color rendering is fairly accurate (Avg deltaE 5.2 for the primary colors plus black and white), with white being not as accurate as we would expect. With a deltaE of 9.9, it's on the colder bluish side, but you would hardly notice that unless you get some sort of a reference to compare it side by side.
As usual, display colors are a matter of personal taste and perception so if you don't need calibrated color output, you will probably be quite happy with the color rendition on the Z1.
If you are not happy, Cyanogen OS offers plenty of ways to adjust the screen output. We managed to improve substantially the accuracy of the color rendition by adjusting the color temperature via the LiveDisplay feature from 6500K to 5200K. With this adjustment Avg deltaE went down to 3.8 and the rendition of white became almost perfect. The screen however loses some of its maximum brightness in the process and would only go as high as 383nits with this adjustment.
LiveDisplay lets you create two presets for color temperature - one for use during the day and one for night time. You can switch between day/night manually or have the phone do it automatically.
If you're wondering why, it's medical reports claim looking at blue light in the evening can affect your sleeping cycle. Several studies have confirmed that it reduces melatonin - the hormone responsible for sleep. So you might want to use a warmer light setting (i.e. less blue or smaller temperature reading) at night.
Connectivity
The ZUK Z1 is a dual-SIM, dual-standby phone that can freely roam the globe. It has basic GSM and CDMA connectivity, along with 3G data (again GSM and CDMA) and two flavors of LTE (international and Chinese).
Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac is supported as is Bluetooth 4.1, however there's no NFC or ANT+. This precludes easy pairing and certain sports trackers. Positioning is handled by a GPS and GLONASS receiver.
The wired connectivity is the more interesting part. USB 3.1 Type C promises up to 5Gbps transfers, up from around 0.5Gbps for USB 2.0. While microUSB 3.0 did not last on mobile devices, Type C is building up popularity.
It doesn't look like ZUK has implemented some of the more advanced features of the standard - e.g. DisplayPort TV out and the 100W power delivery spec - but it definitely has the speed. We ran a couple of benchmarks with the Z1 connected to a USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.1 port and copied over a large file from the SSD on one of our office PCs.
We copied the file over several times to the ZUK Z1, first through a USB 2.0 port and then through a USB 3.0 port. The phone didn't max out either standard, but it ran noticeably faster on USB 3.0, especially when copying from the phone to the computer.
Battery life
The ZUK Z1 has a huge 4,100mAh Li-Ion battery. It's made up of two rectangular batteries stacked on top of each other to better fill in the curved shape of the back. Note that you don't get any special fast-charging solutions, the included 5V/2A charger is fast but will still take a while to fill up the battery.
With such a big battery, the big results come as no surprise. Talk time hovers around 25 hours, an excellent result (even if we expected more). In the browser test the Z1 came 15 minute short of 11 hours, again a good result without being the best. It lasted longer when playing videos, over 14 hours, which too falls in the great, but not perfect category.
Our proprietary score also includes a standby battery draw test, which is not featured in our test scorecard but is calculated in the total endurance rating.
The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritties. You can also check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
