Mlais M4 Note review: Galaxy Note 4 for less

The manual settings that you can access through the Mlais M4 Note camera do help with overexposure issues. If you have the know and the patience to dabble in settings, you will get good photos out of the smartphone. But automatic mode did not shine that much. Most of the photos I took on auto mode were quite grainy, even though there was plenty of light to go around. For on-the-go photography, quick snapshots and such, the Mlais M4 Note is great, because it’s fast. From the lock screen, you just draw a C on the display with your finger and the camera pops up in less than a second and you can snap a photo immediately, without any lag or stutter. Focusing is also great, for that matter, and it’s also speedy.

Seeing as the Mlais M4 Note price is set at just about $150, you shouldn’t expect flagship performance out of it. But you can, and that’s why I would recommend this phone to anyone who doesn’t have the cash to get a Galaxy Note 4 or any other flagship for that matter. It will do the job, I promise you. That is if you’re not a big photography enthusiast. In that case, I would not recommend it. But if you need a smartphone camera just for the occasional Instagram photo or plain snapshots, the Mlais M4 Note can handle that. You can learn a bit about camera settings while fiddling to get a good shot, which can be fun in the long run.

That was my experience over a week using the Mlais M4 Note. Now let’s move on to what actually made this experience so positive, and honestly surprising. Let’s start at the beginning, which is display. The Mlais M4 Note display is a 5.5 inch IPS display with a 1280*720 resolution. It’s not much and it doesn’t have a lot of protection on top, which is why I would recommend using this phone with a Dot View case, which comes in the box when you buy it.

The Mlais M4 Note display is not even close in quality to the Galaxy Note 4 display, let me say that right off the bat. But it’s as good as a Nexus 5 display and it’s as good as a Galaxy S4 display, even better. It’s bright enough, crisp enough and you won’t be getting pixelated on it anytime soon. But the brightness is a problem. I haven’t used adaptive brightness, because I find that most of the time, it doesn’t work properly so I always set mine according to my needs. The nits that the Mlais M4 Note display can go through are few. When pulling brightness to the max, you will end up with a bright screen, but in outdoor environments, it won’t help too much, you will still have to squint. Now for the minimum brightness: that’s what bothered me. Even though I set brightness to the minimum, the change that happened was very minimal.

I like to be able to set display brightness to low and be comfortable with it, as in actually see the difference and not have to say that wow this hurts my eyes. That’s not the case with the Mlais M4 Note. There’s not much of a difference between minimum brightness and maximum brightness. But you can see the display most of the time and unless you sit in bed checking Instagram in the dark, the not-so-low low brightness setting will not bother you. I don’t recommend sitting in bed with your phone before going to sleep, it will interfere with your sleep – just to put that out there while we’re on the topic.

Since display quality can be a trade-off for the price, I eventually ended up being pretty comfortable with the Mlais M4 Note display. I got used to it not being that high quality or customizable so to speak, and after two days, it didn’t bother me at all. But it’s good to note that this might be a downside to the smartphone. I don’t see it as a deal-breaker, at least not for me, but it might be for those who prefer QHD displays and AMOLED displays.