Acer Liquid Z5 Smartphone Review

Acer introduced the Liquid Z5 smartphone just a few weeks back and here it is at goldfries.com’s lab.

Just how good is this RM 599 device?

The device comes neatly packaged, just slide the box open and you’ll be greeted with this beautiful looking device.

The Z5 runs Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2, powered by 1.3Ghz Mediatek processor, 4GB ROM, 512MB RAM, 5″ FWVGA screen, 5MP rear camera with LED, and a 200mAh battery. The device weighs 147g with battery, of course that’s like stating the obvious because the battery is non-removable.

The screen is big and the colors look great but those who are picky would probably notice that the screen display isn’t tack sharp as it’s a 480 x 854 pixels (not even 720p) crammed into a 5″ screen. This is very different from other devices that have some 4.x” screens but resolution being 720p or even 1080p, resulting in much higher pixels per inch.

Here’s the back view of the phone.

On the left is the compartment for MicroSD card, on the right is a compartment for 2 SIM cards, one being normal SIM size while the other being Micro SIM.

Below is a product presentation recorded a few weeks back about the Z5.

And for those interested, here’s the Antutu Benchmark for the Liquid Z5

User Experience

The 5″ TFT capacitive touchscreen works great for browsing, colors are good and browsing was certainly a pleasure BUT the phone is overall a disappointment due to the 512MB RAM.

All it takes is to run a Facebook app and load some web pages on Google Chrome (when I say some – I mean 1 or 2 tabs) and that’s it, you’ll see this message nagging at you again and again.

The app isn’t affected as the notice is just a warning.

Due to the RAM limitation, I was unable to run 3D Mark. I tried to run it for a few times, the benchmark just crashes.

The 4GB storage space was limited but good enough to install a game or 2, I managed to install Asphalt 7 and got it up and running but the 512MB and perhaps even the dual-cored nature of the device made the game totally unplayable. I had better experience with my much aged Samsung Google Nexus.

Sound quality was pretty good for a device as such, not great but good.

The camera works as how it worked with other Android devices, image output is acceptable. 🙂 Don’t expect it to be a full-fledged camera.

The battery life for the Liquid Z5 turned out to be quite good too, with 10 games of Bejeweled Blitz draining only 4%.

The Verdict

It’s feature rich as it is, with dual-SIM, expandable storage, good battery life, decent camera and lovely screen.

I feel that the part that hurts the experience a little was the RAM size. There is a 1GB variant as the product box mentioned it’s “optional” so I think that’s a good sign. 🙂