diff --git a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala
index 692a83630..974e30f81 100644
--- a/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala
+++ b/jvm-packages/xgboost4j-spark/src/main/scala/ml/dmlc/xgboost4j/scala/spark/params/BoosterParams.scala
@@ -282,7 +282,7 @@ private[spark] trait BoosterParams extends Params {
 
   setDefault(eta -> 0.3, gamma -> 0, maxDepth -> 6,
     minChildWeight -> 1, maxDeltaStep -> 0,
-    growPolicy -> "depthwise", maxBins -> 16,
+    growPolicy -> "depthwise", maxBins -> 256,
     subsample -> 1, colsampleBytree -> 1, colsampleBylevel -> 1,
     lambda -> 1, alpha -> 0, treeMethod -> "auto", sketchEps -> 0.03,
     scalePosWeight -> 1.0, sampleType -> "uniform", normalizeType -> "tree",