Asus ZenFone 5Z Review

Asus first generation of ZenFone’s with the Intel chipset did a spectacular job in terms of performance and pricing of the devices were done really right. Last year Asus did mess up with the pricing which made the ZenFone’s to be preferred less than the other devices from other manufacturers.

This year again with the ZenFone 5Z Asus did a spectacular job in pricing the device, let us have a look at the review of the newly launched device and check if it can easily make up–to the expectations of the people. The Zenfone 5Z  launched recently at an event held in Delhi and it is exclusively available in Flipkart. Also, the device rolled first OTA update with the camera and other improvements.

Design and Build Quality

Starting with the color options the device comes in two colors Meteor Silver and Midnight Blue, in both the color the phone looks amazing and good in one’s hand. Talking about the construction, ZenFone 5Z by Asus is made with aluminum sandwiched as the frame between 2.5D curved glass both at the back and the front. The phone looks absolutely premium in one’s hand. Although one of the major flaws in the device is about the wireless charging which is not included in the device despite having a glass back.

Talking about the placements of the components, on the back of the device we get a vertically stacked dual camera setup with a single LED Flash above the same. The backside has a round shaped fingerprint scanner which is easy to use and works without any delay. On the right side, we have the power button while the volume rocker is positioned just a bit above the power button.

We have the SIM tray on the left side. We have three different noise-canceling microphones positioned on the phone.  At the bottom, we get the Type C USB Port, speaker grill, primary microphone, 3.5mm headphone jack and even a couple of antenna lines which run through the frame.

On the front side we get the 6.2 – inch display which comes with a ratio of 19:9, on the top side we get a notch on the display which houses the selfie camera, earpiece, sensors, etc. Let us talk more about the display.

Display

On the front, we get the 6.2 – inched display with a Full – HD+ Resolution. Both the front and the rear are protected by the Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3 technology. Talking about the panel it is quite legible in the sunlight which makes it the perfect phone to be used outdoors.

Along with a normal light sensor we also get a color temperature sensor which makes it easy for the display to be adapted in the same. Colors and Contrasts on the phone are quite good, but only in the indoor conditions as outdoors, these keep on changing as per the lighting and other factors to make it most easy for you to see the screen.

The display comes with the DCI – P3 color gamut and we can easily tweak the gamut as per our liking. The ZenFone 5Z comes with a host of different features which also include the Smart Screen feature which can keep the device on while you are looking on it. This makes it really easy for us while we are reading something.

Performance

The device comes included with the top of the line processor from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 845. There are three different versions of the phone which comes in a combination of 6GB / 8GB RAM & 64 GB /128 GB /256 GB of storage. The ZenFone 5Z comes with its own custom Zen UI on top of the latest iteration of Android.

The phone was really smooth to play with are the animations were quite smooth. The Processor is capable of handling all the different day to day task easily, and even the high-end games will be a breeze on the cell phone. There is a lot of AI work done on the cell phone and it uses AI in almost all of its jobs.

Talking about the scores the ZenFone Z5 was able to score 2,451 and 9,111 on single core and multi-core tests of Geekbench. On Antutu the device scored 271,861 which is a great score for the phone. With the AI Mode, the phone can even score a better score which makes it easy for us to determine that the AI mode does work really great.

Camera

The phone has two different cameras in the back just like any other smartphone in 2018. The primary one is a 12 MP shooter while the second wide angle lens is an 8 MP shooter. The phone is a capable shooter and with its AI functionality the phone comes out to be really great. We can see the results of the AI with the depth effect, HDR effect and many other AI effects.

Although the front camera of the phone lacks a bit to the competition still it is one of the best especially on the AI front included with the camera. The application from ASUS is the same as other phones and hence it does offer a manual mode on the phone, with which you can really do an amazing job with the pictures.

Battery

On the battery point of view, the phone comes really close to the segment leader the OnePlus 6. The phone comes with an 18W charger which takes 1 hour and a haft to charge it completely. The phone can easily go throughout the day without any issue, although if you are a really heavy user, you might have to pump it up at the end of the day to use it at night. Although ZenFone 5Z uses its AI feature to charge the phone keeping the health of battery to its maximum.

Verdict

The phone is a great daily driver if you are looking for a flagship specked phone. Although the device comes at a bargained price, it doesn’t mean that it is not a capable performer. It can easily match up the performance and quality of most of the high-end devices. The 6GB RAM & 64GB Internal Storage Variant of the device is the real steal. What do you think about the ZenFone 5Z from Asus? do let us know in the comment section below.