ASUS ZENFONE 5 REVIEW

PROS

• Sturdy design and looks
• Very good performance
• Smooth, simple UI

CONS

• Camera quality is disappointing
• Display is slightly dull

OUR VERDICT

If Asus puts a smart price tag on the ZenFone 5, then it could give the Moto G a run for its money. It offers a good looking design and respectable performance capability. There are many other reliable brands out there in the market, and Asus has done a good job with the Zenfone 5. But having said that, it will have to do a lot more if it wants to give the other brands tough competition. The smartphone is not a bad choice if you are aiming for a mid-ranged device with a decent performance package and design, but quite honestly, there is room for improvement.

Asus has a decent share of the tablet and laptop markets in India and now it is ready to plunge into the smartphone market as well. We had seen Asus’ updated line of ZenFone smartphones earlier this year and now the company has confirmed that it will be officially launching the ZenFone 5 in India by the second week of July. We managed to get a test unit of the smartphone before launch and here is our take on the Zenfone 5.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Display: 5 inches IPS panel with 1280x720 resolution (294ppi)
• Battery: 2110mAh
• Storage: 8GB, expandable via microSD card
• Camera: 8MP rear with LED flash, 2MP front
• SoC: Intel Atom Z2560
• CPU: 1.6GHz quad-core
• GPU: PowerVR SGX544MP2
• RAM: 2GB
• Operating system: Android 4.3
• Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Dual-SIM

BUILD AND DESIGN

The ZenFone 5 has a standard candy bar design with a 5-inch 720p display protected with Gorilla Glass 3. Asus has used an IPS panel which offers pretty good viewing angles but somehow the display seems a bit dull. Even on the highest brightness settings, it looks very average. The bezels aren’t what you call slim especially above and below the display; this makes the device look and feel larger than many of the 5-inch devices that we have reviewed.

Above the display are the Asus logo, the earpiece, the front facing camera and the usual set of sensors. Below, we have the three capacitive Android navigation buttons and a metal textured accent underneath it.

The right edge houses the volume and power/lock key which have a metal finish. The top has the 3.5mm audio jack while the bottom has the microUSB port. The handset also has two microphones, each of them housed on the top and bottom edges. At the back you will find the 8MP camera with an LED flash, the loudspeaker and a couple of Asus and Intel logos. The back panel is essentially plastic with a matte finish. The panel comes off to reveal two microSIM card slots and a microSD card slot. The battery is non-user replaceable so in case you have any issues, you will have to head to the service centre.

The handset has a curved back which essentially makes the overall thickness come down to about 8mm. It does fit well in the palm and for the expected price of Rs. 15,000, it is definitely one of the well-built devices.

UI AND PERFORMANCE

The smartphone runs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean with ZenUI from Asus. Now this isn’t the same UI that we've seen on Asus tablets but rather a fresh UI with a bunch of transparent widgets, custom icons, colourful toggles in the notification bar and menus and so on. The lockscreen is also different and allows you to enable three apps (phone, camera and messaging) and also add the calendar app which shows you upcoming events. The good news is, Asus has confirmed that the handset will get the new Android Kit Kat update. Thankfully the UI is not very heavy and retains most of the basic stock features. It is quite colourful and gave us a fresh change from usual stock UI. Apps work smoothly and are responsive and even multitasking is done efficiently thanks to the 2GB of RAM. Day to day usage is fairly good and we didn’t notice any app crashes or anything out of the ordinary.

We were quite eager to test the raw capability of the hardware as we wanted to know what kind of performance level the Intel Atom chipset can deliver. Benchmark apps including Quadrant Standard, Antutu, Smartbench 2012 and 3D Mark were used and here are the results.

As you can see the handset has the capability to beat the strongest competitor in the category, the Moto G.

Gaming on the ZenFone 5 wasn’t all that bad and it managed to run games like Dead Trigger 2, Badland, Asphalt 8 and so on. Of course the experience isn’t the same as you get on a high-end Snapdragon equipped smartphone, as we did notice some lag here and there. We did notice the device heat up after extensive gameplay but then almost every other Android device does.

The battery on the Zenfone 5 has a rating of 2110mAH and surprised us in the tests. We ran a full HD video for one hour with full display brightness and the handset connected to Wi-Fi. After one hour we saw a drop of 12% which means the handset can go on playing a full HD video for about 8.2 hours. This means on normal usage you could get about a full day’s charge.

Overall we think that Asus took a bold step by fitting in an Intel chipset in the Zenfone 5 and surprisingly, it performs well.

CAMERA

The Zenfone 5 comes with an 8MP camera with an f/2 aperture, an LED flash and also a front 2MP snapper. In the video department you can shoot full HD videos at 30fps. Now the primary camera was a bit disappointing. Firstly the shutter wasn’t fast at all and pictures produced didn’t have correct colours and lacked sharpness. Some of the pictures even ended up being a little grainy and soft. The camera can handle low light, and even asks you to turn on the night mode if there is less light, but again we were left with pictures that lacked details. 

The camera app UI is fairly simple and includes your usual set of settings, filters and effects. Below are some of the test shots from the Zenfone 5. Please click on an image to enlarge it in a new window.

 
 

Hopefully future updates will improve the quality of the camera.

CONCLUSION

Since the Asus Zenfone 5 is yet to launch, we are assuming that it will fall somewhere around the 15-18k price mark. For a smartphone in this category, it does offer an appealing design and sturdy build quality. The handset does perform well and even in benchmark tests, it managed to score pretty good results. The only two things that we didn’t fancy were the display and the camera. Rest, everything works quite well. It would a cracker of a deal if Asus launches the Zenfone 5 below Rs.15,000 because anything higher than 16k could be overkill.