Asus Zenfone 3 Laser
A balanced smartphone with decent performance and excellent camera
The budget range consumers of smartphones have many options, with new models coming into the market regularly. Asus has regularly launched many smartphones catering to various segments and now it has added another smartphone to its line up with Zenfone 3 Laser.
Looks similar to other Zenfone devices: The overall construction of Zenfone 3 Laser is similar to Zenfone 3 Max which we reviewed previously. It comes with a 5.5-inch full HD display IPS (1920x1080p) with 2.5D curved glass on the top. The screen shows vibrant images that look crisp with rich colors and have wide viewing angles. It is also bright, which makes it easy to use it in daylight conditions. However, due to reflective glass on top, you might face some problem while using it under direct sunlight.
The phone weighs around 150g and you can easily hold it in one hand, despite its large 5.5-inch screen. The look and design of Zenfone 3 Laser is premium thanks to its metallic unibody design. Asus has polished the body using the hyperfine sandblasting technique to give its luxurious look and feel.
Captures life in detail: Asus uses PixelMaster 3.0 with Laser to capture life moments quickly and easily. We have seen this in Asus Zenfone 3 and Zenfone 3 Max as well. The device packs a 13MP sensor, large f/2.0 aperture lens and laser auto-focus.
It can capture decent quality images in daylight condition with vibrant contrast and quick autofocus. With rich details and colors, images come alive with every shot and you can also use the macro mode. The Asus camera app is loaded with lots of options enabling photo enthusiasts to capture images using manual mode. Though the daylight photography is decent without any red spots and noise, the low light images doesn’t impress us. The front camera also clicks decent selfies and is wide enough to capture groupies. As in the case of previous camera app, this phone also comes with beautification feature to enhance your selfies.
Great for basic usage: The phone is backed by simple hardware which is powerful enough to handle daily tasks. You can play with the phone without experiencing any visible lag. We used the device for more than three weeks and stuffed it with several apps and games to test its real world performance. As it’s not a high-end device, we were satisfied with its performance during moderate usage. We browsed the internet, captured images and played games like Asphalt 8, NFS, etc. There was not any visible lag in performance while enjoying the game, though when switched between games, we noticed a bit delay.
The phone is backed by a 3000 mAh battery that can last for a day with moderate usage, approx more than 16 hours. In our video loop test, it lasted for 5 hours and 14 minutes while playing video over YouTube with full brightness and sound.
Bottomline: For a camera enthusiast, Zenfone 3 Laser could be a good choice, but since it has average performance, you can consider buying Zenfone 3 Max with the large battery or Lenovo Zuk with overall good performance.