Asus ZenFone 5
A brilliant mid-range phone that wisely sacrifices all-out speed for the sake of a great screen and lovely design
“The key to the ZenFone’s success is that Asus doesn’t cut corners on any of the things that you use every day, including the screen”
SCORE PRICE £292 (£350 inc VAT) from asus.com/uk
This is not the perfect phone. It has flaws, it’s beaten for speed by many others, it’s missing a couple of nice-to-have features that I’d really like to have. What it is, however, is stunning value. It’s a genuine rival to the OnePlus 6 and should make you seriously question the wisdom of spending more than £400 on any phone.
The key to its success is that Asus doesn’t cut corners on any of the things that you use every day. Prime among those is the screen, which rivals those of flagship phones with its high-quality IPS panel and glorious 6.2in diagonal size. Just like the three-times-as-expensive iPhone X, this fills every available square millimetre with pixels and I would challenge anyone to spot the quality difference between the two phones side by side.
It’s bright, hitting a crazy maximum of 603cd/m2, and photos and videos burst from the screen thanks to a 1,763:1 contrast ratio and the fact it reproduces 99.6% of the sRGB gamut and 97.5% of DCI-P3 (as used by Netflix, for instance, so you can be confident that films will look great too).
Just like the iPhone X, there’s also a notch at the top of the screen, and this is a little larger than I’d like; it means you’ll see a lot of the “...” symbol during your time with the ZenFone 5, with the dots signifying that some notifications are hidden from view. But some people may like it; the notch almost signifies high-end phone these days, and with a vertically arranged dual-lens camera at the rear you could fool friends into believing this is an iPhone X. Until they spotted the Asus logo beneath the fingerprint reader.
Naturally, the front-mounted camera means face recognition, and this worked around eight times out of ten. It was fooled by too much and too little light, but anything in the middle unlocked the phone quickly. I found the fingerprint reader to be an effective backup too, only needing to enter my PIN when Android 8 demanded it for extra security.
I’m also a fan of the retained 3.5mm jack at the bottom of the phone, which accompanies the USB-C port for speedy charging. In general, I found battery life to be fine: I never used the ZenFone to such an extent that it was empty by the end of the day. Most days, it sat between 30% and 50%, and on one occasion I eked out two days’ use. In our formal video-rundown test, it lasted a respectable 15hrs 40mins.
I think Asus makes all the right calls in terms of specs, too. The Snapdragon 636 processor is a speedy chip in everyday use, helped along by 4GB of RAM. The 64GB of onboard storage is plenty to get along with, and you can always add more (or a second SIM) via the microSD slot.
Where it will never shine is in benchmark graphs. If you want raw speed, spend another £119 on the OnePlus 6 with its Snapdragon 845 processor, because the 636 looks slovenly in tests such as Geekbench 4: 4,837 vs 8,783 multicore, 1,327 vs 1,868 single-core. This is no gaming phone either, with its 16fps in the off-screen Manhattan 3 test shrinking into insignificance against the OnePlus’ 80fps.
Other drawbacks? I wish Asus had chosen a less glossy finish for the back, because it picks up fingerprints and has an annoying habit of sliding off my desk. As a result, it’s already wielding a couple of scratch marks around the frame, despite living with me for less than a month. I would have liked waterproofing too, and have mixed feelings about the camera.
There’s much to like. It takes the best photos I’ve seen from a phone costing under £400, and the 24mm-equivalent lens is kept company by a wide-angle lens – useful for group shots and panoramas. The 8-megapixel front camera is ideal for selfies, there’s AI cleverness to detect what you’re shooting and change settings on the fly, and in good light it picks up bags of detail. In low light, though, images become more grainy more quickly than the OnePlus 6, and I found some colours emerged looking a bit too vibrant.
Drawbacks such as the camera are why the OnePlus 6 remains our A List choice, and won our Smartphone of the Year award ( see p36), but if you’re fed up with overpaying for phones then the ZenFone 5 is an excellent choice. It’s fast enough, has strong battery life and it looks so good that people will believe you when you say it cost twice the price. No, the ZenFone isn’t perfect; but it is a superb mid-range phone. SPECIFICATIONS Octa-core 1.8GHz/1.6GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor 4GB RAM Adreno 509 graphics 6.2in IPS screen, 1,080 x 2,246 resolution 64GB storage microSD slot 12MP/8MP rear camera 8MP front camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 USB-C connector 3,300mAh battery Android 8 75.7 x 7.9 x 153mm (WDH) 155g 1yr warranty