Cooler of my heart
An unwavering focus on gaming promises impeccable performance, but does Tom Morgan-freelander think Asus’s latest ROG Phone sets a new high score?
DAY 01
You’re lucky if you even get a charger in the box with most phones these days, but the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate comes bundled with something that’ll leave you in no doubt that it’s serious about gaming.
The Aeroactive Cooler 7 is a Usb-powered clip-on accessory that combines a thermoelectric chiller and a cooling fan to slash CPU temperatures by as much as 25° while playing. The whole thing lights up with rainbow LED effects, and there’s even a tiny
An extra USB port on the side lets you play games with the cooler attached while charging at the same time
kickstand built in – handy for watching videos hands-free.
If all that doesn’t give it away, the ROG Vision display will. This colourful dot-matrix PMOLED panel on the back wakes up when calls or notifications come in, when you put the phone on charge, or when you open up a game.
Even without the cooler attached this is a proper bruiser of a handset that weighs in at 240g, but its sturdy metal frame still sits comfortably enough in the hand. As well as that little cut-out screen on the matt glass back, there’s a 6.78in AMOLED covered with Gorilla Glass Victus on the front, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of onboard storage and a colossal 6000mah battery. That extra juice is useful for a phone with this much grunt, but it’s also used to power the cooler when it’s attached, with an extra USB port on the side letting you play and charge at the same time.
As well as a rather intense ROG theme pack, Asus’s interface also includes the Armoury Crate game launcher and Game Genie software, which give fine-grain control over performance and thermal management – plus familiar settings like silencing notifications, recording gameplay clips and stopping you from accidentally returning to the home screen mid-game. You can even come up with custom vibrations based on which part of the screen you press.
It’s a lot to take in – but an AR space combat game, using the box the phone comes in to highlight various settings and features, runs you through the basics. Oh, and did we mention it comes with a charger too?
DAY 02
The refresh rate is adaptive, but for now I’ve set it to the max 165Hz and things look slicker than an oily porpoise. Colours are punchy, contrast is exceptional, and while the max brightness isn’t the highest it’s still easy to see in direct sunlight. The front-facing speakers are clear and balanced for a phone too, but you’ll want to use the 3.5mm port for proper zero-latency listening.
DAY 03
I fire up Diablo Immortal and, even with all the detail settings cranked, the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate doesn’t break a sweat. With the cooler on you can hear the fan spinning, but it’s not loud enough to disturb anyone else in the room. It also includes a couple of buttons that you press with your middle fingers, which takes a bit of practice, but I much prefer the physical clicks to any kind of haptic feedback. The Air Triggers, activated by tapping the phone’s frame, are also a great alternative to onscreen buttons.
DAY 07
I embark on a particularly intense gaming session to see how fast it drains the battery, but even the most demanding titles barely make a dent. If you stick to web browsing, social scrolling, Spotify streaming and such like, it’ll easily last a day without even dipping into the red. That’s well ahead of pretty much every major Android rival. A full charge takes around 40mins, but you’ll probably only need half of that to get you from morning to evening.
DAY 10
I decide to have a fiddle with the ROG Vision rear display. There’s an extensive list of effects and animations you can pick from, or you can create your own. It has about as much performance impact as the RGB lighting on a gaming PC, but is still a fun way to customise the handset.
DAY 14
Nobody buys a phone like this for the cameras, but a sunny day is a good excuse to try them out.
It’s well capable of taking decent photos… but there’s no optical image stabilisation, so you’ll need a steady hand at night, and clarity takes a nosedive when you use too much zoom. If you demand a £1200 phone’s cameras to be outstanding across the board, you’ll need to look elsewhere. STUFF SAYS Consistently epic gaming performance and stunning battery life, but at a steep price ★★★★✩