ASUS Zenfone 2 Deluxe Special Edition hands-on, benchmarks

We were with ASUS earlier today where they showed the special edition Zenfone 2 Deluxe and announced its availability here in the Philippines. Although basically having the same form factor as other Zenfones, this special package consists of two unique back covers, some slight upgrades on its specs, and extra goodies added into the package.

Let’s take a look at these new offerings and do a short comparison to the original Deluxe that we previously reviewed.

Out of the box, the Zenfone 2 Deluxe Special Edition includes the tessellated back cover seen on the original Deluxe variant but instead of the violet-ish hue, this one has a silver color that seems to be gunning for a chrome look. This implementation of a different shade indeed makes the device stand out when used in public.

The other cover comes across as carbon fiber but is made of the same plastic material used in other Zenfones just like the silver tessellated panel.

Although this may be the case, the “woven” design is detailed so it’s nice to look at. The black-and-red tandem also blends well and definitely differentiates this limited edition variant from other models in the Zenfone 2 series.

Pegged as a gaming smartphone, the special edition Deluxe has slightly tweaked internals. It still carries a capable 4GB of RAM but the CPU is now clocked at a faster 2.5GHz and has been bumped up to a PC-grade Z3590 processor.

Apart from those, the internal has the same specs but the company added a few more stuff to go along with the package.

For starters, the phone now has an included 128GB of class 10 microSD card. Combine this to the existing 128GB of internal space and you get a total of 256GB worth of storage.

We installed some of the usual benchmarking tools we use so we could quickly compare the capabilities of the limited edition Deluxe from the base model and here are the results:

• AnTuTu: 41,419 (from 48,679)
• Quadrant Benchmark: 9,737 (from 11,621)
• Vellamo:  1,368 – Multicore, 1,299 – Metal, 2,942 – Chrome Browser (from 1,502/1,468/3,489, respectively)

Surprisingly, the benchmarks yielded lower scores than those from the original Deluxe during our initial test. We shall be looking more into this during our review.

Finally, in an attempt to make it more appealing to gamers, an original copy of Asphalt 8 has also been pre-loaded into the device with 25,000 worth of in-game credits.

That’s all we have for now and stay tuned for the review where we test its capability as a daily device for tasks like gaming and casual use. It will be available on the second week of January 2016 for Php20,995.

ASUS Zenfone 2 Deluxe Special Edition specs:
5.5-inch Full HD IPS display (72% screen-to-body ratio), 401ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 3
2.5GHz 64-bit Intel Atom Z3590 CPU
4GB RAM
128GB internal storage
up to 128GB via microSD
13MP PixelMaster rear camera w/ LED flash
5MP PixelMaster front camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE Cat 6, 3G HSPA+
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 4.0, A2DP, EDR
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
FM Radio w/ RDS
Android 5.0 Lollipop w/ ZenUI
3,000mAh battery w/ ASUS BoostMaster charging tech
152.5 x 77.2 x 10.9 mm
170 g