Asus is not done competing with the low-end smartphone market, as they have a ZenFone family recently announced poised to take over in 4, 5 and 6. What we have here now is the Asus ZenFone 5, the middle-child of the family, not too big, not too small – packing decent specs, good software, a great design and a polishing in almost all places – paired with a really affordable price tag. Does it have what it takes? Read on our full review and find out!
Design and Construction
We let a few people hold the phone and give their impressions on it, and so far, everybody liked it and no bad comment was given about the design. Asus took a lot of work into refining every detail with the ZenFone 5; from the buttons on the left side & the circular design on the bottom bezel of the screen to the curved back, we have no complaints.
As for attracting dirt and debris, Asus has done good as well. The back cover is entirely removable, and everything was easy to wipe off.
Although its body is mostly made of plastic, the handset still looks classy and sophisticated. Despite of being a little thick and bit hefty, it didn’t diminish the overall premium feel of the smartphone.
Display
The display of the ZenFone 5 is, well, 5-inches in size and it’s of the IPS LCD kind. Sadly, we did notice that the ZenFone’s screen still has a few bad angles – but not a serious dealbreaker from what we’ve seen.
At first look, we really thought the panel here is full HD – as colors are bright, vibrant and well-contrasted, but it’s actually just 720 x 1280. Nevertheless, text produced still looked sharp, and we’d like to give it to Asus for having a reading mode setting as it helped not straining my eyes using the phone in total darkness.
OS, Apps and UI
Android 4.3 powers the ZenFone, and we’ve received a few updates since we powered up the device already. None of them brought the device to KitKat yet, but we will probably see it in the future.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – Asus has done a good job with their skinning here – the Zen UI, It adds lots of features and apps that you’d actually use, and they all look so clean without being too in-your-face all the time. You have organized apps for display and audio settings, and a great set of widgets and apps such as SuperNote. From here, we wish all other manufacturers would take note as this is one of Asus’ big strengths right now in our opinion.
Multimedia & Camera
If you check out the lower back portion of the device, you’ll see a strip of holes dedicated for the speaker, but we find this rather deceptive. Pull off the cover or cover just a specific part of the strip and you’ll find that the speaker is only a small square. Nevertheless, it performs slightly better compared to average phone speakers out there, producing loud and quality audio, but it surely won’t blow anyone away.
The 8 megapixel camera here works great, especially for its caliber. It’s fast and it gives timely suggestions on what photo mode to use in a specific situation, and the modes themselves are really good just like the rest of the software in the ZenFone.
What blows us away is what Asus calls Pixelmaster, a combination of software and hardware that allows you to take bright 2 megapixel photos even in almost no lighting – and it works! We have a gallery of pictures down below covering depth of field, low-light & auto shots, so check those all out for yourself.
[fancygallery id=”106″ album=”110″]
Following up the bright and sharp photos taken by the device, video works well too. We were tapping to focus in the sample video down below, but other than that, we’re contented with what we got:
Performance & Benchmarks
Asus has stuffed an Intel Atom inside this device. And while the chipset didn’t blow us away, we’re thankful that it’s not one of those processors that showboats the number of processors to woo consumers. In fact, despite being a dual-core CPU, it does more than okay and we didn’t encounter any problems with navigation and the like.
What we did encounter, however, are few crashes from opening up games when power saver mode was on. The handset froze on few occassions and when we had to turn off the screen, the whole device shut down as well. It’s probably some GPU related problem, but it didn’t occur that frequently as we were able to play a few graphic intensive games at normal settings (it starts to lag when it gets heavier).
- Antutu – 22,808
- Quadrant – 11,033
- Nenamark – 60.3
Call Quality & Battery Life
With connectivity in mind, we did not have anything deviating from the usual. There is dual SIM support here, the earpiece is okay, and from places where we usually test our gadgets, it manages to capture our WiFi connection easily.
On standby, the Asus ZenFone 5 did really well lasting us days, but after putting it through our battery test, draining the battery with 50% brightness and 50% audio volume on video playback, we managed to drain the battery in around five hours and 10 minutes, which is to say it’s not bad, but it’s not that impressive either.
Charging the battery takes the usual time here, maybe even slower, but we’ve noted that as we tried using the bundled charger on other phones and it will take so long before we even get to half a charge.
Conclusion
With almost nothing to complain about, the ZenFone 5 is one of those phones that say “premium but affordable devices are possible”. Hardware and software combined, the ZenFone is very polished. However, we do have a few gripes with the overall performance, and we’re hoping an update comes to fix that, but apart from what we mentioned, this is one affordable smartphone that’s greatly put together.
The local pricing of the Asus ZenFone 5, as of the time of writing, is still not set. But it’s already available in some parts of the world for USD149 or estimated 6,500 in our local currency, making it a very interesting proposition for the budget-conscious crowd. Let’s just hope that the local SRP will be somewhere close to what we’re expecting.
ASUS ZenFone 5 specs:
5-inch IPS LCD display, 1280 x 720 @294ppi
Intel Atom Z2580 2GHz dual-core processor
PowerVR SGX 544 MP2
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
64GB via microSD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
3G/HSPA+
Bluetooth
8MP BSI rear camera w/ LED flash
1080p video recording @30fps
2MP front-facing camera
2100mAh battery
Android 4.3
148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3 mm
144 grams
Colors: Charcoal Black, Pearl White, Cherry Red, and Champagne Gold
What we liked about it:
- Vibrant 720p display
- Premium streamlined design
- Well-performing camera paired with good software
- Zen UI is polished
- Fast UI navigation
- Loud speaker
What we didn’t like about it:
- Few performance issues
- Slow charger included
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How’s the audio output of this phone? Is it loud? Balanced?
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It was stated above that zenfone 5 has intel atom z2580, internal storage of 16 gb, and a battery of 2110 mah but according to what i’ve seen in other sites, asus philippines will just release intel atom z2560, internal storage of 8 gb, and battery of 2010 mah. Which is true?
Intel Atom Z2560
2GB RAM
8GB internal
2110 mAh battery. :))
which is better? this or huawei honor 3c?
The Zenfone 5. Considering the processor alone. What more of the other parts? :)
It seems The ZENFONE 4 and 5’s specs aren’t that impressive..
For the price tag, it actually shines. It is impressive, especially for its price. Big time na ‘yan! Unless you expect to get at least Snapdragon 600 on the Zenfone 4 @ less than 5000 php on estimate, and Snapdragon 801 2.5 GHz on less than 10000 php estimate. Sulit deal na ‘yan!
yugatech. konting practice pa.
Why does the internal storage labeled TBA? You have a review unit already. Is it a prototype? I’m sure you can look at the storage option in the settings to know the internal storage.
The Zenfone 5 will have 8GB internal storage + SDXC Card slot of up to 64GB. :D
I admire these zenfones when they were announced back in january, but announcing a quad core upgrade to these models while they are not available here yet has killed my enthusiasm to recommend them. And asus must now keep the pricing low as it will be harder to woo people from choosing myphone rio quad core (albeit slightly slower) instead…
LATE! Saka with the charger you should have at least indicated the Ampere charging rate not just guessing. It’s very unprofessional for a yugatech article
Poorly written. What happened to the quality of write up Yugatech? Puro advertising nalang ba?
“Charging the battery takes the usual time here, maybe even slower, but we’ve noted that as we tried using the bundled charger on other phones and it will take so long before we even get to half a charge.” – Huh?!
8995 with taxes. Ill bet on it. 11995 for the z6.
I used 30% pric3 fluctation based on what i observed from all their other offerings including tablets and hybrids.
better cores…
a budget DUALCORE with an antutu score of 22,808
8-9k sabi nga taga…
I guess that price level sa mga malls, I look at web,online retailer cmk cellphones are selling them for around 6.5k.
reference: http://www.cmkcellphones.com/Asus/Asus_Zenfone_5.html
I bought my Asus Zenfone 5 since May 2015 and I’m still using it until now. The phone is so good. Clear Camera. Except that the speaker is not that loud and the battery life is not good. I charged my phone 2 times a day(no call and text) and 3-4 times a day if i’m using internet.