Hacky pun aside, the past six months presented the opportunity to review the Asus Zenfone 2. Why did I hold off this review for so long? As you may or may not know, the period of February through November presents a plethora of devices being released. During my initial review period using this as my “daily driver”, I came to the conclusion of holding a review for a later period to give this device the alone time it needed. For this review, I observed and used the ZE551ML edition, which is the higher end variant. Let me tell you, the Zenfone 2 proves an undeniable truth budget smartphones are getting better and better, while still maintaining exceptional pricing.
TAKING THE TOP OFF: THE UNBOXING
At under $300.00, it is easy to understand a simple and minimal unboxing experience will be the expectation. The Zenfone 2 comes in a rectangular white box, with a color accent of the chosen back covering. Adorning the rest of the packaging is the standard FCC markings and information, specifications, and paint-on picture of the phone. Albeit simple, I still believe this was one of my most enjoyable experiences. Brief, but still very enjoyable. Inside the box you are immediately greeted by the device in familiar plastic wrapping. Underneath the customary safety and user guides, standard usb cable, and wall adapter. No Samsung or Apple-esqe additional earbuds, quick charging plug or anything; just another example of simple and clean. Will this unboxing wow you over as the must amazing unboxing ever? No. Just the phone and essential, all you really need.
THE ENTREE: HARDWARE AND SPECIFICATIONS
The Zenfone 2 sports a gorgeous 5.5” 1080p display on its all plastic frame. Let me tell you, this may be a plastic build in a day when metal is the craze, but this device feels great in the hand. A continuous oxymoron, the phone is both feathery while still feeling substantial. This is without a doubt one of the better built devices for under $300.00. But let me tell you about the display, WOW! I won’t lie to you and say this is the best display I’ve ever used, but it surely is beautiful to use. Using a true-color IPS display was masterful tactic by Asus as colors were accurate with sufficient saturation. Blues had a great contrast with whites perfectly done without being to warm or cold. I think the blacks could have been done better, as they sometimes appeared blue-ish to me, but regardless a great display. One bit of information I will parlay is if you get this phone, go in and turn up the brightness on the display as the preset proved to be somewhat dim. I also observed less than stellar viewing angles, as turning it off-axis makes the screen nearly invisible. But, I highly recommend this to anyone who loves watching media or surfing the web, or for you business-heads needing a great device for writing or reviewing documents.
In LG-esque fashion, Asus placed the volume buttons on the back, in which they are easily accessible by your index finger. But, in an epic fail fashion, the power button is found on the middle-top of the device. Not only that, the power button is near flush with the body, so using it will be a frustrating endeavor. Luckily, much like its LG counterparts, the screen allows you to initiate a wake-up with a double-tap. Nice recovery from a disappointing flaw! The speaker is found at the bottom right and demonstrated admirable sound. The quality was very impressive, being both loud and clear, with only a slight hint of robotic sounding. Once again, a striking feature for a sub-$300 device.
Inside you will find the 64-bit Quad-Core Intel Z3580 chipset clocked at 2.3Ghz, this is also one of the first devices with 4 GB of RAM, along with a PowerVR G6430 graphics card. Now, the Intel Atom is more of a power and battery sipper, but don’t be fooled as this bad boy hums through everything I threw at it. Applications open with very minimal lag, gaming truly proved an incredible endeavor, and for you workaholics like me, I was able to run both light and heavy word processing program on this device with a breeze. Having the 4 GB of RAM (approximately 3.9 available with ZenUI using roughly 1.5 GB for System Resources) allowed for extensive multi-tasking with little-to-no aggressive application termination.
Alongside the aforementioned power-sipping Intel Atom chip we find a 3,000 mAh battery. For me, this one of the few inconsistency of the phone, and slightly lowered my love for the device. One would imagine with the large battery coupled with an efficient chip and GPU, battery life would be tremendous; and some days it was. Overall, any level of consistently good battery life was not present. Now, this could be attributed more to the ZenUI software overlay and the unimpressive battery management of Android Lollipop, but on most days I was able to achieve between 3-1/2 to 4 hours of on-screen usage, with standby time of roughly 27 hours. One won’t confuse this device as an energy powerhouse, but it definitely should get you through a full day and then some without needing to reach for the charger. But, should you have one of those inconsistent days, it supports quick charging with claims of 60% charge within 40 minutes. My experience would affirm this as one day I was able to charge from 14% to full in just under an hour and seventeen minutes.
Intel included dual-sim slots, something I wish was more prevalent in U.S. variants, and get this, an SD card slot. Yes, an SD Card, a feature seemingly going the way of the dinosaur by data Nazi phone makers. All jokes aside, the dual-sim slots was very welcomed for someone who usually cares two devices, one for work and one personal, allowing to compress to one phone usage. Additionally, the SD Card slot, which is read and write accessible, just gave me goose bumps, as I am a media junkie and frequently need to save documents. The installed antennae proved very capable as in my carrier areas, maintained exceptional reception along with nearly crystal clear call quality. Data was another notable feature as the include Cat 4 chip carries nine U.S. LTE bands with 150/50 Mbps speeds. Additionally, 802.11 Wi-Fi supporting a/b/g/n/ac bands proved quite an impressive addition.
TELL ME MORE: SOFTWARE AND CAMERA
Truth be told, I do like Android in stock version, with that being said, I must attest ZenUI makes me ponder if a skin can be useful. In this case, I would say timidly “kinda”. ZenUI turned out to be a heavily skinned version of Android Lollipop, and as I mentioned before, can take up a lot of the operational memory. However, I did find several features to be quite useful add-ons to Android. Usable features such as the theme engine, memory power booster and power saver, one-hand operation, ZenMotion, and easy mode demonstrated pre-installed applications I enjoyed, and made daily usage that much more pleasurable. Even the FM radio was a welcomed addition I found myself listening to when doing my daily walk. But, the best added feature of ZenUI was the display adjustment feature allowing users an interface to adjust filters, make modifications to the brightness and contrast, or tweak the saturation levels. For me, this should be a must have in all devices going forward, and I give kudos to Asus for its inclusion. One gripe I do have is about the button layout and placement on the keyboard. Truthfully, I actually enjoy the keyboard’s overall functionality, but because the space bar is so low and near the device home button, often I found myself hitting the latter by mistake. Also, I had to get use to where the arrow for initiating uppercase letters on the Google keyboard would be, Asus put it higher and in its stead put a settings menu key. Not a big deal, but often I would be delayed in completing a text message or document when I would hit this instead of starting an uppercase letter. Once again, a minor annoyance but an annoyance nonetheless in an otherwise great experience. In general, the software use was incredibly smooth, responsive and enjoyable to use. Despite the gluttony of pre-installed Asus-branded applications aside, I must give the experience a solid B+.
On to the camera, which I thought would be a low-point of an otherwise enjoyable device. Much to my surprise, for the price, this proved a solid camera. I definitely wouldn’t crown it a Galaxy S6 or Galaxy Note 5 killer in terms of the camera production, but it produced clear photos, in the right conditions. I will include some photos for review, but this 13MP camera took great photos in both great lighting and low lighting. You can see some noise and lack of range on the low-light shots, but all-in-all quite impressive. The installed filters could use improvement in future Asus or Android software updates, as sometimes in darker conditions, I found some misses in contrast accuracy, but the dual-tone LED flash helped along with tweaks within the camera software to clean some of this up. I was informed there is no IS (Image Stabilization) but I honestly did not observe an impairment in either photo or video. But, as I mentioned, I will include samples for your review. Video was nice with the 1080p capture at 30fps, and the microphone demonstrated nice audio pickup. Again, for the price you pay, you get a great camera with quality better than the price tag would parlay.
BRING IT ON HOME: CONCLUSION AND FINAL THOUGHTS
As I normally do in my reviews, I answer the question of who would this phone be best suited to please. Honestly, this is a rare one I would recommend to everyone. Whether you’re a converted iPhone user, Nexus Junkie, Stock Android Lover, or customizing fiend, there is a little bit of everything to like here. The theme store will allow for interactive customization in all aspects of the device, keeping the typical user from getting bored. The strong CPU and GPU would allow gamers, up to the moderate usage levels, an enjoyable venture. Those small business owners would enjoy the dual sim capability for both personal and work phone, as well as the vibrant display to type documents or review presentations.
Truly a device super ceding its price tag, this is a great buy for anyone looking for a new phone, or looking for a great gift for someone else this holiday season. My only caution is to thoroughly review which model you picked as Asus made way too many variants of this phone. But at the end of the day, you will be happy with this purchase and find yourself realizing great devices do not need to have hefty price tags.
JA3Tech 