Asus ZenFone 5Z is powered by a Snapdragon 845 processor
A 6.2-inch full-HD+ resolution display
Asus ZenFone 5Z comes with two RAM variant 6GB and 8GB
Asus after learning from its mistake took off with a smartphone with powerful hardware at an affordable pricing when it launched the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1. We did a complete review of the top variant of the Asus ZenFone Max Pro M1 6GB and it stayed up by delivering great results. It went it direct competition with Xiaomi Mi Note 5 Pro. Asus ZenFone 5Z is yet another smartphone with a powerful processor and giving tough time to OnePlus 6.
The Asus ZenFone 5Z comes with a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with different RAM and storage variant. A dual camera set up at the back and a notch display. This whole combination is been offered by Asus at a very affordable price. With Asus ZenFone 5Z, the brand is promising more features, better device and powerful performance at a lower price. But does the Asus ZenFone 5Z really takes on the game? Does it really performed well and fits in right for the price, Let’s find out in our complete review of the Asus ZenFone 5Z.
The Asus ZenFone 5Z retail box comes with the Device, a protective case, high-quality earphones, fast charger and a type-c cable.
Asus ZenFone 5Z Design
The smartphone comes with a 2.5D glass at the front and back, while the frame is made of good grade aluminium. The ZenFone 5Z feels premium in hands with very firm construction. Although the back is complete glass the smartphone does not support wireless charging. Also does not have any kind of protection which means you need to shield the phone with some protective case. The display on the smartphone is a 6.2-inch display with a 19:9 aspect ratio making the device look tall. It houses a notch which has selfie camera, earpiece and bunch of sensors. At the back, the ZenFone 5Z has vertically placed two cameras with single LED flash. The fingerprint sensor is been placed at the back and is very well positioned.
The power button and volume rocker are been placed on the right side and are easily accessible. The SIM tray is on the left along with one of the noise cancelling microphones. The bottom of the smartphone house a USB Type-C port, speaker grills and primary microphone. And yes the ZenFone 5Z also has a 3.5mm headphone jack. The third microphone is at the top of the device. The handset is made available in two colours Meteor Silver and Midnight Blue. The ZenFone 5Z ships with a device itself, a silicon good quality case, 18W charger with USB Type-C, USB Type-A to Type-C cable and a pair of Hi-Res in-ear headphones.
Asus ZenFone 5Z Specifications and Software
The Asus ZenFone 5Z is fueled by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC. The device is made available in three variants 6GB RAM 64GB of storage, 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage and the top variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. We had the
Storage on all the device can be expanded using a hybrid dual-SIM slot and can support up to 2TB of storage. The ZenFone 5Z is a dual-SIM device supporting 4G VoLTE on both slots. Connectivity options on the smartphone include Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi, NFC, GLONASS, GPS.
The device comes with a huge 6.2-inch full-HD+ display which comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display has good viewing angles and is bright enough to use in direct sunlight or outdoors condition. Asus has made use of colour temperature sensor which adjusts the screen automatically adjusting the ambient lighting condition. You can also easily tweak the display on ZenFone 5Z as per your preference. The smartphone also has multiple screen features making it look good in all lighting conditions.
The ZenFone 5Z ships with Android 8.0 Oreo and ZenUI on top. The software is quite clean with not many pre-loaded apps. Asus has also guaranteed a timeline for updates. If you do not like the notch then you can easily take it off using its built-in settings. Asus during the launch of ZenFone 5Z was hyping around the AI-driven features. This goes around with some added advantages of the smart use of resources to keep the smartphone moving strong and fast over a period of time. The device keeps on learning and interpreting data of users and based on which it works on different features.
Most of the custom software settings on the Asus ZenFone 5Z have been listed under an advanced menu. Here you can find four main option Assistive tools, Special modes, Quick actions and Touch sensitivity. The Game Genie gives you an option to record gameplay or even live stream it to other application like YouTube. There are multiple features available on-screen when you are using this feature.
BeautyLive is yet another feature which is seen on ZenFone 5Z which allows you to use the beatification mode while streaming a live video. The ZenMoji lets an emoji mimic your facial movements. Although it is not as smooth work well on the device. ZenMotion lets the user interaction using the gesture. The security features on the ZenUI Safeguard has been enhanced making the safety features better. There are multiple small and big features been added to the ZenFone 5Z making it a strong competitor in this price range. There are two different modes which set in a different interface for users.
Other features on the Asus ZenFone 5Z include Face recognition which is easy to set up but cannot be trusted. The smartphone was struggling a bit while we were using this feature to unlock the device.
Asus ZenFone 5Z Performance, Battery Life and Camera
The ZenFone 5Z is powered by Snapdragon 845 SoC which guarantees high performance. Very few smartphones in this price range are powered by the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. This makes a direct competition of Asus ZenFone 5Z with these smartphones. The smartphone on the first go does not face any type of lag. Everything in the device works fast. The apps and multi-tasking operate at a much smoother rate. The review device which we had was with 6GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage option. The device performed really well in every condition. The apps loaded fast, multi-tasking was smooth. Many of the apps were kept running in the background, saving too much time when they were reloaded.
Asus gives the credit of fast launching of apps to its OptiFlex and AI feature on the device which predicts and allocates maximum resources to the required application. The animation is smooth with the graphics rendering speed for heavy games is smooth all credits to Adreno 630 GPU. The device which we had was the 6GB RAM variant, the 8GB version of the smartphone is expected to perform the same.
The ZenFone 5Z can handle all game without any trouble or lags. We played all the huge and famous games which are present on the Play store and must say they all loaded quickly and were butter smooth. The phone did not show any kind of difficulties or did not pass on much heat while running these games. PUBG was set to high graphics and loaded quickly. The gaming experience on ZenFone 5Z is incredible. On playing all the games, the smartphone feedback on every other games and application were fast.
My day-to-day usage on the device includes using WhatsApp, Playing games, Clicking pictures and an active email account. The phone lasted over a day with such usage. There were no calls or much of internet browsing. But playing too much of games on the ZenFone 5Z drained off the battery fast. The charging time on the smartphone picked up the game all thanks to its fast charging support which company calls it Asus BoostMaster Technology. You can choose from different performance mode on the device which includes Normal, Power saving, Super saving and customised battery saver mode. These modes let you pick on how the phone uses its battery to sustain more over time. The phone takes around an hour and a half to two hours to get full charge.
The camera setup on the ZenFone 5Z consists of a 12MP primary camera and secondary 8MP wide-angle lens. The primary camera has a f/1.8 aperture and sensor by Sony IMX363. The selfie camera has an 8MP sensor with an 84-degree field of view. The shots on the ZenFone 5Z came out to be pretty decent. Both the camera performed well in low-light and good lighting conditions. The camera app is easy to use and have understandable toggles which assist you with different modes. There are multiple options on the top for HDR, Depth Effect, Flash and Time. Many different modes are available with a left swipe. If you wish to switch around with the modes, swiping right gets you to access to Pro, Super Resolution, Beauty, Slow Motion, GIF animation, Panorama, Timelapse and Google Lens mode.
Overall my experience on the ZenFone 5Z is pretty good. The AI-based features come in action and deliver great results. The Auto mode on the ZenFone 5Z does its work. All the picture taken on the device were good. The device had a good and quick focus with right light exposure. The device also enables the HDR mode itself depending on the scene available. Bunch of the features on the device were not seen active as AI driven technology takes over weeks to learn and put things in action. The details in the photo were good. Macro shots were easy and all the images came out to be sharp. But on zooming into the picture there was distortion.
Selfie on the ZenFone 5Z looked good, the front camera on the smartphone supports HDR. The portrait mode also works well. Also, the beautification mode on the smartphone can be controlled with different parameters. The picture taken on the ZenFone 5Z during the night had a pretty good amount of details. There was some amount of noise but it could be ignored. All the features worked well. The smartphone does its setting based on the multiple features which bring out great results.
Video recording with the primary camera of the ZenFone 5Z is just amazing. The video quality is great with an amazing quality of sound and light. The recording maxes out at 4K 60fps and with the use of wide-angle camera footage can go up to 1060p. The EIS on the camera delivers a stable output. When we took some footages. The stabilization didn’t perform that great. The videos were a bit jerky and had movements.
Benchmark Score of Asus ZenFone 5Z
We ran multiple benchmark test on the ZenFone 5Z and found that it scored 4717 on Sling Shot Extreme-OpenGL ES 3.1 and 3672 on Sling Shot Extreme – Vulkan. In AnTuTu, the phone scored a total benchmark of 27,1120. The real power of the hardware and the AI is seen when you run benchmarks on the phone. The Geekbench score result on Single-core scored 2315 and on the multi-core scored about 6745 which is good for a smartphone with such a good processor, RAM and price. Overall the score was pretty decent.
Verdict
The Asus ZenFone 5Z with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage is priced at Rs. 29,999 and the higher variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage comes at a price of INR 32,999 and the top 8GB RAM and 256GB of internal storage would cost you Rs. 36,999. Asus has done a great job with balancing the hardware, user experience and the price of the device. Considering every aspect of the device with all enhanced features. Asus ZenFone 5Z makes real value for money smartphone. The smartphone does have a very little drawback which could be ignored considering the price which it is been offered. It is still a satisfying budget smartphone. The smartphone could actually be called flagship killer.
Best Buy Links for Asus ZenFone 5Z
Asus ZenFone 5Z (Midnight Blue, 64 GB) (6 GB RAM)
Asus ZenFone 5Z (Meteor Silver, 64 GB) (6 GB RAM)
Asus ZenFone 5Z (Midnight Blue, 128 GB) (6 GB RAM)
Asus ZenFone 5Z (Midnight Blue, 256 GB) (8 GB RAM)
Asus ZenFone 5Z (Meteor Silver, 256 GB) (8 GB RAM)
Asus ZenFone 5Z (Meteor Silver, 128 GB) (6 GB RAM)
For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Techipundit on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus also follow us on Instagram.
