Asus Zenfone 5z review

Introduction

The Asus ZenFone 5z has been around for some time now. Announced back at MWC 2018, the phone was then the flagship for the company. It has since then been superseded by the ROG Phone as the new flagship in the company's lineup, the ZenFone 5z is still the flagship for the masses, so to speak.

So, while the 5z may not have the glamor of the ROG Phone, it still comes loaded with everything one would expect from a flagship in 2018. Flagship ZenFone series devices have been known to border on the excess in the past, and while some of that may have become par for the course for flagship Android phones these days, the ZenFone 5z leaves no stone unturned and comes with all the proverbial bells and whistles.

     Asus ZenFone 5z specs:

• Body: Corning Gorilla Glass front and back, aluminum side frame
• Screen: 6.2-inch, 2246 x 1080 IPS LCD
• Rear camera: Primary 12MP, 24mm f1.8, 4-axis OIS, 4K60 video, secondary 8MP, 12mm wide-angle f2.2, 1080p30 video
• Front camera: 8MP, 24mm f2.0, 1080p30 video
• Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, octa-core (4x Kryo 385 Gold @ 2.8GHz + 4x Kryo 385 Silver @ 1.8GHz) CPU, Adreno 630
• Memory: 64GB/128GB/256GB UFS 2.1 storage, 6GB/8GB LPDDR4X RAM
• OS: Android Oreo 8.0 with Asus ZenUI 5
• Battery: 3300mAh with Quick Charge 3.0
• Connectivity: Dual SIM (hybrid), Wi-Fi 802.11ac with 2x2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, USB 2.0 Type-C, GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou/QZSS, headphone jack
• Misc: FM Radio, stereo speakers

That's pretty much everything but the kitchen sink. However, top-notch specs are not the only thing that the ZenFone 5z has going for it. As with previous ZenFone flagships, it is also priced exceedingly well, which makes a lot more attractive than even something like the OnePlus 6. It's not quite as aggressively priced as the Poco F1, but the ZenFone 5z makes up by having a more premium look and feel.

So, it sits neatly between the Poco F1 and the OnePlus 6 but is that really the whole story? Let's find out.

Unboxing the Asus ZenFone 5z

The ZenFone 5z comes in a pretty decent packaging that feels slightly more premium than some of its rivals. All the basics are here, including the phone, cable and a charger. The 18W charger supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 so you don't have to go hunting for one.

The packaging also includes a soft silicone case, which is quickly becoming the norm. Lastly, Asus also included a decent sounding in-ear headset, something you won't find inside a Xiaomi or OnePlus package.

Disclaimer: You might notice that this review is shorter than usual and doesn't include some of our proprietary tests. The reason is it has been prepared and written far away from our office and test lab. Still, we think we've captured the essence of the phone in the same precise, informative and detailed way that's become our trademark. Enjoy the good read!

Design 

The ZenFone 5z design is the epitome of 2018; glass on the front and back and a notch display. Whether that's good or bad is open for debate but the ZenFone 5z looks every bit as modern and stylish as every other flagship 

             

The ZenFone 5z display is not as tall as some of the other phones out there, so the phone doesn't have the same stretched out look and is a bit short and stout in comparison.

The front is edge to edge glass and is so featureless when the display is not lit up, that sometimes it's hard to tell which side is up. Once lit up, it's easy to appreciate the thin bezels all around. Even the bottom "chin" is quite thin to the point where it's barely noticeable.

The notch is of course here in full force, although it's not quite as large as we have seen on some other phones, such as the Poco F1 and the Huawei Nova 3. That doesn't mean it couldn't have been smaller as Asus isn't packing any specialized hardware in there apart from the usual camera, earpiece and sensors.

           

The front glass melts over into the side frame, although not quite gracefully as there is a noticeable lip around the glass that sits between the glass and the frame. The frame itself is made out of aluminum, as is par for the course, and is still rocking chamfered edges that feel a bit out of 2013 at this point. The metal has a smooth, sandblasted finish that isn't particularly grippy.

On the right side are the power and the volume buttons. The buttons offer good feedback and feel stable without any play. On the other side is the hybrid SIM slot.

At the bottom is a headphone jack, a USB-C port, a microphone and a loudspeaker. On the top is another microphone.

At the back, the ZenFone 5z uses the same glass as on the front. The glass has a nice smoky look with a fine circular pattern originating from the fingerprint sensor that creates spinning wheel pattern when the light hits the back. It's a design feature that has been around since the early days of ZenFone devices, and it's good to see Asus keeping it around for continuity.

The glass does attract smudges and fingerprints but it's never distracting and was actually hard to see on our Midnight Blue unit. It's also extremely easy to clean; one swipe on your shirt or trouser wipes it clean instantly. The Asus branding on the back is also very subtle unlike the shouty branding on some other devices.

The overall look and build quality and feel of the ZenFone 5z is premium and the phone looks and feels a lot more expensive than it is. However, we would have liked to see ingress protection, which is missing. As with most modern smartphones, it's quite possible the ZenFone 5z will survive a quick splash or the rain, but without any certification or claims from the manufacturers, we wouldn't put any trust into it

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Display

The ZenFone 5z has a 6.2-inch, 2246x1080 IPS LCD. The display has an aspect ratio of 18.7:9, which is a bit shorter than the display on the OnePlus 6 and the Huawei Nova 3 and same as the display on the Poco F1.

    
Display settings

Numbers aside, the display on the ZenFone 5z is top notch (no pun intended). Out of the box, the display is calibrated for the DCI-P3 color space, which isn't ideal. However, with the flick of a switch from the display settings, it can be changed to sRGB. With a few other adjustments (disabling screen color optimization mode and increasing the color temperature), you can get near perfect color calibration.

The display does not have the perfect black levels of the AMOLED display on the OnePlus 6. It also doesn't get particularly bright and might be a bit hard to see on a bright day. But aside from that, this is an excellent display, and it's good to see Asus provide not just good color values out of the box but also plenty of options for further manual adjustments.

Battery Life

The ZenFone 5z has a 3300mAh battery. The battery life can best be described as acceptable. The ZenFone 5z should get you through most days, but if you're a heavy user, you should consider something with a larger battery, such as the Poco F1.

 
Battery menu

The ZenFone 5z does support Quick Charge 3.0 and comes with a compatible 18W charger in the box. QC isn't really the fastest fast charging standard around, and the phone takes about two hours to charge completely.

Loudspeaker

The ZenFone 5z has a stereo speaker system, which uses the bottom firing speaker and the earpiece as is common these days.

Unfortunately, while the audio quality isn't bad by any means, the speakers tend to sound extremely imbalanced at times. There is a vast difference in the frequency responses of the two speakers, with the bottom firing speaker producing the bass and the mids and the earpiece speaker only being able to handle the higher frequencies.

The two speakers handle different parts of the audio spectrum, so the sound feels like its bouncing back and forth between them when someone is talking as different parts of their voice are picked up by a different speaker.

This is more noticeable when holding the phone close to your face at about a foot away. When holding the phone further away, the sound from the two speakers melds together, and it's harder to tell them apart but up close the sound is extremely imbalanced, and you can tell two very different speakers are working here.

One good thing that Asus has done is that the speakers tend to flip channels when you rotate the device so left channel audio always comes from the left side regardless of how you hold the phone, something not many Android OEMs bother implementing.

Android Oreo 8.0 with ZenUI 5

The ZenFone 5z comes with the fifth major release of Asus' ZenUI based on Android Oreo. Unfortunately, it is still Android 8.0 and not the newer 8.1. The phone has received several updates since launch but none have changed the Android version number, so we are assuming it's not a priority for Asus and we will likely jump straight to 9.0, whenever that happens.

When it comes to features, Asus follows the same 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach to software that it does to the hardware. Sometimes, it's a good thing. Other times you wonder what is the point of having so many features when most of them are either never used or turned off.

It's hard to list all the features here as that would require its own separate article. But to just summarize, the launcher itself comes with a choice of 33 typefaces. These are not system-wide font choices, mind you - that is a different menu altogether - these are just for the text underneath the app icons, which, by the way, can also be any color you like.

     
Launcher settings

That's just the beginning. The Settings app has a sub menu for some special features that includes some fifteen odd features in there, which includes everything from a mode that lets you record and live stream your games to one that applies a permanent beauty filter on your face in any live video streaming app of your choice even if that app doesn't have its own beauty mode.

We could go on but it would be a very long day. The point is, the phone comes with a ton of software features, many of which you will never use but they are there if anyone's interested. The good thing is that they can all be disabled and you never have to worry about them again if you are not interested.

   
   
Features and settings

What's less nice is the bit of bloatware the phone comes with. There are a bunch of Asus apps and several third-party apps that come pre-installed, which is usual for Asus phones. Unfortunately, while some of these can be uninstalled, others such as the Facebook apps (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram) cannot be uninstalled and permanently take up place on your phone.

Since the ZenFone 5z has a notch, it's worth talking about the software implementation. You can "disable" the notch, which just blacks it out but we have never found that solution ideal or even particularly sensible. Good thing is that Asus has pretty good level of customization available on a per app basis for notch settings. You can enable fullscreen access to the notch to every app of your choice, which is especially convenient for any app that can display images.

None of the apps so far can access the notch area automatically in fullscreen mode, which creates some issues on some devices but on the ZenFone 5z you can manually grant them access, which makes the apps behave as you'd expect.

One thing ZenUI is not particularly good at is UI scaling. Since Android Nougat, devices have had a built-in feature to adjust the UI DPI scaling. Most devices tend to ship with one size too large, which makes everything look a bit too large and wastes display space but it's easy enough to fix; just slide the DPI scale down one notch, which usually fixes it. With ZenUI, scaling down one setting makes everything tiny across the OS; even buttons in the camera app become nearly unusably small. It seems like Asus barely tested the UI with different scaling options and just expected everyone to use the default setting.

Last complaint is that the ZenFone 5z does not support the appropriate version of Widevine DRM, which means it cannot stream Netflix and Amazon Prime in HD.

Performance and benchmarks

In terms of hardware, the ZenFone 5z brings the A-game. It includes the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset, a choice of 6GB or 8GB LPDDR4X memory and storage options that go up to 256GB. Our review unit had 6GB of memory and 64GB of storage.

Starting with the benchmark scores, the ZenFone 5z performed predictably for a Snapdragon 845 device, which means it was right up there with devices ranging from the humble Poco F1 to all the way up there with the Galaxy Note9, since they all basically have the same chipset and similar storage and memory specifications.

In terms of real-world usage, the ZenFone 5z is extremely impressive. It's one thing to have a flagship chipset and ace benchmark scores but it's another to perform in the real world, but you don't have to worry about the ZenFone 5z. The phone blitzes through all tasks with ease and feels incredibly snappy throughout. App launches are instant and scrolling performance is almost perfectly smooth in every app.

The ZenFone 5z will also mow through every game you throw at it. There's really nothing that fazes it, which is how you'd expect a flagship device to perform.