Asus ROG phone has it own cult, The phone has created quite a market for itself. The company does not miss amazing enthusiastic gamers and Esports players with its new and upgraded phone launches every year. The ROG Phone has been specially designed for casual to hardcore gamers, keeping both in mind. Last year amidst the pandemic we saw the ROG Phone 3 which had introduced the first of its kind of Air Triggers which took the gaming and multiple controls to the next level. Fortunately, We got to try the phone at our place for some time, and here’s my take on the ASUS ROG 5 Phone.
ASUS ROG Phone 5 Design and Display
Asus has been designing some amazing displays over the past few years for the ROG series. ROG phone 5 is not an exception to this. The phone comes with a large 6.78″ display on the front with a large notch on the top rather than on the bottom. This is done because the selfie camera and other sensors are placed here, so you end up getting a pure full-screen experience without a selfie camera notch or cut out hindering the experience.
The phone comes with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, It is said to be best in class glass available for smartphones with better protection to the phone’s display. The sides have a metal frame running across. On the right side, you will find the returning pressure-sensitive air triggers along with the power and volume rocker keys. On the left side, you get the SIM tray, a connector for accessories like the fan and a USB Type-C charging port. At the bottom, you will find the second USB Type-C charging port and the 3.5mm jack, which makes a comeback as it was omitted in the previous edition.
There are Total 5 microphones on the phone which help the voice reach to your teammates during the gaming without any issues.
The back of the ASUS Rog phone is one of the amazing parts of it. The smartphone has become much smoother. I say this because now a single sheet of CGG (Corning Gorilla Glass) 3 comes on it. But here is the fun part about it, you do get a familiar rear camera bump, but at the bottom you get a ROG logo LED panel, which has a lot of bling value as we all know how much gamers love to show off their rigs and smartphones. This comes to life when you are gaming or are in the X-mode. You can also enable the LED logo to be on 24*7 and it doesn’t have much impact on the battery.
Coming to the display, ASUS ROG Phone 5 has a 144Hz AMOLED display that supports up to 1,200 nits of brightness and HDR 10+. FHD+ is the resolution that strides in with the smartphone. I loved every bit of it. I found the display to be bright and vivid. Gaming, as well as movies, experience on it, was top notch. Something that I have seen earlier on Samsung and Apple devices only. The display gets an A+ on my sheets as the graphics are lively, characters are crisp, and the screen does not wash out even under direct sunlight. I even played a few Netflix shows on it and they all look good. ASUS ROG Phone 5 can manage dark scenes and fast-paced action scenes with extreme ease.
Performance and cameras
Asus ROG phone is loaded with the top specifications that is available right now. There is a lot to say on the performance and cameras and probably I could write a thesis over it. For now, I would be summing it up for you to understand and decide. At the core, there is Qualcomm’s latest offering 888 chipset which is the powerful processor available in the market. This is the absolute best when it comes to premium performance and gaming capabilities.
The is coupled with Adreno 660 graphics. With that, you get 8, 12, or 16 GB of RAM. The one we are testing has 12GB RAM and 256GB storage. The 8GB RAM version comes with 128GB storage, the 16GB RAM model also comes with 256GB storage. The storage is UFS 3.1 supported. For audio, there is a stereo sound available as there are twin loudspeakers available on the ASUS ROG Phone 5 which I absolutely loved it. These are optimized for the best gaming sound with DTS:X so that you always end up getting chicken dinner in PUBG Mobile.
A 6,000 mAh battery is installed in the smartphone that gave almost 2 days of battery life when I used it nominally with just 30 mins of gaming. But if you do game a lot on it, then you will get less than a day of battery. Talking about which, we played a lot of games on it. Everything from COD: Mobile to Asphalt 9: Legends was played on it and we never got a chance to complain. The graphics are superb and there is no lag on it. However, the smartphone does get a bit warm when you play for more than 30 mins. Thanks to Wi-Fi 6 and multi-point antennas, we rarely got any packet drops while gaming.
The touch response of the air-triggers has also become better, and it did give the edge in battle royale games such as PUBG: Mobile. Armory crate app also comes installed on the ASUS ROG Phone 5. This will enable you to tune the phone for each game type. A very good tool/app if you play different genres of games on your smartphone. Over that, you also get Game Genie for in-game tools. This will enable you to stop alerts, calls, etc when you are gaming so you end up getting no-interruption gaming. This can be brought by swiping right from the left edge of the phone when gaming. It also shows you the temperature of the smartphone.
The operating system on the ASUS ROG Phone 5 is Android 11, which comes with ASUS’s ROG skin on top. This gives the users a very clean UI experience. However, it is not totally bloatware-free. Thankfully, much of it can be uninstalled.
Coming to the cameras department. The phone comes with a triple camera setup at the rear. These include a primary 64MP wide, 13MP ultrawide, and 5MP sensor for macro shots. For close-up shots, I had to turn on the LED flash, which enabled us to get better details from portrait shots at night. Ultrawide angle shots we were not in awe of, as the details did come down a lot and smudged edges were apparent. The same is the case with Macro shots. 3 out of ten shots were not very useful. So, you need to get a hang of it or take multiple shots of the subject and keep the best one.
8K video recording can be shot on the smartphone at 30 FPS. However, we did like the 4K at 60FPS to be our preferred setting for videos. The front camera is driven by a 24MP sensor and it is exceptional for taking selfies during the day. During low-light, you do get decent shots too, a night not so much. The best is to use the rear camera with LED flash for the best results.
But ASUS ROG Phone 5 is not built primarily for photographers. It is built for gaming and it excels in the department. I loved the performance of the smartphone when it came to gaming.
Asus Rog 5 Review
Summary
All in all, the ASUS ROG Phone 5 is one of the best and powerful smartphones you can own if you are a casual or a professional gamer. At Rs 57,999 for the 12GB variant, Asus is asking for a shiny penny, however, we do believe it is worth every penny. If you want the absolute latest with top-of-the-line features for gaming, then this smartphone is the right choice for you. In case you are looking for the lesser expensive version of the smartphone, its base variant starts at Rs 49,999, where you get 8GB RAM. There are gaming phone offerings from other manufacturers but ASUS carries its experience from the already matured ROG community which is very helpful on the forums. A perk which you wouldn’t find anywhere else along with ROG 5 phone.