Asus ZenFone V - Review 2022

Merely considering the price of high-end phones is ticking steadily upward, doesn't mean you take to bust your upkeep to become a solid device. The Asus ZenFone Five for Verizon offers a sleek drinking glass build and powerful specs for a reasonable $240. Information technology's bonny, fast, and most importantly, affordable. While photographic camera quality leaves something to be desired, the ZenFone V beats the Samsung Milky way J7 V in value and makes a compelling alternative to the Moto Z2 Play if yous aren't interested in its modular backs. It's a strong option for the price for Verizon customers.

Pattern, Display, and Features

The ZenFone 5 bears a chip of a resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy S7. You accept glass on the front and back, with a ring of metal sandwiched in betwixt. The shape of the photographic camera lens and the home button both also resemble Samsung'south previous flagship. While Asus won't win points for creativity, the phone looks good and the build quality feels premium, though the glass can be pretty slippery.

The phone measures 5.8 past two.nine by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.ii ounces. That'south about average for its 5.2-inch screen size and like to what you get with the Moto G5 Plus (5.9 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches, v.5 ounces) and Z2 Play (6.1 by 3.0 by 0.2 inches, v.i ounces).

A clicky volume rocker and power button are on the right. A speaker, USB-C charging port, and 3.5mm audio jack are on the bottom. The left side has a SIM/microSD carte slot that worked fine with a 256GB card. The fingerprint sensor is integrated in the concrete button below the display, surrounded by backlit capacitive navigation keys on either side.

Forepart and center is a crisp 5.ii-inch, ane,920-by-1,080 AMOLED screen that gets bright and has adept viewing angles. Because it's AMOLED, rather than the more than common IPS panels you notice on most midrange phones, colors announced rich and saturated and blacks are dense and inky. Color accurateness is a flake better on the G5 Plus, though Asus has settings that let yous adjust screen temperature, customize colour saturation, and enable a bluelight filter for reading at night.

Network Functioning and Connectivity

The ZenFone Five operates exclusively on Verizon's network and supports LTE bands 2/4/five/thirteen. What'southward interesting hither is that at that place's no CDMA, making the ZenFone 5 one of a handful of LTE-only smartphones every bit the carrier moves toward phasing out CDMA by 2022. In terms of network connectivity, the ZenFone 5 fared quite well in highly congested midtown Manhattan, registering 47.8Mbps downwards and 21.5Mbps upwards.

Boosted connectivity features are impressive, with support for Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, NFC for Android Pay, and Bluetooth 4.two. In that location'south besides support for hi-res 24-chip audio and vii.1 virtual surround sound, and an AudioWizard that lets you lot create custom EQ profiles for dissimilar content like games, music, and movies. With some tweaks, sound sounds a bit more robust than most phones can muster, though you're unlikely to hear much of a departure unless yous're using FLAC files or streaming on Tidal.

Call quality is generally quite solid. Voices can come across a bit robotic, but bated from some minor skips, transmissions are clear. Earpiece book is loud and noise cancellation successfully blots out nearly all background dissonance bated from current of air. You won't take trouble using the phone in a noisy surround.

Processor, Battery, and Camera

The ZenFone 5 has the specs of a flagship phone from last year, with a Snapdragon 820 processor clocked at ii.2GHz—which is a lot better than what you typically notice at this toll range. The phone scored 148,480 on the AnTuTu criterion, which measures overall system operation. That's twice as high as the Snapdragon 626-powered Moto Z2 Play (68,040) and within spitting altitude of the Milky way S8 (158,266).

With 4GB of RAM, multitasking is shine and at that place are few slowdowns, bated from the occasional blitheness stutter. Demanding games similar GTA: San Andreas and Modernistic Combat 5 play without issue. The ZenFone V runs a fleck warmer than other phones we've tested, but it doesn't seem to have an impact on performance. By comparing, the Moto Z2 Play is as well fast and smoothen, thanks in part to its nearly stock UI, just it can dull down on graphically demanding games.

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Battery life is excellent. The ZenFone V clocked eight hours, 22 minutes on our rundown test in which we stream video over LTE at maximum screen effulgence. That'due south a few minutes longer than the Z2 Play (viii hours, xviii minutes). Information technology also significantly outstrips the Milky way S8 (5 hours, 45 minutes), though part of that is due to having a smaller, lower-resolution display. Asus also has a number of Power Saver modes congenital into the settings carte du jour, letting you tamp down CPU performance, turn off certain modes of connectivity, and reduce screen effulgence to save juice. Alternatively, if yous're doing some high-finish gaming you can kick things up a notch with High Performance mode. Fast charging is supported with the included 18-watt adapter.

Photographic camera quality is where the ZenFone 5 stumbles. Outdoors and in good lighting, the 23-megapixel rear camera is capable of taking some very crisp shots with good clarity and color reproduction. The ZenFone's many camera modes shine in this setting, with HDR punching upwardly colors for a brighter look, and a Super Resolution mode overlaying four 23-megapixel shots to create one super-detailed prototype. Indoors, things are more of a challenge.

In that location's a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation sensor on the dorsum, simply within the murky depths of PC Labs, it struggled to observe focus. Nigh photos I took indoors were dirty, with poor details and lots of noise. In that location are modes for Night and Low-Light, but you're be amend off using transmission controls to crash-land up the ISO for clearer shots. The telephone records 4K video at 30fps, but it looks jittery despite optical paradigm stabilization, with dropped frames in lower light.

The 8-megapixel camera on the front takes skillful selfies, assisted by postal service-processing that can remove blemishes, brighten peel tone, and polish out wrinkles. It's a heavy-handed effect, but pictures come out pretty practiced.

Software

The ZenFone Five ships running Android 7.0 Nougat with Asus' Zen UI three.0 on superlative. It'due south a dense UI layer, and though information technology's been somewhat streamlined in terms of preloaded apps, it'south packed with customization options, themes, toggles, and modes to add a variety of functionality. Aside from the ones we've already mentioned, you have options like Gloves mode, which increases touch-screen sensitivity to let you utilize the telephone with gloves. There's ZenMotion, which allows you to draw on the screen when the telephone is off to launch a programmable gear up of apps. You can besides modify animations, ringlet effects, and load custom app icons. It's all highly customizable, but very unlike from stock Android.

Preinstalled apps mostly come up from Verizon. You'll notice nine Verizon apps preloaded, along with a few extras like Depository financial institution of America, eBay, Final Fantasy 15: A New Empire, NewsRepublic, and Yelp. The Verizon apps can't be removed, merely the rest tin be uninstalled, leaving you lot with 21GB of storage free out of 32GB. That'south a pretty decent amount, and if y'all need more space you tin ever use an SD card.

Conclusions

The $240 Asus ZenFone V gives you last year's flagship specs for a midrange price. It has strong (LTE-only) connectivity on Verizon'due south network, and hardware that's powerful plenty to handle multitasking and gaming akin. And it's only $thirty more than than the Galaxy J7 5, which has a lower-resolution display and weaker specs across the board. It outperforms the Moto Z2 Play in most regards, making it a more compelling pick if y'all aren't interested in using Moto Mods. Photographic camera functioning isn't the best, and if that's important to y'all, the Moto X4 is a strong alternative. Otherwise, the Asus ZenFone V gets you more bang for your buck than near any other phone on Verizon.