Zenfone 3 Deluxe: ASUS takes aim at flagships

With a premium all-metal look and feel, the latest from ASUS is good for gaming and photos, writes Abhik Sen

With the ASUS Zenfone 3 Deluxe, the first thing that hits you is the price: Rs 49,999 (for the Snapdragon 820 version, which is what I used). At this price, you’re looking to compete with the iPhones, Galaxys and Pixels; thus the phone sports an all-metal unibody design and looks and feels premium, like a flagship.

The big retail box comes with pretty decent earphones supporting high-resolution audio. The rectangular fingerprint scanner takes a bit of time to train, but once up and running, it is blazing fast. The phone runs the custom ZenUI 3.0 based on Android Marshmallow and comes with a suite of apps from ASUS. The 5.7-inch super AMOLED screen is surprisingly easy to use, though it’s only a fullHD screen. 

That said, the phone performs admirably well when gaming with up to 20 tabs open, because of its 6GB of RAM on board. Both Asphalt 8 and Real Racing 3 were smooth as butter, with absolutely no lags. And the phone didn’t heat up.

The 23-megapixel (MP) primary camera performed remarkably whenever there was decent light. The camera is fast and image stabilisation is good; and while the phone can shoot in 4k, videos shot at 1,080p with auto settings turned out best. The 8MP selfie camera does a very good job. The speaker at the bottom is loud but audiophiles should stick to headphones.

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe lasts for more than a day with heavy music and calls, moderate browsing, social media, videos and some amount of gaming.