ASUS is quite famous when it comes to launching phones in the budget segment. But this time they have launched a phone in the range of 30K called as ASUS Zenfone 5Z which has been quite a buzz in the digital market. The phone has a balance of all the features required to give a tough fight to the competitors such as Oneplus and Xiaomi. So let us check if ASUS Zenfone 5Z is worth buying or not.
ASUS Zenfone 5Z worth buying or not?
Design
ASUS Zenfone 5Z has a glass panel on the front as well as back. It has an elegant design and the concentrated circle design on the back which looks premium. The edges on the corners are rounded and the phone is quite good to hold if you just grab the corners. The back however being a glass one is very slippery if you keep it on your lap. The volume rockers & power button are on the right and the dual SIM card tray is on the left. The type C charging/data syncing port, speaker, and 3.5mm audio jack are on the bottom of the device. The fingerprint sensor is on the back with ASUS logo. I would give a 9.5/10 for the design of the device. One of the best phones I have seen in this budget if you consider design.
Display
ASUS has done the best job when it comes to the display of the device. ASUS Zenfone 5Z has a full HD+ LCD IPS+ (2246×1080 resolution) display having screen ratio of 19:9. The quality of display is amazing and it does a great job of color reproduction. You can play around the color temperature settings to set the perfect display temperature that suits you. If the brightness is set to automatic, it sets the color temperature automatically based on the lighting conditions. The LED notification light is on the extreme left corner of ear-piece speaker grill. The bezels are reduce from all the sides and it has a notch on the edge to edge display. There is an option to hide the notch in the settings as every other device. The display is protected with Gorilla glass and does a pretty well job. Tried dropping it from different height like pocket, desk, and dinning table but it managed to protect it everytime. Overall the display is something which you will be impressed to see on ASUS Zenfone 5Z.
Performance
ASUS Zenfone 5Z comes with one of the powerful chipsets that is Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. It has an octa-core processor(4 cores clocked at 2.7 GHz & the other 4 clocked at 1.7 GHz). As far as the memory is concerned it comes with different RAM & ROM variants like 6GB+64GB, 6GB+128GB, & 8GB+256GB. For gaming they have introduced Adreno 630 which can run any game in high graphics. They have AI introduced in almost everything to optimize the features and utilize the hardware in the best possible way. I would say that the phone handles multi-tasking very well and it is capable of running graphics intensive games without any lag. Normal usage experience is amazing as you can keep the apps running in the background without worrying about the performance.
Software
ASUS Zenfone 5Z has Oreo 8.0 out of the box with the new ASUS ZenUI 5. Not many people are fan of the custom ASUS ROM but I feel that it is not that bad to use. Though they might need to revamp the design a bit and go for the modern minimalistic approach for designing the UI. For example the dialer, it is quite old fashioned now and they have kept the design almost same.
Camera
ASUS Zenfone 5Z has a Sony flagship IMX363 12MP primary shooter on the back. It has large sensor size 1/2.55″ with F1.8 aperture. One of the core features is the 4 stops optical image stabilization with LED flash support. The secondary lens on the back is of 8MP having a 120 deg wide-angle camera having F2.2 aperture. With AI photography feature added, the ASUS Zenfone 5Z can detect 16 types of different scenes with AI photo learning feature too. As for the default camera modes that ASUS has, it supports real time potrait and beautification. The front camera is of 8MP having F2.0 aperture and 84 deg field of view. As for the recording, one can take 4K UHD video at 60 fps with rear camera, 1080p FHD video recording at 30/60 fps. It has 3-axis EIS for rear cameras. One can record slow-mo videos with 1080p at 240 fps and 720p at 240 fps. Overall the camera on the device is excellent for indoors as it introduces artificial lightning which is better than other smartphones in the range. Outdoor camera quality matches with the competitors but it forms very well indoors. One needs to lower the brightness of the image if you are not looking for too bright images especially indoors. The video recording was good as the OIS & EIS worked great.
Speaker & Connectivity
It has dual speakers with NXP Smart Amp for louder, deeper and less distorted sound effect. The speakers are quite loud and I enjoyed watching movies on the smartphones with its amazing display & sound. Recommended for people who love watching videos/movies on smartphone. It has 3 internal mics for noise cancellation. The speaker grill is located on the bottom of the device which is conventional in terms of design. One of the best features of ASUS Zenfone 5Z is the dual SIM dual standby support. You can use JIO along with other 4G network provider and both 4G services will work simultaneously. Though you can use interent service of only one service provider. One needs to sacrifice one SIM if he/she wishes to extend the memory by using memory card slot. Both SIM cards supported are nano. It has other connectivity options like Wifi, bluetooth, GPS, & NFC too. In terms of security the phone supports face-unlock, fingerprint scanner & other modes of security modes like password/pin. The face unlock worked quite well on this device and so did the fingerprint sensor. You can save upto 5 fingerprint impressions on the device.
Battery
The device ASUS Zenfone 5Z has a large 3300 mAh battery pack. Though frankly speaking I feel that the phone could have been optimized to use the battery pack in a much efficient way. It might be possible that the screen is using quite some battery, but I noticed that the camera was consuming the battery rapidly. On a above normal usage that includes 2-3 hrs of video, 3 hrs of music playback using bluetooth earphones and all time WiFi or 4G connectivity, the phone lasted for somewhere more than half a day. But if you are such user, then you need to charge the device once in the middle of the day or at evening. You can make it work for one full day too, it all depends on the usage. One good thing is that it comes with Qualcomm quick charge 3.0 and the phone takes up less amount of time to get the juice in. Also it has AI charging it can schedule it for battery protection. It is said that initially the phone might drain out in a shorter amount of time, but later it optimizes itself to last longer.
Price
The phone comes in two colors – midnight blue(my favorite) & meteor silver. The price for 6GB RAM + 64 GB ROM is Rs.29,999, for 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM is Rs.32,999 and for 8GB RAM + 256GB ROM is around Rs.36,999. The phone is available on Flipkart. Yes I would suggest with all the offers going on from different banks, the phone is definitely worth the price and you can go for it.
