Asus ZenFone 2 (Unlocked) Review
I can’t believe the Asus ZenFone 2 costs $299. In terms of sheer power per dollar, it’s unmatched. The ZenFone 2 has everything and the kitchen sink: 64GB of storage plus a memory card slot, two SIM slots, enough RAM to flip between several large games at once, and a surprisingly good camera. If you’re going by benchmarks and performance measures, it’s the best unlocked phone available for $299.
But here’s where things get personal. The ZenFone 2 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is powerful, but I don’t find it appealing. Much of that has to do with design: This is a big, heavy slab of a phone, with a dim screen and a cloying Android skin, overburdened with bloatware. A lot of that judgement is based on personal taste, and some of it is fixable. But I find the Editors’ Choice Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 ($92.05 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and the OnePlus One ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) —while not as powerful—to be more appealing to hold and to use.
This review, by the way, covers the 64GB, $299 version of the ZenFone. There’s also a $199 version with significant differences: 16GB of storage instead of 64GB, a slower processor, and half the RAM. That’s enough to review and rate that model differently, so I will.
Physical Features and Call Quality
The ZenFone 2 tries to be stylish, but it’s a heavy, ungraceful tank of a phone. At 5.98 by 3.04 by 0.30 inches (HWD) and 6 ounces, it’s noticeably wider and much heavier than the One Touch Idol 3, which makes a significant difference in usability. The button layout is also very unusual: The volume buttons are on the back (which work well), but the very small, stiff power button is on the top edge, where it isn’t easily reachable. Fortunately, you can wake the phone up by double-tapping on the screen.
The 1,920-by-1,080-pixel, 5.5-inch display is disappointing. It has a sharp 401 pixels per inch, but it’s dimmer, with poorer viewing angles, than the Idol 3. You can tweak the display’s color balance to a surprising extent with built-in utilities, but none of the tweaks make the screen much brighter.
The back is removable, so you can access the SIM card slots and microSD memory card slot, but the 3,000mAh battery is sealed in. That’s OK; the ZenFone 2 got a great battery life result with 6 hours, 50 minutes of LTE video streaming. The Idol 3 pays for its slimmer, lighter body with just over 4 hours of streaming life.
The ZenFone 2 is the only one of our $299 unlocked leaders with two SIM card slots, a big plus for frequent travelers. One of the slots allows for LTE, while the other only permits EDGE data. This works really well with T-Mobile’s Simple Choice roaming; switch your T-Mobile SIM to the EDGE slot when you’re abroad so you can keep your number, and use a local data SIM for high-speed data in the main slot.
Band-wise, the ZenFone 2 supports U.S. and foreign 2G and 3G GSM networks. For LTE, it has bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/17/20. That means it works on both AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks, and has LTE roaming in Europe and Canada. It lacks T-Mobile’s new Band 12, though, which will reduce T-Mobile LTE coverage in some suburban and rural areas. The phone also supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and a raft of GPS systems.
Call quality, I’m happy to say, is generally good. The earpiece, while not raucously loud, has decent volume, and noise cancellation through the microphone is excellent. The speakerphone, on the other hand, is too quiet to use in many contexts.
Android and Performance
The 2.3GHz Intel Z3580 processor benchmarks like a pretty high-end chip, falling somewhere between the Snapdragon 801 and 805 on Antutu benchmark results, and just killing the Snapdragon 615 that Alcatel uses in the One Touch Idol 3. It outpaces the Idol 3 on GFXBenchmark graphics tests, too, nevermind lesser performers like the Moto G ($129.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . It doesn’t match up against the Google Nexus 6 ($194.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) or the Samsung Galaxy S6 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) , but they cost twice as much.
Almost as importantly, the 4GB of RAM here really matters if you multitask. Android handles multitasking by tossing out old, suspended app processes when you run out of memory; that means if you’re playing a game, do six other things, and then return to the game, sometimes the game will relaunch. With the ZenFone, I could play Asphalt 8, do some emailing and Web browsing, play Epic Citadel, and then return to the suspended Asphalt 8. The Idol 3, with its 2GB of RAM, insisted on relaunching Asphalt 8 at that point.
Software-wise, though: Ugh. Clearly, one of the ways Asus is making money on this phone is by renting it out for bloatware. There’s a ton of it, fortunately deletable, from a “Dr. Safety” antivirus app that I’d never heard of, to an “Omlet Chat” OTT messaging app that I’d never heard of.
And beyond the third-party bloatware, Asus’ ZenUI is one of the most heavy-handed Android skins I’ve ever seen. There are too many “smart options,” too many redesigned apps, too many slow animations (which you can turn off), and too many Asus-exclusive apps that are just a bit less usable than the standard Google versions. It doesn’t look much like Android Lollipop at all, and it is, in fact, Android Lollipop. Alcatel’s significantly lighter approach is much more appealing.
I checked benchmark scores before and after removing the bloatware, and it didn’t seem to slow the phone down. With 64GB of internal storage (54GB available), there’s still plenty of room for your own data. Add a microSD card and you can get up to 192GB into the phone. But just like with the body, the software here left me with a bad aesthetic feeling when compared with the brighter, simpler Alcatel interface.
See How We Test Cell Phones
Camera and Multimedia
The ZenFone 2’s 13-megapixel main camera is better than either the One Touch Idol 3 or the OnePlus One. It locks focus much more reliably than the Idol 3, so you have fewer blurry photos. The photos themselves are sharper than the Idol’s best—so sharp, in fact, that they look like they’ve been through a sharpen filter, complete with artifacting. Still, I really appreciated the precision.
A few useful modes help as well. There’s an intriguing low-light mode, which drops the resolution to 2.36MP but does indeed offer much better low-light performance than the One Touch Idol 3 does. There’s a good HDR mode, and a great auto-face-detecting rear-camera selfie mode. For video, the phone records 1080p footage at 30 frames per second, indoors and out, with the front and rear cameras.
The ZenFone 2 supports all the usual Google music formats, as well as MPEG4 video, but not DivX, Xvid, or anything more exotic. That’s fine; there are third-party video players available for these formats. The back-ported speaker is pretty bad. It’s harsh and tinny.
Comparisons and Conclusions
The Asus ZenFone 2 is, by far, the most powerful phone you can get for $299 unlocked. Its camera, especially, puts the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 and the OnePlus One to shame. The 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM for multitasking, and dual SIM capability all mean that it would make a terrific traveling companion, and it works on both AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks. All of this makes for a great review—but no Editor’s Choice. So, why not?
Aesthetic bias is the hardest part of a review. The ZenFone 2 is just too big, too heavy, and its screen is too dim, compared with the slim, attractive One Touch Idol 3. I also don’t care for the overbearing Android skin, or the oppressive amount of bloatware. The Asus ZenFone 2 is a truly impressive piece of engineering and an amazing value for its price. But the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 is the phone I would rather carry.
Asus ZenFone 2 (Unlocked)
4.0
(Opens in a new window)
Check Stock
at Amazon
(Opens in a new window)
MSRP $299.00
Pros
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Cons
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The Bottom Line
The Asus ZenFone 2 is the most powerful smartphone you can get for $299, but it isn’t the most aesthetically appealing one.
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