Asus ZenFone V Review
Just because the price of high-end phones is ticking steadily upward, doesn’t mean you have to bust your budget to get a solid device. The Asus ZenFone V for Verizon offers a sleek glass build and powerful specs for a reasonable $240. It’s attractive, fast, and most importantly, affordable. While camera quality leaves something to be desired, the ZenFone V beats the Samsung Galaxy J7 V in value and makes a compelling alternative to the Moto Z2 Play if you aren’t interested in its modular backs. It’s a strong option for the price for Verizon customers.
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Design, Display, and Features
The ZenFone V bears a bit of a resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy S7. You have glass on the front and back, with a band of metal sandwiched in between. The shape of the camera lens and the home button both also resemble Samsung’s 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 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.2 ounces. That’s about average for its 5.2-inch screen size and similar to what you get with the Moto G5 Plus (5.9 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches, 5.5 ounces) and Z2 Play (6.1 by 3.0 by 0.2 inches, 5.1 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 card slot that worked fine with a 256GB card. The fingerprint sensor is integrated in the physical button below the display, surrounded by backlit capacitive navigation keys on either side.
Front and center is a crisp 5.2-inch, 1,920-by-1,080 AMOLED screen that gets bright and has good viewing angles. Because it’s AMOLED, rather than the more common IPS panels you find on most midrange phones, colors appear rich and saturated and blacks are dense and inky. Color accuracy is a bit better on the G5 Plus, though Asus has settings that let you adjust screen temperature, customize color saturation, and enable a bluelight filter for reading at night.
Network Performance and Connectivity
The ZenFone V operates exclusively on Verizon’s network and supports LTE bands 2/4/5/13. What’s interesting here is that there’s no CDMA, making the ZenFone V one of a handful of LTE-only smartphones as the carrier moves toward phasing out CDMA by 2020. In terms of network connectivity, the ZenFone V fared quite well in highly congested midtown Manhattan, registering 47.8Mbps down and 21.5Mbps up.
Additional connectivity features are impressive, with support for Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, NFC for Android Pay, and Bluetooth 4.2. There’s also support for hi-res 24-bit audio and 7.1 virtual surround sound, and an AudioWizard that lets you create custom EQ profiles for different content like games, music, and movies. With some tweaks, audio sounds a bit more robust than most phones can muster, though you’re unlikely to hear much of a difference unless you’re using FLAC files or streaming on Tidal.
Call quality is generally quite solid. Voices can come across a bit robotic, but aside from some minor skips, transmissions are clear. Earpiece volume is loud and noise cancellation successfully blots out nearly all background noise aside from wind. You won’t have trouble using the phone in a noisy environment.
Processor, Battery, and Camera
The ZenFone V has the specs of a flagship phone from last year, with a Snapdragon 820 processor clocked at 2.2GHz—which is a lot better than what you typically find at this price range. The phone scored 148,480 on the AnTuTu benchmark, which measures overall system performance. That’s twice as high as the Snapdragon 626-powered Moto Z2 Play (68,040) and within spitting distance of the Galaxy S8 (158,266).
With 4GB of RAM, multitasking is smooth and there are few slowdowns, aside from the occasional animation stutter. Demanding games like GTA: San Andreas and Modern Combat 5 play without issue. The ZenFone V runs a bit warmer than other phones we’ve tested, but it doesn’t seem to have an impact on performance. By comparison, the Moto Z2 Play is also fast and smooth, thanks in part to its nearly stock UI, but it can slow down on graphically demanding games.
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Battery life is excellent. The ZenFone V clocked 8 hours, 22 minutes on our rundown test in which we stream video over LTE at maximum screen brightness. That’s a few minutes longer than the Z2 Play (8 hours, 18 minutes). It also significantly outstrips the Galaxy 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 built into the settings menu, letting you tamp down CPU performance, turn off certain modes of connectivity, and reduce screen brightness to save juice. Alternatively, if you’re doing some high-end gaming you can kick things up a notch with High Performance mode. Fast charging is supported with the included 18-watt adapter.
Camera quality is where the ZenFone V 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 up colors for a brighter look, and a Super Resolution mode overlaying four 23-megapixel shots to create one super-detailed image. Indoors, things are more of a challenge.
There’s a laser sensor on the back, but inside the murky depths of PC Labs, it struggled to find focus. Most photos I took indoors were muddy, with poor details and lots of noise. There are modes for Night and Low-Light, but you’re be better off using manual controls to bump up the ISO for clearer shots. The phone records 4K video at 30fps, but it looks jittery despite optical image stabilization, with dropped frames in lower light.
The 8-megapixel camera on the front takes good selfies, assisted by post-processing that can remove blemishes, brighten skin tone, and smooth out wrinkles. It’s a heavy-handed effect, but pictures come out pretty good.
Software
The ZenFone V ships running Android 7.0 Nougat with Asus’ Zen UI 3.0 on top. It’s a dense UI layer, and though it’s been somewhat streamlined in terms of preloaded apps, it’s 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 use the phone with gloves. There’s ZenMotion, which allows you to draw on the screen when the phone is off to launch a programmable set of apps. You can also alter animations, scroll effects, and load custom app icons. It’s all highly customizable, but very different from stock Android.
Preinstalled apps mostly come from Verizon. You’ll find nine Verizon apps preloaded, along with a few extras like Bank of America, eBay, Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire, NewsRepublic, and Yelp. The Verizon apps can’t be removed, but the rest can be uninstalled, leaving you with 21GB of storage free out of 32GB. That’s a pretty decent amount, and if you need more space you can always 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’s network, and hardware that’s powerful enough to handle multitasking and gaming alike. And it’s only $30 more than the Galaxy J7 V, 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 option if you aren’t interested in using Moto Mods. Camera performance isn’t the best, and if that’s important to you, the Moto X4 is a strong alternative. Otherwise, the Asus ZenFone V gets you more bang for your buck than almost any other phone on Verizon.
Asus ZenFone V
4.0
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$240.00
at Verizon
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MSRP $240.00
Pros
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The Bottom Line
The Verizon exclusive Asus ZenFone V has a sleek build and specs that pack a punch for a very affordable price.
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