This unlocked, 5. Sold unlocked in the U. All these features make the ZenFone 3 Deluxe a great-looking device at an attractive price, but poor camera performance holds it back, and some competitors offer similar features for less.

With its aluminum, unibody chassis, diamond-cut edges and narrow bezels, the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe has an extremely attractive and premium design that puts more expensive phones to shame cough, Pixel.

Asus crows about its “invisible antenna design,” which means that the device has a smooth back and sides, free of the antenna lines you see on most other smartphones.

I was particularly impressed with the almost nonexistent side bezels on the front, along with the classy matte surface on the back, which holds a pleasantly square camera module and rectangular fingerprint scanner.

In addition to the “Glacier Silver” color on our review unit which had a slight gold color and accents despite its name, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe also comes in a more intense “Sand Gold.

However, unlike some competitors from Apple and Motorola, Asus’ handset has a standard 3. The device never felt too chunky, either in my hand or my pants pocket.

ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe review – Android Authority

Now that the Galaxy Note 7 is off the market, you won’t find a lot of high-end handsets with 5. The ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s 5.

When I watched a p trailer for Rogue One, I had to step back, because the orange sparks from explosions and green laser rays were so vivid that they seemed to jump off the screen.

When I viewed the same trailer on the Pixel XL, which also has an AMOLED display, but with a higher, x resolution, the colors were no more colorful, but I did make out a small amount of additional detail.

Asus makes the display even more compelling by preloading Splendid, an app that provides a more detailed set of software color controls than you’ll find on most other phones.

You can manually adjust the color temperature in all but Bluelight Filter mode.

I enjoyed adjusting the hue, saturation and temperature manually, but would recommend using Super Color as your mode of choice, because it made reds and other shades pop a lot more, without making the trailer look out of balance.

According to our colorimeter, the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe can reproduce a fantastic percent of the sRGB color gamut in Super Color mode and a still-strong percent in standard mode.

When I used it, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s display was more than bright enough for both indoor and outdoor use, but it reached a modest nits on our light meter, which is far below the nit category average, Galaxy S7 Edge nitsthe Google Pixel XL nits and OnePlus 3 nits.

The ZenFone 3 Deluxe comes with a pair of white earbuds — and that’s a good thing, because the bottom-mounted speaker is anything but hi-fi.

Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe ZSKL – Full phone specifications

When I listened to a couple of pop songs, “Uptown Funk” and “Perfect Illusion,” the output was just loud enough to fill our small lab, but it was filled with ugly distortion.

Even worse, if I held the phone by its bottom or leaned it against my chest as I often do when holding a phonethe output because extremely muffled and hard to hear.

I suspect is is a hardware problem they can’t fix and wish to ignore. ZenFone 3 Deluxe vs. Asus zenfone 3 deluxe 5 5 zs550kl express I’ve got quite a few dents and scrapes from dropping it onto cement, roofs, hardwood, tile, etc. The storage still decreases until it runs out and warns you that it may now be corrupt.

The built-in Audio Wizard software lets you adjust the equalizer or choose between Movie, Music and Voice modes, but playing with these did little to improve the quality.

The ZenFone 3 Deluxe runs Android 6. While some purists prefer the plain look of stock Android that you find on phones like the Google Pixel XL, I found that Asus’ software added a lot of value.

I particularly appreciated its built-in theming capability, which allowed me to choose from dozens of designs, which change the wallpaper, icons and menu colors.

In any theme, the quick settings area, app drawer and full settings menu are vibrant and easy to navigate.

Carton asus zenfone 3 deluxe 5 5 zs550kl express tablet useable

Like most other non-Google phones, Asus uses hardware navigation buttons for home, back and recent apps so that it doesn’t waste screen real estate.

The phone also comes with several built-in ZenUI utilities, and many of them are quite helpful. I really like the FM radio app, which lets you tune into real stations as long as you have headphones plugged in.

I also appreciated Mobile Manager, which gives you fine control over notifications and security settings, while offering various power-saving options and a performance booster that clears unnecessary apps from the memory.

ZenFone 3 Delxue left vs Pixel XL right A few tenths of a second of additional processing time might not sound like much, but in practice it made the difference between my ability to capture my son as he was going down the slide or just missing him. Asus Mobile Phones Price List in India It takes a good two or three seconds for the camera to capture a shot in low light, and that makes it really difficult to get a shot that was in focus.

Mini Movie can turn your family photos into videos, and Photo Collage lets you aggregate your shots. Considering that most flagship smartphones have cameras that shoot at 12 megapixels, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s MP rear shooter looks really good on paper.

A camera app that has a plethora of special modes and very detailed manual controls adds to that potential. Unfortunately, in practice, photos that I shot with the phone often suffered from dull colors, dim lighting and motion blur.

Even worse, the shutter was downright slow, making it easy for me to miss important shots. When shooting in my relatively well-lit office, the phone’s camera took about 0.

B101 asus zenfone 3 deluxe 5 5 zs550kl express zte z777

In a darker area, the phone took around 1. And, on a partly cloudy day in the park, it appeared to take even longer. A few tenths of a second of additional processing time might not sound like much, but in practice it made the difference between my ability to capture my son as he was going down the slide or just missing him.

The slow speeds also made for very blurry images when an object was moving or my hands weren’t perfectly still. When I shot stills of toy race cars rolling around a track, they looked like blurry blobs, as did several pictures of a completely still set of toys that I shot in low light with the flash firing.

The photo quality also leaves a lot to be desired. Across dozens of pictures I took both outside and indoors, using the auto mode with auto HDR enabled both defaultsthe ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s output was always significantly darker than that of the pricier Google Pixel XL, with colors that were much duller and less accurate.

When I took an outdoor image of a field with the blue sky over it at midafternoon, the picture looked extremely dark, but the same subject captured on a Google Pixel XL appeared bright and sunny.

Full-HD videos that I shot with the camera suffered from the same weak brightness and colors. They were also jerky, even though I had video stabilization enabled.

Expert photographers may have better luck, if they spend time playing with the ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s extensive manual controls, which let you adjust the ISO, white balance, shutter speed and more.

My favorite modes were Time Rewind, which captures a second or two of images before your shot, and Children mode, which shoots as soon as it detects that your kid is facing the camera a huge problem for many parents.

I also enjoyed the slow-motion video capture, which operates at frames per second, but I preferred the Pixel XL’s ability to choose between and fps slow-motion shots.

The ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s camera setup is like a reverse mullet: party in the front, sadness in the back. The 8-MP front-facing camera captured the best selfies I’ve taken in years.

Enabled by default, the beautification feature made me look 10 years younger by smoothing out the fine lines on my skin, while still allowing fine details like the hairs in my beard to come through.

Colors like the blue on my shirt were vibrant, though not completely accurate.

Asus zenfone 3 deluxe 5 5 zs550kl express v80

Besides the beautification mode’s standard skin-smoothing ability, Asus’ camera app allows you to fine-tune how your features look, making your face look thinner, your eyes wider or your skin and lips a slightly different shade than in real life.

Some users will find these features helpful, while others may be offended by the notion of changing someone’s eye shape or choosing from a limited pallet of skin tones in the makeup mode.

Running on T-Mobile, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe stayed well charged during some on-and-off use, but it lasted a modest 8 hours and 24 minutes on our battery test, which involves continuous surfing over 4G.

Navigating around the OS was smooth as butter, whether I was surfing the web, changing settings or launching the camera app. When I played Asphalt 8, a graphically intense racing game, the action was slick and full of details like smoke and snow.

On Geekbench 4, a synthetic test that measures overall performance, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe scored a strong mark of 4, — well above the category average 3, and about on par with the Snapdragon powered Galaxy S7 Edge 4, The Pixel XL and its Snapdragon processor did slightly better 4, The ZenFone rang up an impressive score of 32, on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics benchmark — a mark that’s more than double the category average 15, and comfortably ahead of all its competitors, including the Google Pixel XL 28,OnePlus 3 30, and Galaxy S7 Edge 29, Asus’ handset took just 3 minutes and 26 seconds to convert a MB, full-HD video to p.

That time is more than twice as fast as the category average and over 30 seconds quicker than the S7 Edge The ZenFone 3 Deluxe is only sold unlocked in the U.

Our 5. The 5.

Cons: Buggy. Asus zenfone 3 deluxe 5 5 zs550kl express The device never felt too chunky, either in my hand or my pants pocket.

We haven’t tested the 5. If you want an unlocked device with a strong sense of style, plenty of performance and great selfie capabilities, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe is a good choice, but the camera could be better.

Tom’s Guide. Holiday Guide Home Reviews. Our Verdict This unlocked, 5. Against Camera is sluggish and images look dim Below-average battery life Weak sound.

Design With its aluminum, unibody chassis, diamond-cut edges and narrow bezels, the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe has an extremely attractive and premium design that puts more expensive phones to shame cough, Pixel.

ZenFone 3 Deluxe I was particularly impressed with the almost nonexistent side bezels on the front, along with the classy matte surface on the back, which holds a pleasantly square camera module and rectangular fingerprint scanner.

Sound The ZenFone 3 Deluxe comes with a pair of white earbuds — and that’s a good thing, because the bottom-mounted speaker is anything but hi-fi.

Rear Camera: Dark, Dull and Slow Considering that most flagship smartphones have cameras that shoot at 12 megapixels, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s MP rear shooter looks really good on paper.

ZenFone 3 Delxue left vs Pixel XL right A few tenths of a second of additional processing time might not sound like much, but in practice it made the difference between my ability to capture my son as he was going down the slide or just missing him.

ZenFone 3 Deluxe vs.

20.01.2020 – The only problems i’ve ever had with this phone were android system updates which would cause issues sometimes. Rear Camera: Dark, Dull and Slow Considering that most flagship smartphones have cameras that shoot at 12 megapixels, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s MP rear shooter looks really good on paper. Across dozens of pictures I took both outside and indoors, using the auto mode with auto HDR enabled both defaults , the ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s output was always significantly darker than that of the pricier Google Pixel XL, with colors that were much duller and less accurate. They were also jerky, even though I had video stabilization enabled.

Battery Life Running on T-Mobile, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe stayed well charged during some on-and-off use, but it lasted a modest 8 hours and 24 minutes on our battery test, which involves continuous surfing over 4G.