Asus ZenFone three Zoom

Editors’ Note: This review has been updated to reflect switches to the ZenFone three Zoom’s software since we reviewed it in May 2017. We’ve raised its score from Three.Five to four starlets.

Better battery life is a spec most manufacturers overlook in the quest for thinner, lighter phones, but Asus is listening. The unlocked ZenFone three Zoom ($329) packs a massive Five,000mAh cell into an attractive metal figure, for some of the best battery life we’ve tested. You also get solid spectacle, dual cameras with Two.3X optical zoom, and a host of unique features and customization options. It’s an attractive option for the price, particularly if you’re focused on battery life, but Motorola’s Moto G5 Plus remains our Editors’ Choice award for its simpler software practice and compatibility with all major US carriers.

Design, Display, and Features

The Zoom is proof that phones with big batteries needn’t be bricks. Measuring 6.1 by Three.0 by 0.Trio inches (HWD) and 6.0 ounces, the Zoom is slightly smaller than the iPhone seven Plus (6.Two by Three.1 by 0.Three inches, 6.6 ounces) and just a bit thicker than the Moto G5 Plus (Five.9 by Two.9 by 0.Trio inches, Five.Five ounces). That’s a pretty exceptional feat, considering the Zoom’s battery is almost twice as big as the ones in either of those devices.

The phone has a sleek metal assets available in black (pictured here), gold, and silver. The right side has a volume rocker and power button. The bottom features a Three.5mm headphone jack, a USB-C charging port, and a speaker. The left side has a SIM/microSD card slot and worked fine with a 256GB card. You can also use two SIM cards instead, but only one will connect to a 4G network.

On the back you’ll find the dual-camera setup with a laser autofocus sensor and dual-LED flash. A square fingerprint sensor below can be enabled for functions like tapping twice to quick launch the camera app, acting as the shutter key, and answering phone calls.

The Zoom has a Five.5-inch, 1,920-by-1,080 AMOLED display clad in Gorilla Glass Five. The resolution works out to a crisp four hundred one pixels per inch, matching the G5 Plus. The panel is rich and saturated out of the box, tho’ you also have the capability to tweak color temperatures to your preference. The AMOLED panel not only provides inky blacks, but saves power by lighting pixels only as needed. Viewing angles are excellent, and using the phone outdoors is no problem, as it reaches up to five hundred nits of brightness at maximum.

Network Spectacle, Connectivity, and Audio

The Zoom is available unlocked and supports GSM (850, 1800, 1900MHz), WCDMA (1/Two/Four/Five/8), and LTE bands (1/Two/Trio/Four/Five/7/8/17/28). That means you can only use it on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile, and you’ll likely get better connectivity on the former, since the phone is missing band 12, which provides better coverage and improved indoor reception on T-Mobile. That said, the phone performed fine across our testing in midtown Manhattan, showcasing a top download speed of 11.4Mbps on T-Mobile’s network.

Other connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the Two.4GHz band and Bluetooth Four.Two. There’s no NFC, which isn’t unusual for this price range.

Call quality is solid. Transmissions are clearly audible and have little to no garbling , tho’ voices can sound a bit robotic. Noise cancellation is good at blotting out background noise, and with the noisy earpiece volume, you shouldn’t have trouble carrying on a conversation in a noisy environment. VoLTE is supported, Wi-Fi calling isn’t.

Audio quality is also solid. Similar to the ZTE Axon 7, the Zoom supports high-resolution 24-bit audio playback through the headphone jack. Using a feature called Audio Wizard you can adjust music using the built-in equalizer and use DTS Headphone:X virtual surround sound for movies, music, and games. Listening with a pair of high-fidelity Auros earphones, I was able to notice a significant improvement in clarity and sound quality compared with phones that don’t have the same enhancements. Bass-heavy metal came through particularly well, with more clearly defined lyrics, less distortion, and a warmer sound. Virtual surround sound is subpar at best, however, actually worsening audio quality by narrowing the sound field.

The bottom-firing mono speaker has an NXP Wise Amp. Aside from getting fairly noisy, I couldn’t detect a difference inbetween it and other downward-facing speakers. It’s no match for the thunderous front-facing speakers on the Axon 7.

Processor and Battery

The Zoom is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon six hundred twenty five processor clocked at Two.0GHz. It’s a capable midrange chipset, scoring 62,504 on the AnTuTu benchmark, which measures overall system spectacle. That’s similar to the G5 Plus (63,845), which has the same processor, and higher than the Kirin 655-powered Honor 6X (56,602). The Axon seven (141,989) has a much more powerful Snapdragon eight hundred twenty processor, but it’s also more expensive.

In terms of real-world spectacle, the ZenFone three Zoom is slick. Its 3GB of RAM is enough that multitasking isn’t a problem, and I never encountered any lag or stuttering. The phone also had no trouble treating high-end games like GTA: San Andreas.

Asus has packed the Zoom to the brim with software enhancements to improve spectacle. The most notable is Power & Boost, accessible through the notification shade. It’s a memory manager that cleans up background apps when the screen is off, and can stop apps from automatically embarking when you turn the phone on.

The Zoom also has phenomenal battery life. It clocked ten hours, thirty minutes in our rundown test, in which we stream full-screen movie over LTE at maximum brightness. That outclasses all its competitors including the G5 Plus (7 hours, thirty five minutes), the Axon seven (6 hours), and the Honor 6X (Five hours, thirty five minutes). The only phone that comes close is the OnePlus 3T, at ten hours. With average use, you can lightly go two to three days without having to recharge. If there’s one downside to the massive battery, it’s that even with quick charging it’ll still take a few hours to charge the Zoom.

Camera

Dual-camera phones are becoming increasingly more common, suggesting features like wide-angle shots in the case of the LG G6, bokeh on the Honor 6X, and telephoto zoom on the iPhone seven Plus. With the Zoom you get a pair of rear-facing f/1.7 12-megapixel shooters capable of Two.3x optical zoom, slightly higher than the 2x zoom on the seven Plus. It also has a laser autofocus sensor, a dual-LED flash, and Dual Pixel Phase Detection Autofocus.

In good light the phone takes crisp, detailed shots. Autofocus locks on quickly and noise is fairly minimal. Color reproduction is accurate, tho’ perhaps a little abate if you choose more saturated colors. In the camera app you’ll find a number of modes and settings, including bokeh (which blurs backgrounds to make objects stand out in the foreground), but the most notable is the Two.3x optical zoom, which permits you to get in close on an object without the loss of detail that comes with digital zoom. It works well, as you can see in the photos below, tho’ overall quality isn’t up to par with the iPhone seven Plus—some of the pictures I shot on a cloudy day were a bit muddy.

Despite claims from Asus that the phone has Two.Five times the light sensitivity of the iPhone seven Plus, it wasn’t apparent in testing. The rear sensors took soft, noisy shots indoors, with overall subpar quality compared with flagships like the Google Pixel XL. That said, you can tweak ISO and shutter speed for better spectacle and a latest update has added an option for you to save pictures in RAW mode.

The Zoom is capable of recording 4k movie at 30fps, and 1080p at 60fps. There’s no optical photo stabilization, but the electronic pic stabilization works fairly well and movie quality is good. However, in a few instances, the camera app refused to record in 4k, generating an error message. The problem didn’t crop up when attempting to record 1080p30.

The 13-megapixel front-facing camera is excellent. Pictures are crisp, autoexposure has no issue adjusting to different lighting conditions, and backgrounds look clear. There’s a built-in Skin Brightening slider enabled by default that can make your facial features look soft, but it’s effortless to turn off if you don’t want to look like an airbrushed supermodel.

Software

The ZenFone three Zoom shipped running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, but has since been updated to Android 7.1.1 Nougat. While I was originally lukewarm in my feelings about the software practice, this update significantly redesigns the UI and wipes out all the bloatware that previously bogged the phone down. Everything feels a lot more responsive, tho’ it’s still far from stock Android. There’s an altered lock screen, notification shade, and settings menu, however you no longer get an terrific array of toggles and menus when you pull down the notification shade.

Other switches include Google Now and Google Assistant being integrated in the ZenUI launcher, sparing you from having to download extra apps. Other apps like Mobile Manager and Auto-Start Manager have been toned down so you don’t get spammed with invasive notifications. A home screen manager shows up when you swipe up from the app drawer. It permits you to edit every aspect of the phone’s appearance including icon size, alignment, scroll effects, and font size. You can also download fresh themes, third-party icon packs, and switch animation speed.

Other useful settings include a call recorder baked into the Dialer app, Gloves mode to increase screen sensitivity, Outdoor mode to increase earpiece volume, Kids mode to restrict access to certain apps, more apps compatible with Split-screen mode, and Effortless mode to launch a simplified UI. It’s a nice degree of customization to have built right into the default launcher. You’re left with 23.25GB out of 32GB of available storage, and you can add a microSD card if you need more.

Conclusions

The $329 ZenFone three Zoom sits inbetween the $299 Moto G5 Plus and the $399 ZTE Axon seven in terms of price. With its gargantuan battery, dual-camera setup with telephoto zoom, and host of unique features, it manages to stand out, which is more than you can say about many phones in the price range. And with its latest update to Android Nougat, the software practice is far better than it was at the beginning.

That said, the G5 Plus remains our Editors’ Choice on the more affordable end: It features similar hardware and compatibility with every major US carrier. For $100 more, ZTE’s Axon seven is almost a year old, but it too received a Nougat update with Daydream support, putting it almost on par with current flagship phones for almost half the price.

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