Today we are going to Review Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe. Earlier this year, Asus launched Zenfone 2 Deluxe in New Delhi, India at Zenfestival 2015. As the name suggests “Deluxe”, it’s the high end flagship smartphone from Asus. After testing lot of things then we decided to do the review of Zenfone 2 Deluxe.
Asus Zenfone 2 Unboxing
Box contents include one charger, user manual, warranty and a USB charger. There are no earphones in the box just like other Zenfones. Surprisingly we did receive ZenFlash along with the smartphone. The ZenFlash can be used in low light conditions which work only on Zenfone 2. There is a user manual inside to know How to use Asus Zenflash.
Display
Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe comes with a 5.5-Inch Full HD display. It has corning gorilla glass 3 support on top. The viewing angles are turned out to be fair and the color reproduction was good. The Touch was responsive and super smooth. The 1080P video playback was really good and we have no complaints.
Design
Zenfone 2 Deluxe come with concentric circle design on back. The phone looks solid in hand due to thin edges on the corners. The diamond-like texture on the back looks sexy and eye-catching. You can feel the textures while holding the device.Volume rockers are placed on the usual position which are below the rear camera. In the beginning, we did find some difficulties to use volume rockers. Dual LED Flash is on top of the camera. Speakers are placed at the bottom of the device.
Camera
The Zenfone flaunts 13 MP rear camera with dual LED flash and Laser autofocus technology. On the front, it has 5 MP Secondary camera. The laser autofocus is super speedy while talking closer shots. But focusing takes time on long distance which is the drawback of laser autofocus technology. Overall the camera is good in outdoor conditions. In low light, the camera is just above average but with Zenflash the camera quality can be improved.The camera can record Full HD videos without any interruption. The front camera is just average too, it does a fair job in outdoor conditions.
Software and Hardware
Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe runs on Android Lollipop 5.0 with ZenUI on top. The ZenUI works really smooth and has handy options. Double tap to wake up works well in this phone. The UI is clean and customization looks good. The notification bar is simple and has some cool options. I like the One hand operation which comes in handy while texting. The power and boost for cleaning the ram. NFC is the stand out feature of Zenfone 2 Deluxe. There is a heck of a bloatware which cannot be uninstalled.
The smartphone comes with the 64 GB of internal storage with MicroSD slot option. The expandable storage is up to 128 GB. It has 4 Gigabytes of RAM where 2 GB used by the system itself. Powered by 2.3 GHz Intel Atom Z3580 Quad Core Processor. Thankfully the smartphone doesn’t heat up at normal temperature.
Benchmark Testing
- Antutu Score -47249
- Geekbench 3- Single core:-904, Multi-core:-2821
- Quadrant-12149
- Nenamark-59.7 fps
Performance
Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe performs as smooth as a butterscotch. I haven’t faced any lag while browsing the internet and rendering were quick. At high end settings, Asphalt 8 played well without any lag. Basic games like Subway Surfers and Temple Run played without any issues. While gaming and browsing, you won’t face any heating issues. The ZenUI is optimized well to handle multi-tasking. Overall the performance of Zenfone 2 Deluxe is pretty good.
Battery Performance and Sound Quality
The Zenfone 2 Deluxe packs in a 3000 mAh battery with Asus Boostmaster Technology. The company says within 39 minutes of charging, the battery will be charged up to 60%. So we did the testing, the phone gets charged up to 60% within the promised time, Well done Asus! It gave me 5 hours of battery life on 50% charge. I played few games with WiFi on, took some selfies, the cellular network was off and did browsing for an hour on WiFi. So you can expect 10 hours of battery life on heavy usage. The Loudspeaker on the back of the device. The sound quality was decent and audible.
Zenflash
Along the phone, I received ZenFlash which works only for Zenfone 2 series. Initially, I thought this little kid is of no use. When I did testing, it performed really well. I took shots in complete darkness and the results were more than decent. Remember, use ZenFlash when the distance of the capturing image is more than 3 meters. Otherwise, the image will be overexposed.
My Verdict
Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe is one of the best performers at this price range. If you are looking for a smartphone with high end performance, decent battery life, and a good camera then this one should be your choice. The phone is exclusively available on Flipkart for Rs 22,299. It is available in Blue and White variants.
Camera samples
Front Camera
