We have reviewed at least 5 to 6 of Zenfone devices so far, but the Zenfone 2 Deluxe is the real head-turner. The abstract texture on the back cover shows off tis being the premium device, that everyone wants to check out. But can it perform equally well in the real world tests? Let’s find out in our following in-depth review of Zenfone 2 Deluxe.
Zenfone 2 Deluxe Review
Physical Appearance & Display
Zenfone 2 Deluxe looks nothing different from all the devices in the series, except for its shiny back cover, that is creatively designed. The textured surface has a unique appeal and it provides firm grip in the hand. It’s a bit heavier than the Zenfone Laser, but the addition of little bit of weight, makes it feel premium.
The incredibly thin bezel makes this 5.5 inch display fit in the 5 inch body size, which is pretty amazing considering the design level efforts from Asus’s engineering team.
The 1080P FullHD display of Zenfone Deluxe provides vivid and sharp images, which is great for watching movies or photos. The viewing angles are pretty amazing, and bluelight filter feature in the ZenUI, makes it easy on the eyes if you want to use this smartphone in darker room.
The Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 keeps your device scratch free, and the IPS display produces high quality visuals from any viewing angles. And with the response time of merely 60 ms, you would be stunned with responsiveness of this smartphone. The capacitive buttons are also equally responsive and volume rockers at the back side offer great feedback.
Thanks to this Zenfone exclusive design of volume rockers, both of the sides of this smartphone are port-free. You get power button and 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, and microUSB charging port on the bottom.
Well designed back cover, high quality polycarbonate body, and metallic housing on the front side on top and bottom, makes Zenfone Deluxe an appealing smartphone.
Performance & Multi tasking, Benchmarks
Powered by 64-bit 2.3GHz Super Quad-Core Intel® Atom™ Z3580 processor, Zenfone 2 Deluxe is the world’s first smartphone with 4GB of dual-channel DDR3 RAM. And with the help of 6430 PowerVR 533MHz graphics core, you can use device to play games on or watch extremely high-resolution pictures or videos.
The UI does not slow down even when you have more than 30 apps running in the background, and you can even multi-task with heavy games. This shows the true ability of Zenfone 2 Deluxe, in terms of the performance.
The Geekbench 3 benchmark resulted in the score of 883 for single core and 2773 in multi-core tests, which suggests it’s a faster smartphone than Nexus 10, and a little bit slower than Samsung Galaxy S 5.
The Zenfone 2 Deluxe scored 42397 in AnTuTu Benchmarks, which is just below the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, or the original Asus Zenfone 2. And as you can see the performance for 3D graphics and heavy effects are running seamless on this smartphone.
The out of the box Android L experience is improved with ZenUI, which brings loads of features of big screen devices, and doesn’t slow down the device at all. Most important of all are – One hand use, Boost Memory, Glow Touch & Auto-start manager, that lets you close down startup programs same as that of in the PC.
ZenUI also enabled you to choose from number of themes, fonts collections and wallpapers to choose from, and these feature being in-built saves a lot of time and storage space that you need for customization.
Browsing
Just like other Zenfone devices, the browser on Deluxe performed extremely well, handling effects like pinch-to-zoom & kinetic scrolling quite easily. The performance remained consistent even with multiple apps running in the background and for multiple browser tabs as well.
Apart from this, Zenfone 2 Deluxe comes with the LTE Category 4+ for download speeds up to 250Mbit/s, a technology which is rare to find so far in India, but it indeed makes your device future ready. So overall, a great smartphone for frequent browsing.
Gaming
Like I said before, the addition of 6430 PowerVR 533MHz GPU has made this phone one of the best contender for smartphone gaming. The bigger display not only makes it easy to enjoy graphics in Full HD, but the prolonged gaming sessions were well worth it. With the multiplayer games like Bomb Squad, or Single player campaigns like Tiny Troopers, we experienced no hiccups in the performance of Zenfone 2 Deluxe.
The FPS was consistent for over the 2 hour-long gaming session with friends, and there was hardly a moderate heating on the backside, which is pretty common in smartphones of this capacity.
Apart from gaming, the big Full HD display and full-size speaker on the curved surface delivers great quality audio and video, if you are planning to watch movies on Zenfone 2 Deluxe.
Camera
The 13MP PixelMaster camera with its f/2.0-aperture lens captures stunning, high-resolution smartphone photos, which looks quite amazing in moderate lighting. It does take decent low light photographs, and following are some of the pictures I managed to get with Zenfone 2 deluxe. The low light photography produces a decent images even in the darkest environment.
Check out some of the photos captured with Zenfone 2.
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The 5P Largan Lenses, Dual-LED tone flash and blueglass filter makes it a complete package in terms of lens and camera, but the software features like Super Resolution mode allows you to capture highly detailed photos of resolutions up to 52 Megapixels.
Even the front camera comes with the 85 degrees of wide-angle, 5 MP resolution & f/2.0 aperture, which is more than enough to take high quality selfies. So with the perfect camera variety and options , Zenfone 2 Deluxe makes a great device for photography enthusiasts.
You can also check out Our Zenflash review, which is world’s first Xenon fash for Zenfone 2 smartphones.
Battery Life & Fast Charging Features
Within just 39 minutes, Zenfone 2 Deluxe gets 60% of battery life with the Asus’s proprietary Boostmaster technology. The 3000 mAh battery easily lasts for full day of consistent usage.
The 10 minutes of fast charging gives you 4 hours of 2G talktime & 2.7 hours of 3G talktime, which is possible with 200% fast charging Asus Boost Master Technology.
Our Verdict
With 64 GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM, Latest 4G LTE, Wi Fi, Bluetooth and NFC features, Zenfone Deluxe is a totally worth smartphone not just about features or looks, but in terms of performance as well. With the fastest connectivity options, superior display, flawless performance & creative physical design, Zenfone 2 deluxe justifies the price tag of Rs. 22,999.
If you are looking forward to buy a future-proof flagship smartphones with most features out there, look no further than Zenfone 2 Deluxe.