With design elements and software benefits that enhance the gaming experience, the ASUS ROG phone 5 is the greatest gaming smartphone available. From its excellent screen and speakers to its hidden internal changes that enable its 65W fast charging to charge the phone from empty to nearly full in less than an hour, it is a better option than its predecessor, which makes it appealing to non-gamers as well. If you don’t mind its few drawbacks, the ROG 5 is a good substitute for high-end Android phones, even though it’s still a costly device with noticeable camera shortcomings when compared to competitor flagships.
ASUS ROG phone 5 Reviews
One of the greatest gaming phones available is the Asus ROG 5. But with its fantastic display, long battery life, quick charging, and top-notch speakers, it’s also among the greatest phones for watching any kind of media. In addition to various improvements over its very potent predecessor, they managed to reinstall a 3.5mm jack.
The phone’s limited camera suite is one of its few drawbacks, and it hasn’t been significantly enhanced to match flagship models like the Samsung Galaxy S21 line. However, they are becoming less and less common with each new ROG phone. The Asus ROG Phone 5 has managed to outperform other Android phones in terms of quality of life to the point where it can compete with smartphones that aren’t used for gaming, provided that you don’t want the greatest cameras.
By reducing the “gamer chic” angled plastic found in the original ROG phones to more subdued lines racing across the back cover of the ROG 5, Asus has also achieved a pleasing balance in the phones’ visual appearance.
ASUS ROG phone 5 Design
The Asus ROG Phone 5 is a black rectangle (or white if you get the Ultimate version) with buttons and connectors in the same locations as its predecessor, the ROG 3. Of course, there are a few upgrades. For example, the RGB-lit ROG icon on the back cover is now filtered via blocks to appear 8-bit, but the most are less obvious.
Capacitive touch buttons that function as shoulder buttons are located on the right side’s extreme top and bottom borders, together with a volume button rocker situated above the power button. The USB-C port, which has been a feature of the ROG series since its creation, is located on the left side. However, this time, a capacitive strip is used to connect to accessories in place of another cable port. Additionally, it is shallower than a port, which facilitates the removal of the rubber plug that keeps sand and dust out.
ASUS ROG phone 5 Display
Sharp images and brilliant colors can be seen on the 6.78-inch Full HD Plus (2440 x 1080) AMOLED display of the Asus ROG 5, which is certified HDR10+. In an elegant attempt to prevent a notch, the front-facing camera is housed in a thin black bar.
The only criticism we could make was that images became blurry in areas of extreme darkness or deep shade. Other than that, the image is clear. Naturally, phones with higher resolution screens—such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus’s WQHD Plus (3200 x 1440) screen—produce sharper images than the ROG 5’s Full HD Plus display. All things considered, the ROG 5’s display is on par with, if not better than, almost any other flagship smartphone available (the iPhone 12 Pro has a little advantage in clarity and color balance).
The main advantage for gamers is, of course, the 144Hz refresh rate, which makes playing games that support higher frames-per-second rates more smoother and makes internet browsing more fluid than with standard 60Hz screens.
With a touch sampling rate of 300Hz, the screen reacts to finger presses much more quickly than most phones—the Samsung Galaxy S21’s screen, for example, samples at 240Hz.
ASUS ROG phone 5 Camera
Although it lacks a telephoto lens for zoom photography, the Asus ROG Phone 5 has a respectable selection of cameras for its price range. Although its high-megapixel primary lens may capture fine enough photos for crop-zooming, it cannot substitute the type of magnification seen in the Samsung Galaxy S20 and S21, which come equipped with Space Zoom.
However, the Asus ROG 5’s triple rear cameras—a 64MP primary camera, a 13MP ultra-wide camera with a 125-degree field of view, and a 5MP macro lens—address recreational shooting. A 24MP front-facing camera is available and functions flawlessly.
Top-tier phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus and iPhone 12 Pro (the phones we tested against) significantly outperform the ROG 5 in terms of clarity and color spectrum when taking pictures in the daytime. Additionally, the Asus ROG 5 outperformed the iPhone 12 Pro at maximum (8x) zoom in daylight situations, creating photographs with less blur and a more realistic balance of light and shadow, even if the Samsung phone won overall in distant photography thanks to its Space Zoom.
Although its portrait mode isn’t quite as effective as that of top-tier flagships, the Asus ROG 5 can produce good depth of field effects and background blur. Although it works better in ambient light, the low-light performance is still decent. You might have to struggle to move the camera to change focus, for example, if you’re attempting to get depth-of-field.
Up to 8K video at 30 frames per second, 4K video at 60 frames per second (or 30 frames per second with the ultra-wide camera), 4K slow-motion video at 120 frames per second, and still photography during video recording are all possible with the ROG 5.
Hardware and Software
Although the ROG series of phones has made the rest of its equipment more consumer-friendly, its primary focus has always been gaming, and the ROG 5 is their best gaming phone to yet. Even though there was less competition in previous years, the new phone still boasts the best gaming hardware and software available.
If you are familiar with the Asus ROG 3, you will see that not much has changed. The phone still has a similar hardware and software setup. When the phone is turned sideways, the two ultrasonic buttons on the top and bottom of the right side transform into shoulder buttons. Compared to previous ROG phones, they are responsive and simpler to map to the game you’re playing. However, you’ll need to manually activate and position the activation area that the buttons trigger by pulling out the “Game Genie” overlay menu (swipe from the left).
Although there are additional options to personalize how your phone functions for each specific game, the Armoury Crate software remains mostly unaltered and still serves as a repository for all of your games. The performance-boosting X-Mode is back as well, but when it was turned on with the default settings, we didn’t witness a noticeable improvement in Geekbench 5 benchmark scores; rather, it seems to gain more from tweaking to optimize performance.
Additionally, the phone’s mid-gaming software now has new features: The mapping interface of Game Genie has been made more user-friendly, and to maintain fair play, a new esports mode has been added that turns off distracting notifications and any macro software—which you can set up in the Game Genie menu in-game, of course.
One accessory has undergone a significant change: the AeroActive Cooler 5 now features two physical buttons that work similarly to the pro console controllers’ underneath paddles. Although they are unique and deliciously clickable, they are difficult to reach, therefore they will function better for infrequent movements like crouching or jumping; preserve your shoulder buttons for the regularly required fire and reload motions.
Only games that support the Kunai 3 may use it, and in some of them, you’ll need to map each button to the appropriate on-screen location—a laborious but manageable procedure. Fortunately, for some games, like Dead Cells, this is done automatically. This is a huge plus because I could pick it up as simply as if I had just installed it onto my Nintendo Switch.
However, mapping buttons one at a time was tedious but not horrible for games like Call of Duty: Mobile. A dealbreaker for the Kunai was the inability to get the controller to reverse the Y-Axis for the right “look” joystick, as this reviewer prefers to do. Fortunately, most gamers aren’t doomed to this peculiar gaming quirk.
It should come as no surprise that the Asus ROG 5 offers a better gaming experience than any other phone currently available on the market thanks to its beautiful display, powerful specs, game-assisting hardware and software, and decent battery life.
Specs and Performance
In terms of pure power, the Asus ROG 5 can compete with the top smartphones of 2021, such as the Samsung Galaxy S21 line, thanks to its top-tier specifications and performance. We use the phone for everything from app switching to online surfing, media viewing, and prolonged gaming.
RAM and storage are the only differences between the various Asus ROG 5 models. The base model has 8GB of RAM, but it is also available in 12GB and 16GB configurations, all running the most recent LPDDR5/UFS 3.1. It should be noted that Asus supplied us the 16GB RAM version, and as might be expected given its potent processor, it hummed through everything.
The ROG 5 with 16GB of RAM earned a multi-core Geekbench 5 score of 3732, easily surpassing the S21 Plus with 8GB of RAM’s 3170 score. However, considering the configuration with the best RAM selection for the standard ROG phone is roughly the same price as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus, our current best smartphone, this is a competitive set of specs that get results.
Although the ROG 5 has a brilliantly colored SIM slot on the bottom right side of the phone, it lacks microSD expandable storage. The ROG 5’s 128GB of storage is the standard for most 2021 Android phones, but it can be increased to 256GB. Both the ROG 5 Pro and the ROG 5 Ultimate have 512GB of storage.
Running Android 11 out of the box, the Asus ROG 5 has the standard Zen UI overlay, which is simple and visually appealing but still very basic. and comes with ROG’s unique gamer-chic wallpapers that come to life when X-Mode is engaged, as well as the Armoury Crate gaming software right out of the box. The phone has 5G capability, but it can only use sub-6 frequencies; mmWave communication is not available.
ASUS ROG phone 5 Battery life
Although the battery in the Asus ROG 5 has been fundamentally changed to improve charging performance, it still has the same 6,000mAh capacity as the battery in its predecessor. The ROG 5 has two 3,000mAh batteries on either side of the central CPU instead of a single 6,000mAh unit.
This allows the phone to recharge more quickly because both batteries charge simultaneously, and according to Asus, the 65W in-box charger can recharge more than two-thirds (4400mAh) of the battery in 30 minutes.
According to Asus, dividing the CPU also lowers heat production, resulting in a 46% reduction in temperature while the battery is fully charged. Additionally, the phone remained rather cold throughout casual play sessions, such as 20 minutes of Call of Duty: Mobile battles; the only thing that warmed up after the session was the metal frame.
Slow charging, a useful feature that Asus first included with the Asus ROG 3, is back. You can make your battery charge up more slowly, as if you were plugging it in overnight, rather than using the highest charging speed to wear it down more quickly. That 65W charger isn’t just for show if you want to recharge your phone as quickly as possible. We started with 6% battery life and quickly reached 75% in 30 minutes, rounded to 90% in 45 minutes, and had a full charge shortly after.
A new function called planned charging allows you to set a wake-up time if you plan to charge your phone overnight. If the phone is plugged in, the charging will begin to top off at the time you specify. It makes a lot of sense and enables people who are worried about how long their battery will last to reduce the number of needless charging cycles. If you don’t want the phone to charge all the way up, you may also set a cap of 80% or 90%.
Another option is bypass charging, which lets you to connect your phone in to power your gaming sessions without having to recharge the mAh. Why? This is a good option to have in order to prevent the ROG 5 from overheating, especially because it may already be warm after extended gaming sessions.
Additionally, there is a new ultra-durable battery mode that aims to conserve as much power as possible without compromising phone functionality, mostly by reducing the phone’s performance. The mode reduces the CPU and GPU clock speeds, lowers the refresh rate of the display to 60 Hz, reduces touch input, and limits background processes. It’s only the necessities to prolong the battery’s life.