Asus ZenFone 3 Zoom - Review 2022

Editors' Note: This review has been updated to reflect changes to the ZenFone 3 Zoom's software since we reviewed it in May 2022. Nosotros've raised its score from 3.5 to four stars.

Better battery life is a spec nigh manufacturers ignore in the quest for thinner, lighter phones, but Asus is listening. The unlocked ZenFone three Zoom ($329) packs a massive 5,000mAh jail cell into an attractive metallic body, for some of the best bombardment life we've tested. You also become solid performance, dual cameras with 2.3X optical zoom, and a host of unique features and customization options. It'south an attractive option for the price, particularly if you're focused on bombardment life, but Motorola's Moto G5 Plus remains our Editors' Selection award for its simpler software feel and compatibility with all major The states carriers.

Design, Display, and Features

The Zoom is proof that phones with large batteries needn't exist bricks. Measuring 6.ane by three.0 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and 6.0 ounces, the Zoom is slightly smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus (6.two past 3.1 by 0.3 inches, 6.6 ounces) and only a bit bigger than the Moto G5 Plus (5.nine by 2.9 past 0.three inches, 5.5 ounces). That'southward a pretty impressive feat, considering the Zoom's battery is near twice as large every bit the ones in either of those devices.

The phone has a sleek metal body available in black (pictured hither), gold, and silvery. The right side has a volume rocker and power button. The lesser features a 3.5mm 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 lot can also apply two SIM cards instead, simply simply ane volition connect to a 4G network.

On the back you'll find the dual-camera setup with a light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation autofocus sensor and dual-LED wink. A square fingerprint sensor below can be enabled for functions similar tapping twice to quick launch the camera app, acting as the shutter key, and answering phone calls.

The Zoom has a 5.5-inch, 1,920-past-ane,080 AMOLED brandish clad in Gorilla Glass v. The resolution works out to a crisp 401 pixels per inch, matching the G5 Plus. The panel is rich and saturated out of the box, though you besides accept the ability to tweak color temperatures to your preference. The AMOLED panel not merely provides inky blacks, but saves power past lighting pixels just as needed. Viewing angles are corking, and using the phone outdoors is no problem, every bit it reaches upwardly to 500 nits of brightness at maximum.

Network Performance, Connectivity, and Audio

The Zoom is available unlocked and supports GSM (850, 1800, 1900MHz), WCDMA (ane/two/4/v/8), and LTE bands (1/two/3/4/5/7/eight/17/28). That means you can but employ 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 throughout our testing in midtown Manhattan, showing a elevation download speed of eleven.4Mbps on T-Mobile'due south network.

Other connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz band and Bluetooth 4.2. There'southward no NFC, which isn't unusual for this price range.

Phone call quality is solid. Transmissions are clearly audible and have trivial to no garbling, though voices can audio a fleck robotic. Noise cancellation is good at blotting out background noise, and with the loud earpiece volume, you shouldn't have trouble carrying on a chat in a noisy surroundings. VoLTE is supported, Wi-Fi calling isn't.

See How Nosotros Test Prison cell Phones

Audio quality is also solid. Like to the ZTE Axon 7, the Zoom supports loftier-resolution 24-bit sound playback through the headphone jack. Using a feature chosen Sound Sorcerer you can adjust music using the born blaster and use DTS Headphone:X virtual surround sound for movies, music, and games. Listening with a pair of high-allegiance Auros earphones, I was able to detect a significant improvement in clarity and sound quality compared with phones that don't have the same enhancements. Bass-heavy metal came through peculiarly well, with more conspicuously defined lyrics, less distortion, and a warmer sound. Virtual surround sound is subpar at all-time, notwithstanding, actually worsening audio quality past narrowing the sound field.

The bottom-firing mono speaker has an NXP Smart Amp. Aside from getting quite loud, I couldn't find a deviation between information technology and other downward-facing speakers. It'due south no lucifer for the thunderous front-facing speakers on the Axon 7.

Processor and Bombardment

The Zoom is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor clocked at 2.0GHz. Information technology's a capable midrange chipset, scoring 62,504 on the AnTuTu benchmark, which measures overall system performance. That'south 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 7 (141,989) has a much more powerful Snapdragon 820 processor, but information technology's besides more expensive.

In terms of existent-world functioning, the ZenFone 3 Zoom is smooth. Its 3GB of RAM is enough that multitasking isn't a problem, and I never encountered any lag or stuttering. The phone too had no trouble handling high-end games like GTA: San Andreas.

Asus has packed the Zoom to the skirt with software enhancements to ameliorate performance. The nigh notable is Power & Heave, accessible through the notification shade. It's a retentivity managing director that cleans up background apps when the screen is off, and can stop apps from automatically starting when you turn the telephone on.

The Zoom also has phenomenal bombardment life. It clocked 10 hours, 30 minutes in our rundown test, in which we stream total-screen video over LTE at maximum effulgence. That outclasses all its competitors including the G5 Plus (seven hours, 35 minutes), the Axon 7 (half dozen hours), and the Accolade 6X (5 hours, 35 minutes). The simply phone that comes shut is the OnePlus 3T, at 10 hours. With boilerplate use, you can easily go two to three days without having to recharge. If in that location'south one downside to the massive bombardment, it'south that even with fast charging information technology'll still take a few hours to charge the Zoom.

Camera

Dual-photographic camera phones are becoming increasingly more common, offering features similar wide-bending shots in the instance of the LG G6, bokeh on the Accolade 6X, and telephoto zoom on the iPhone vii Plus. With the Zoom you get a pair of rear-facing f/ane.vii 12-megapixel shooters capable of two.3x optical zoom, slightly college than the 2x zoom on the 7 Plus. It also has a laser autofocus sensor, a dual-LED flash, and Dual Pixel Phase Detection Autofocus.

In adept lite the telephone takes well-baked, detailed shots. Autofocus locks on quickly and noise is fairly minimal. Color reproduction is accurate, though maybe a lilliputian irksome if you prefer 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 2.3x optical zoom, which allows 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 images below, though overall quality isn't up to par with the iPhone vii Plus—some of the pictures I shot on a cloudy day were a scrap dirty.

Despite claims from Asus that the telephone has 2.v times the light sensitivity of the iPhone 7 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 amend performance and a recent update has added an selection for you lot to save pictures in RAW mode.

The Zoom is capable of recording 4k video at 30fps, and 1080p at 60fps. There's no optical image stabilization, but the electronic prototype stabilization works adequately well and video quality is good. Still, in a few instances, the camera app refused to record in 4k, generating an error message. The problem didn't crop upwardly 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. At that place's a built-in Skin Brightening slider enabled past default that can brand your facial features look soft, but information technology's like shooting fish in a barrel to plow off if yous don't want to look like an airbrushed supermodel.

Software

The ZenFone three Zoom shipped running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, only has since been updated to Android 7.i.one Nougat. While I was initially lukewarm in my feelings about the software experience, this update significantly redesigns the UI and wipes out all the bloatware that previously bogged the phone downwards. Everything feels a lot more responsive, though it'southward still far from stock Android. There's an altered lock screen, notification shade, and settings carte, though you no longer go an overwhelming array of toggles and menus when you pull down the notification shade.

Other changes include Google Now and Google Banana being integrated in the ZenUI launcher, sparing yous from having to download extra apps. Other apps like Mobile Managing director and Car-Start Manager take been toned down so yous don't get spammed with invasive notifications. A home screen manager appears when yous swipe up from the app drawer. Information technology allows you to edit every aspect of the phone's appearance including icon size, alignment, curl furnishings, and font size. You can also download new themes, 3rd-party icon packs, and change blitheness speed.

Other useful settings include a call recorder baked into the Dialer app, Gloves fashion to increase screen sensitivity, Outdoor style to increment earpiece volume, Kids mode to restrict access to certain apps, more than apps compatible with Divide-screen style, and Easy way to launch a simplified UI. It's a overnice degree of customization to have built correct into the default launcher. You're left with 23.25GB out of 32GB of available storage, and y'all tin can add a microSD card if you need more than.

Conclusions

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

That said, the G5 Plus remains our Editors' Choice on the more than affordable end: It features like hardware and compatibility with every major US carrier. For $100 more, ZTE'south Axon 7 is nearly a twelvemonth old, but it too received a Nougat update with Daydream back up, putting it nearly on par with electric current flagship phones for about half the price.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/mobile-phones/15500/asus-zenfone-3-zoom

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