1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,440 I am absolutely smitten with the ASUS Zenfone 10. 2 00:00:03,440 --> 00:00:07,160 It's small-ish, but it still has flagship performance, 3 00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:10,240 great battery life, and just a ton of amazing features 4 00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:13,280 that ASUS has actually added to it, which is why when I heard that they were making 5 00:00:13,280 --> 00:00:16,760 the Zenfone 11, I was excited until I found out 6 00:00:16,760 --> 00:00:20,020 that it was going to be the Zenfone 11 Ultra, 7 00:00:20,020 --> 00:00:26,960 and I found out that they went big mode. And alongside the size increase is a pretty radical departure 8 00:00:27,000 --> 00:00:30,600 from the two large camera lenses that we know, 9 00:00:30,600 --> 00:00:33,680 and I don't know, love, maybe? 10 00:00:33,680 --> 00:00:38,080 It's gone from their textured plastic back to a kind of smooth glass back, 11 00:00:38,080 --> 00:00:41,800 which honestly has a decent amount of grip in the hand, 12 00:00:41,800 --> 00:00:47,600 but nothing compared to this textured plastic back. It also still maintains an aluminum frame on the outside, 13 00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:52,000 though this time, it's recycled aluminum because they're going eco-friendly mode, 14 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:55,640 which is great, we love it. The phone has IP68 water resistance, 15 00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:59,840 and on the front has Gorilla Glass Victus II, durable, baby. 16 00:00:59,840 --> 00:01:04,520 I really liked this Zen Touch button that was featured on the side of the Zenfone 10. 17 00:01:04,520 --> 00:01:08,560 It ended up being your fingerprint reader, as well as like you could use it to swipe down notifications 18 00:01:08,560 --> 00:01:12,880 and stuff like that. It was a multi-purpose button, and I really enjoyed that feature. 19 00:01:12,880 --> 00:01:17,120 And now you have an underscreen fingerprint reader and just a normal lock button, 20 00:01:17,120 --> 00:01:21,720 which is a little bit of a downer, in my opinion. Hey, look at that, an included case. 21 00:01:21,720 --> 00:01:25,840 That's always a nice value add. I love looking at these cases. 22 00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:29,000 Look at the size of the, 23 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:32,320 look at the size for the camera bump. There was already a huge camera bump. 24 00:01:32,320 --> 00:01:37,400 You might notice that there's a crack in my camera lens here because it protrudes so much 25 00:01:37,400 --> 00:01:43,280 that it's one of the easiest parts to hit the ground when it falls. Elsewhere in the box, we have a charging cable, 26 00:01:43,280 --> 00:01:47,040 a USB-C to C, and they don't give you a wall plug, 27 00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:50,940 which is a bummer because it looks like there's space in the box for it. 28 00:01:50,940 --> 00:01:54,840 So while it stylistically is a departure from the Zenfone 10, 29 00:01:54,840 --> 00:01:59,120 of what it isn't very much a departure from is the ROG phone. 30 00:01:59,120 --> 00:02:03,360 It's basically the same. You can look around, you can see that there is 31 00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:09,400 the volume rocker, the lock button, the antenna band, the camera bumps, the camera layout, all the same. 32 00:02:09,400 --> 00:02:13,160 There are some things that they don't include like the extra USB-C port on the side, 33 00:02:13,160 --> 00:02:16,600 but the bottom, you can even see that you got the USB-C port 34 00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:20,360 and the headphone jack. Shout out to ASUS for keeping a headphone jack. 35 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:26,800 I love to see that. So basically they took the shell of the ROG phone 36 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:32,960 and made it a nicer phone, which is okay because the ROG phone 8 is a great phone. 37 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:36,080 I'm a gamer, but I don't like it to be like my entire personality. 38 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:40,240 So it's nice that you can kind of, you know, something that's presentable for like the parents 39 00:02:40,240 --> 00:02:44,720 or something like that. I personally think the ROG phone looks a little better 40 00:02:44,720 --> 00:02:49,960 just because it's got, feels a little bit more intentional. I think the camera bump placement on this is kind of ugly. 41 00:02:49,960 --> 00:02:54,440 And alongside that ugly camera bump, it also brought a lot of the specs of the ROG phone 8. 42 00:02:54,440 --> 00:02:59,920 The phone ships with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, a top-line processor that's like a massive improvement 43 00:02:59,920 --> 00:03:04,240 over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The Zenfone comes with up to 16 gigabytes of RAM 44 00:03:04,240 --> 00:03:07,380 and 512 gigabytes of storage. But if you live in the US, 45 00:03:07,380 --> 00:03:13,240 you only get the option of the 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage. 46 00:03:13,240 --> 00:03:17,680 Finally, a win for the non-US people. That feels pretty good. 47 00:03:17,720 --> 00:03:22,560 The screen is a 144 Hertz LTPO AMOLED display, 48 00:03:22,560 --> 00:03:26,440 which means that it can go all the way down to one Hertz if there's nothing on the screen 49 00:03:26,440 --> 00:03:30,080 that requires a rapid refresh rate. Now, speaking of rapid refresh rate, 50 00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:33,400 that 144 Hertz number is only available in games. 51 00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:37,800 When you're moving around the UI, it's just going to be at 120 Hertz. 52 00:03:37,800 --> 00:03:42,720 That high refresh rate screen is also huge, 6.7 inches. 53 00:03:42,720 --> 00:03:47,520 But apparently it's only a 1080 screen. It's 2400 by 1080. 54 00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:51,560 I can't really tell, but that means it's probably the same resolution as this. 55 00:03:51,560 --> 00:03:57,880 It looks pretty good to me. I really don't think that there's a reason to have 4K on your phone display. 56 00:03:57,880 --> 00:04:01,280 It's too small. It just is. You don't need the higher pixel density. 57 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,320 And if it increases battery life, that's great. Speaking of battery, 58 00:04:05,320 --> 00:04:08,560 the battery in this phone is 5,500 milliamp hours, 59 00:04:08,560 --> 00:04:13,240 which might not seem that big for this big of a phone, but it's just the same size as the one in the ROG Phone 8, 60 00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:16,780 which is a, who would have thought that that would happen? 61 00:04:16,780 --> 00:04:20,940 But the Zenfone 10 has a smaller battery and it has killer battery life. 62 00:04:20,940 --> 00:04:25,580 And according to the results from the lambs, this thing is a battery king. 63 00:04:25,580 --> 00:04:30,860 In our longevity tests, where we watch YouTube at 1080p at a brightness of 250 nits, 64 00:04:30,860 --> 00:04:35,860 the Zenfone Ultra got 22 hours and 11 minutes 65 00:04:36,060 --> 00:04:40,700 of screen on time, which is insane. In comparison, the Google Pixel 8 Pro 66 00:04:40,700 --> 00:04:45,340 gets just 14 hours and 11 minutes. The phone does support 65 watt fast charging, 67 00:04:45,340 --> 00:04:48,980 which obviously isn't the fastest compared to like the 100 watt chargers out there. 68 00:04:48,980 --> 00:04:52,020 Still pretty good, but they didn't include a charger in the box. 69 00:04:52,020 --> 00:04:55,860 So we tested our battery charging with a 30 watt charger. 70 00:04:55,860 --> 00:05:00,580 And in about half an hour, you'll see about 44% of your battery filled up 71 00:05:00,580 --> 00:05:05,780 with a 30 watt charger, which is still pretty good, especially if that means that you get around 10 hours 72 00:05:05,780 --> 00:05:10,380 of battery life remaining on the phone. The time for a full charge was around 75 minutes at 30 watts. 73 00:05:10,380 --> 00:05:14,580 So still pretty good. Let's take a look at the screen. And as you can see from the top down camera, 74 00:05:14,580 --> 00:05:18,260 this is a bright display. With the auto brightness on, 75 00:05:18,260 --> 00:05:23,260 the screen can go as high as 2483 nits. 76 00:05:23,420 --> 00:05:27,700 That'll only really happen outside with the sun shining on it, but that's crazy good. 77 00:05:27,700 --> 00:05:31,680 It makes it really, really easy to use outside. If you turn the auto brightness off 78 00:05:31,680 --> 00:05:36,900 and you just manually set it, the max you'll get is still a very high 1000 nits. 79 00:05:36,900 --> 00:05:40,980 Let's listen to the speakers. I mean, they're pretty loud. 80 00:05:44,740 --> 00:05:49,060 That's not bad. 81 00:05:49,060 --> 00:05:50,660 Those are pretty good speakers. 82 00:05:52,260 --> 00:05:56,300 They definitely do some processing to like make it sound even louder at the top. 83 00:05:56,300 --> 00:06:02,620 But with that, this kind of makes this like a bit of a media monster. If you got this great screen on it plus great speakers. 84 00:06:02,620 --> 00:06:06,460 Now the display might look good, but can you take good photos? 85 00:06:06,460 --> 00:06:09,780 The biggest weakness on the Zenfone 10 is probably its camera system. 86 00:06:09,780 --> 00:06:14,300 It takes photos and it takes them okay. 87 00:06:14,300 --> 00:06:17,300 I think ASUS's camera software is a little bit finicky 88 00:06:17,300 --> 00:06:23,340 and also they don't really have the great processing that you can find on pixels or Samsung phones. 89 00:06:23,340 --> 00:06:27,280 However, they have upgraded from two sensors to three. 90 00:06:27,280 --> 00:06:31,200 So now we have a 13 megapixel ultra wide camera, 91 00:06:31,200 --> 00:06:35,480 a telephoto that comes in at 32 megapixels 92 00:06:35,480 --> 00:06:39,680 and a main shooter that comes in at a whopping 50 megapixels. 93 00:06:39,680 --> 00:06:44,280 But obviously resolution doesn't matter if the phone can do stuff very well. 94 00:06:44,280 --> 00:06:50,620 I found that on the Zenfone 10 that the ultra wide was far worse of a camera 95 00:06:50,620 --> 00:06:54,000 than the main sensor. And just taking a quick look 96 00:06:54,000 --> 00:06:57,040 in what is pretty gnarly setting. I mean, just through the viewfinder, 97 00:06:57,040 --> 00:07:02,880 you can see that the ultra wide does not handle light nearly as well as that main sensor. 98 00:07:02,880 --> 00:07:07,040 And in this lighting, there's kind of a haze that comes over the telephoto lens. 99 00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:10,840 Is that like, I've never really seen that before. The telephoto doesn't have a crazy 100 00:07:10,840 --> 00:07:15,240 like 10 X zoom or anything like that. But in the camera app, you can go all the way up 101 00:07:15,240 --> 00:07:20,580 for a digital crop to 30 times zoom. And it looks grainy. 102 00:07:20,580 --> 00:07:25,360 And in terms of the camera processing, a lot of the colors kind of get mushed down 103 00:07:25,360 --> 00:07:29,460 and things kind of start to look synthetic because you lose a lot of these details. 104 00:07:29,460 --> 00:07:34,080 It looks competent and it's like good enough. But one thing I know from using my Zenfone 105 00:07:34,080 --> 00:07:39,280 is that I really would miss the quality that I got when I was using a pixel. 106 00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:43,640 Just switching over to the selfie camera, we have a 32 megapixel front sensor 107 00:07:43,640 --> 00:07:47,960 and it looks pretty good in this lighting. 108 00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:54,240 So on top of that, there's also a ton of AI features. Of course there's AI features because it's 2024. 109 00:07:54,240 --> 00:07:57,340 And if you don't have an AI feature, I mean, what are you? 110 00:07:57,340 --> 00:08:00,620 Oh, there's AI smart search for your photos. It's gonna use object recognition 111 00:08:00,620 --> 00:08:03,880 to search through your photos for you. Apparently you can also search for apps 112 00:08:03,880 --> 00:08:08,200 which again, doesn't sound like AI or you can deep and smart search for settings. 113 00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:12,480 Okay, the portrait video is an interesting feature. Basically, it's supposed to allow you 114 00:08:12,480 --> 00:08:16,820 to have like a depth of field effect where it'll focus on a certain face 115 00:08:16,820 --> 00:08:20,460 and then it'll do a processed blur all around it. 116 00:08:20,460 --> 00:08:24,600 They have a six axis gimbal for your video so you can get really steady motion 117 00:08:24,600 --> 00:08:28,760 and it works quite well. I'm gonna make sure that we have it set up here. 118 00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:31,900 The hyper steady will limit the resolutions that you can record at probably 119 00:08:31,900 --> 00:08:35,600 because it's going to be doing some sort of cropping at the edges so that you can get more balanced. 120 00:08:35,600 --> 00:08:39,780 So you aren't able to shoot at the 8K 24 frames per second that the phone is capable of. 121 00:08:39,800 --> 00:08:43,400 So I don't know why you're taking 8K video. It can also do 4K 60 on the video. 122 00:08:43,400 --> 00:08:46,760 Let's see how good it is. Let's see. It's pretty good. 123 00:08:46,760 --> 00:08:49,840 That's pretty stable. Let's take a look at the regular video quality 124 00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:53,440 which Lab specifically said was actually quite good. 125 00:08:53,440 --> 00:08:56,440 With the student normal stabilization. Just from the viewfinder things 126 00:08:56,440 --> 00:09:00,840 are actually looking quite good. Colors seem accurate. There's not a ton of noise 127 00:09:01,720 --> 00:09:05,880 when I look at the darker scenes. It seems like the mic is pretty sensitive to noise 128 00:09:05,880 --> 00:09:08,960 to like being bumped and stuff though. Maybe something to note. 129 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:13,540 But again, it's a competent camera. It would be interesting to see if installing GCam 130 00:09:13,540 --> 00:09:17,100 could maybe like give you an extra edge in terms of photo processing. 131 00:09:17,100 --> 00:09:21,700 But who knows? What I know is I want a game on this. 132 00:09:21,700 --> 00:09:25,380 Despite this not being an ROG phone you still get to take advantage 133 00:09:25,380 --> 00:09:29,460 of like the game genie features that are on the ROG phone 8 134 00:09:29,460 --> 00:09:34,220 which includes stuff like setting frame rate limits or increasing your overall performance 135 00:09:34,220 --> 00:09:38,540 like and not worrying about the heat. However, I think Lab saw from testing 136 00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:43,520 that if you let this thing go absolutely unhinged it gets really hot and it can be uncomfortable to hold. 137 00:09:43,520 --> 00:09:48,240 And honestly, apparently the performance holds pretty steady 138 00:09:48,240 --> 00:09:52,960 even at like not full tilt. You see you can adjust the refresh rate. 139 00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:56,400 Bunch of other stuff. You can do macros picture in picture 140 00:09:56,400 --> 00:10:01,160 if you want a video over top. You can speed up the systems optimized now boys. 141 00:10:01,160 --> 00:10:04,600 We're playing Genshin Impact on high settings. 142 00:10:04,600 --> 00:10:07,720 And it's not quite at the full resolution of the screen 143 00:10:07,740 --> 00:10:14,300 but it is definitely good enough. And we are seeing a pretty solid 60 FPS 144 00:10:14,300 --> 00:10:17,300 even in a busy scene like this castle town area. 145 00:10:17,300 --> 00:10:22,560 And Labs confirms that it plays well. Apparently it runs warmer than the ROG phone in most settings 146 00:10:22,560 --> 00:10:27,860 but you still get a pretty consistent near 60 FPS with 58 average frames per second 147 00:10:27,860 --> 00:10:31,780 in this specific area of the game on a 30 minute play session. 148 00:10:31,780 --> 00:10:34,940 The performance mode offered slightly higher frame rates at higher quality settings 149 00:10:34,940 --> 00:10:40,000 but the thermal management of the SOC would throttle the phone down to about 50% performance 150 00:10:40,000 --> 00:10:44,400 and it kind of made things worse. So they recommend that you keep it in dynamic mode 151 00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:47,800 as opposed to going for the performance mode which you can all control through the game genie. 152 00:10:47,800 --> 00:10:54,000 Zero complaints about gaming performance. It's just a solid chip set. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a heck of a chip. 153 00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:58,640 One thing that I find very frustrating about their software is that their display settings 154 00:10:58,640 --> 00:11:02,640 they have this thing called Splendid. Like what does any of this mean? 155 00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:05,800 Should my phone be an optimal, natural or standard? 156 00:11:05,820 --> 00:11:09,260 It's useless. The correct answer is that you want it at natural 157 00:11:09,260 --> 00:11:11,460 and you want to turn it a little bit warmer. 158 00:11:12,660 --> 00:11:15,700 That's enough of me griping. Nice things to have on here, Wi-Fi 7 159 00:11:15,700 --> 00:11:20,100 as well as they have like a dual band mode that's really sick. So you can get a really stable Wi-Fi connection on here. 160 00:11:20,100 --> 00:11:23,300 They also have Bluetooth 5.4 which means it supports a lot of the upcoming 161 00:11:23,300 --> 00:11:26,780 Bluetooth features like a Bluetooth low energy audio 162 00:11:26,780 --> 00:11:32,140 and the AuraCast stuff. So great for a future proof phone. 163 00:11:32,140 --> 00:11:37,040 The big thing about this phone is that it's nice, it's competent, it's capable. 164 00:11:37,040 --> 00:11:42,480 But outside of its battery life, it doesn't really excel where any large flagship phones don't. 165 00:11:42,480 --> 00:11:47,360 The cameras are not as good as the ones that you can find on iPhones or Pixels 166 00:11:47,360 --> 00:11:51,200 or Galaxy S, whatever the number is at now. 167 00:11:51,200 --> 00:11:54,440 The software experience is good. 168 00:11:54,440 --> 00:11:58,960 I'm a big fan of it, but is not say as gimmicky 169 00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:02,680 or as doesn't have the really cool features that Pixel can bring. 170 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:06,540 Another thing is that you get two major OS updates in four years of security updates, 171 00:12:06,540 --> 00:12:10,740 but that's not really great when competitors are offering a lot more. 172 00:12:10,740 --> 00:12:16,460 And the biggest killer feature for me, which was the size being so reasonable as has been gone. 173 00:12:16,460 --> 00:12:21,220 And now we have like another big phone. I guess if this is what ASUS needs to do 174 00:12:21,220 --> 00:12:25,620 to remain in the market and succeed in selling more phones, 175 00:12:25,620 --> 00:12:28,660 I guess that's good because I love a lot of what ASUS does 176 00:12:28,660 --> 00:12:33,500 with their phones and I love that there's more competition in the space, but like it's gonna suffer 177 00:12:33,500 --> 00:12:37,940 from the same flaws that this phone has and that like I can't find a good case for this 178 00:12:37,940 --> 00:12:43,140 or I cracked this lens and I can't find a replacement part for it. And I don't wanna have to like send it into ASUS 179 00:12:43,140 --> 00:12:47,180 to get it fixed. I would love to be able to just swap the lens out myself. 180 00:12:47,180 --> 00:12:50,420 And that's because it's a small volume phone. 181 00:12:50,420 --> 00:12:57,380 I just worry that this phone no longer has enough differentiation to make it worth buying over a OnePlus 182 00:12:57,380 --> 00:13:00,480 or a Pixel or an iPhone. 183 00:13:00,480 --> 00:13:04,380 And the price is $900 US dollars, which is like pretty high up there. 184 00:13:04,380 --> 00:13:09,020 I mean, this was not a cheap phone either, but again, that's a very, very competitive territory 185 00:13:09,020 --> 00:13:12,900 where you're seeing a lot of the best phones on the market sitting at. 186 00:13:12,900 --> 00:13:16,500 After using the phone, I am less disappointed than I thought I would be, 187 00:13:16,500 --> 00:13:22,440 but I still feel a little bit of a betrayal for ASUS leaving the small phone market. 188 00:13:22,440 --> 00:13:26,220 I'm hoping that because there's a suffix, maybe there will be a Zenfone 11 non-ultra 189 00:13:26,220 --> 00:13:30,660 that will be small and not sacrifice too many of the specs, 190 00:13:30,700 --> 00:13:37,060 but I'm not holding my breath and I'll keep holding on to this banger of a phone. 191 00:13:37,060 --> 00:13:40,940 I love you. And I love you for watching ShortCircuit. 192 00:13:40,940 --> 00:13:44,700 If you liked this video, why don't you check out Mr. Jake Belivance's video 193 00:13:44,700 --> 00:13:46,380 on the Zenfone 10?