REVIEW: Asus ROG Phone 5

The Asus ROG 5 is the best gaming smartphone you can buy with design features and software perks that augment the playing experience. Incremental improvements on its predecessor make it a superior choice that make the phone appealing to non-gamers as well, from its good screen to great speakers to unseen internal refinements that let its 65W fast charging juice the phone from zero to almost full in under an hour.

REVIEW

Source: Future

The Asus ROG 5 is one of, if not the, best gaming phones out there. But it’s also one of the best phones for enjoying any type of media given its great display, extensive battery life and charging speed, and excellent speakers. There are some upgrades on its already-powerful predecessor - and they even found a way to get a 3.5mm jack back in.

The phone’s few shortcomings, like its limited camera suite, haven’t been radically improved to come to parity with standouts like the Samsung Galaxy S21 range. But they get fewer and fewer with every new ROG phone, and the Asus ROG Phone 5 has managed some quality-of-life advantages over other Android phones to the point that it’s competitive with non-gaming smartphones - so long as you don’t need the best camera smartphones.

PRICE AND RELEASE DATE

Source:Future

The Asus ROG 5 was announced on March 10, 2021, with staggered availability for its three models. The standard version will start being available later in March, the Asus ROG 5 Pro will go on sale in April, and the Asus ROG 5 Ultimate will be available in May - but only in limited numbers. While availability for all models may vary by region, the Ultimate will be sold everywhere, but will be in short supply.

A quick note on naming: yes, the Asus ROG 5 is the direct successor to the Asus ROG 3 released in 2020. The company decided to skip ‘ROG 4’ given some cultures’ reticence to the number four.

The Asus ROG 5 standard price starts at €799 (around $950 / £684 / AU$1,233) for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, €899 (around $1,069 / £769 / AU$1,367) for 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, and €999 (around $1,188 / £855 / AU$1,541) for 16GB RAM and 256GB storage. 

The Asus ROG 5 Pro will cost €1,199 (around $1,426 / £1,027 / AU$1,849) for 16GB RAM and 512GB storage, putting it around the same price as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The Asus ROG 5 Ultimate’s price tag will be €1,299 (around $1,545 / £1,112 / AU$2,004) for 18GB RAM and 512GB storage.

The Asus ROG 5 comes in TK colors. The Asus ROG 5 Pro comes in a single black hue with its programmable OLED screen on the back cover. The Asus ROG 5 Ultimate has its own white color with blue accents and monochrome OLED screen. 

SPECIFICATIONS

Source: THE VERGE

The Asus ROG 5 packs top-tier specs and gets top-tier performance, making it competitive with 2021’s best smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S21 range in terms of sheer muscle. Whatever we put the phone through, from switching apps to browsing the web to watching media to playing games for long sessions.

The one variable between the different Asus ROG 5 versions is RAM and storage: the standard version starts at 8GB of RAM but you can get it in 12GB and 16GB configurations, all in the latest LPDDR5/UFS 3.1. We should be clear that Asus sent us the 16GB RAM version, and it hummed through everything - which is to be expected when paired with its powerful processor. 

But given the configuration with the top RAM selection for the standard ROG phone is about the same price as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus, our current best smartphone, this is a competitive set of specs that gets results: the ROG 5 with 16GB of RAM achieved a multi-core Geekbench 5 score of 3732, handily beating the S21 Plus with 8GB of RAM’s 3170 score. 

The ROG 5 starts with 128GB of storage, which is a baseline for most 2021 Android phones, but can be expanded to 256GB - but despite the brightly-colored SIM tray on the bottom of the right side of the phone, there is no expandable storage via microSD. The ROG 5 Pro has 512GB of storage, as does the ROG 5 Ultimate.

The Asus ROG 5 runs Android 11 out of the box, with the usual – but still appreciably minimal – Zen UI overlay that’s attractive and simple. and includes the Armoury Crate gaming software out of the box along with ROG’s particular gamer-chic wallpapers that rev into action when X-Mode is activated. The phone is 5G-capable, but only sub-6 frequencies – there’s no mmWave connectivity.

ROG 5 vs ROG 5 Pro vs ROG 5 Ultimate

By and large, the Pro and Ultimate versions don’t have much over the standard Asus ROG 5 aside from better specs and a couple design changes. If you want the best mobile gaming experience, you’ll need to pay for the pricier versions of the phone.
Specs-wise, the standard ROG 5 caps out at 16 RAM and 256GB storage. The Asus ROG 5 Pro comes in one configuration: 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. For the best specs in this generation, the Asus ROG 5 Ultimate has 18GB of RAM and 512GB storage. None of them can upgrade their physical storage, as there is no microSD slot.
 
Design-wise, both of the pricier versions ditch the plastic rear cover for a classier glass back, and also drop the RGB panel for a small (around 1 inch) OLED screen that can display a customizable message or logo.

 The Pro and Ultimate have one more thing the standard version doesn’t: a pair of touch sensor strips on the back of the phone that operate like extra buttons. They’re long yet narrow, and honestly much more difficult to hit reliably than the ultrasonic shoulder buttons. They’re reachable with your ring or pinky fingers, just subtle to the touch, with little width or texture to guide your fingers. 

But otherwise, all three phones are identical: same display, same Snapdragon 888 chipset and Adreno 660 GPU, same 6,000mAh battery and 65W charger in the box. 
The differences in RAM do affect the phones’ benchmarks, but as for performance, we can only compare the standard ROG 5 we tested with 16GB RAM and the ROG 5 Ultimate with 18GB of RAM (we were not sent the ROG 5 Pro for review). Predictably, they performed nearly identically, though the standard version curiously performed better on a multi-core Geekbench 5 benchmark: 3732 for the ROG 5 standard versus 3678 for the ROG 5 Ultimate. At this level of RAM, 2GB is apparently negligible.

IF YOU WANT OR LIKE SOMETHING OF THIS BUY IT...

1. If you want the best gaming phone
2. If you like watching media on your phone
3. If you loathe running out of battery life

IF YOU  WANT SOMETHING OF THIS DON'T BUY IT...

1. If you want a superior camera phone
2. If you want a cheaper mobile gaming experience
3. If you want a classier-looking phone