Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Asus has become something of a household name over the past couple of decade via their entries in the laptop, tablet and other electronic peripheral markets. What not everyone knows is that they have also made a substantial effort in the past few years to become a player in the cell phone market. And, as you might guess, since not everyone knows that, they haven't been exactly super burning up the sales charts in the US in that area. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth your consideration, if you are one of those people willing to look beyond Apple and Samsung. Earlier this year, Asus introduced a new line of phones the Asus ZenFone 2. These were nice, carrier unlocked, relatively inexpensive phones that offered pretty good functionalty. They didn't have the best cameras on the market, or the best performance. But the phone reception on the phones is very good, and as long as you aren't pushing them too hard, they're attractive lower cost options. One of the features that differentiated those earlier generation ZenFone 2 models is that they featured (relatively expensive) Intel processors, giving them a bit of a performance boost, but making those phones a bit like lone wolves in an ecosystem where Qualcomm Snapdragon processors rule, which, among other things, adds to the support costs for phone manufacturers who want to ensure every new Android update lands on their phone line. So it's probably not a surprise that for their new iteration of the ZenFone, the Asus ZenFone 2 Laser, Asus has moved over to the Qualcomm platform. Beyond the change in processor, the main new feature of this iteration of ZenFones is that Asus has added laser assisted focusing technology to the (13 megapixel) rear-facing camera. On top of that, the specs of this particular phone are pretty solid: An upper-midline Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor (MSM8930) with associated Adreno 405 GPU. A full HD resolution (1080x1920) 5.5" screen. A larger-sized 3000mAh battery. A generous 3Gb of RAM and 32Gb of storage. Two sim card slots (you can have two phone numbers with this single phone--although few people use that feature). A second, 5 megapixel, front facing camera. And a micro-sd slot to add storage. The phone comes carrier unlocked and is supported on all GSM networks (so in North America that would mean AT&T, T-Mobile and Rogers (in Canada), plus the third party carriers who use those networks). In the box you get the phone, a USB cable, and a charge. You do NOT get a pair of headphones (honestly, given the quality of the included headphones with most phones, not a loss). Any Android compatible headphones will work with this. Enough about specs and features. How good is this phone? First off, the operating system. The phone comes with Android 5 (Lollipop). That's the good news. On the not as good side of things, to that Asus has added a bunch of (IMHO) unnecessary software on top, which they call the ZenUI. I mean, the added launcher and other software isn't terrible. But I don't think it adds much to the vanilla Android 5 experience and does add more software to slightly slow down your phone and possibly cause issues down the road. That said, one feature of the ZenUI I do like is that it automatically separates your apps into folders based on their category of function. (Photo apps, games, etc.). I do this by hand on my other phones with more vanilla Android interfaces, so having it done automatically (assuming you're OK with the categorization) is not a bad thing. As for responsiveness, I found the phone pretty fast. With about 15 apps opened, including Google Maps, three different browsers, a third party messaging app (Pinger), and a few other things, I was still able to open and play a low-stress game (Angry Birds) without any issue. Everything worked as it should and I could switch between apps and browsers without issue. Responsiveness of the browers remained good and fluid. I wouldn't say the phone was MORE responsive than other mid/high end recent phones. But it was quite satisfactory. In terms of ergonomics of the external buttons, the phone is...odd. The power button is on the top of the phone, not on the side where it's located on just about every other smartphone on the planet. I found that the position of the power button was very inconvenient for one handed operation. This might have been a deal breaker except for the fact that you can also do the equivalent of a power button push by double tapping the screen. While it took a little while to get used to that, once I did, I found that a wholly acceptable alternative to the physical power button. (You still need to use the physical power button to get to the Power Off menu, but I don't typically need to do that with one hand). The volume buttons are also oddly located: On the back of the phone, near the camera, not on the side. Almost immediately, I found this position for the volume buttons to actually be preferable to where you typically find that. They feel very comfortable there. I was worried whether the buttons would be more prone to pushing when the phone was in my pocket, but I didn't find that to be a problem. The screen is bright and clear, as you'd expect for a full HD screen. It didn't seem that the images were quite as vibrant as on some of the top end phones I've used, but certainly it's good enough. Battery life was very good, as would be expected for phone with a larger battery like this one. For an average user, you should have no problem getting through a full day without recharging. In my preliminary testing, I had 35% of the battery left after a full day of power use. A non-typical test of playing video continuously (720p video) until a fully charged battery died gave about 11 hours of play time (with screen at about 70% brightness). The combination of the fairly hefty battery along with the conservative processor and screen shows its power here. On top of the pretty great battery life, the battery is easily replaceable on this phone (snap off the back, change battery). In a world where more and more phones have gone to non-removable batteries, that's certainly a nice feature! The phone, in terms of capability as, you know, a phone, worked quite well. It seemed to be able to pull in a stronger signal in the same place as an iPhone 6--although comparisons based on "reception bar" readout are always suspect. Callers told me I sounded very clear, both in standard and speaker phone mode. The built in speaker is clear, precise, and reasonably loud. Finally, there's the camera. (You were wondering if I'd forgotten?) That's supposed to be the special allure of this phone, because the "laser assisted focusing" is supposed to allow the camera to focus more quickly and accurately, especially in low light. This is a relatively rare feature on camera phones, available only on a few other phones like the LG G3 (The laser assisted focusing sends out a beam that makes it possible for the phone to quickly and accurately focus even in low light. Most phone cameras auto focus by maximizing contrast/phase in the image, and this tends to start to fail in low light). And I did, indeed, find that the camera focused quickly and reliably on objects that were near to the camera. I have no reservations in asserting that in terms of auto-focusing, the camera in this phone works more reliably than any other mid-line phone camera I've ever used, and arguably better than the top end cameras in phones like the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy S6. That's the good news. The bad news? Well, outside of the focusing, the image quality from this camera is pretty average. Photos tended to be somewhat soft. Also, the laser focusing only works well for objects that are close to the phone. If you try to take a photo of something far from the phone, the laser assist has little effect (and in fact the camera automatically reverts to standard contrast based focusing). Finally, while the camera did reliably focus even in low light, the quality of low light images wasn't particularly impressive--images tended to be grainy. This isn't a surprise, but the quality of the (admitedly focused) images wasn't as good as you could get with the very best camera phones. Then again, let's remember this is a relatively inexpensive no-contract unlocked phone. On the whole, I found this phone to offer quite a bit to like for the price. No, it's not a competitor for the top end of the current generation if things like having the very best camera or playing the most demanding games are important. But it has an acceptable camera, a decent processor, a decent screen, good battery life, a replaceable battery (!), two sim slots and micro-sd expansion. A phone like this would have been amazing a few years ago, and it's still a good phone now. It's worth considering that in terms of processor, GPU, screen size, and battery, this phone is very similar to the new highly hyped Moto X Play. It adds laser focusing but has an arguably slightly inferior camera, the Asus has 1Gb more RAM than the Moto X Play (3Gb versus 2Gb), and the Asus has a somewhat smaller battery (but both phones have large enough batteries for full day use). Depending on what you think is important and your budget (and current pricing when you're looking) comparing these two phones would be a great place to start.