Adding to their ZenFone lineup, Asus recently released their new mobile Asus ZenFone 3 Laser. It is an entry level phone and in this article we will try to find out if this phone stands out the competition in its price range.Adding to their ZenFone lineup, Asus recently released their new mobile Asus ZenFone 3 Laser. It is an entry level phone and in this article we will try to find out if this phone stands out the competition in its price range.
Design
ZenFone 3 Laser is constructed of aluminum body consisting of plastic tops and bottom caps. This aluminum gives this device a high quality in-hand feel. The curves around the edges are also nice which makes it easier to grip the device.
But still there are few things that are really annoying like the rear camera hump and also capacitive navigation keys which do not even illuminate.
One thing to notice is that it has a fingerprint reader which is placed below the camera but unlike traditional circular fingerprint readers it features rectangular cutout for the reader.
But for an entry level device the design seems pretty good.
Display
It consists of a 5.5 inch 1080P IPS display coated in Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The display seems to be fairly good. Color reproduction is great, viewing angles seemed pretty nice. But you might face some issues while using the phone out in the sun as maximum brightness is not that bright.
One more issue with display is of the black border around the display. It is not that thick but is not unnoticeable and don’t help it any way to look great.
Performance
It is powered by a Snapdragon 430 processor which is pretty basic, and that is what most of the times you are going to get in entry level devices.
But the benchmark scores don’t look that incredible. It houses a 2GB RAM which can be issue while performing multitasking.
Battery Life
It has a 3000mAh battery packed inside it which gave good results during our testing. When using the phone for more than twenty-four hours, the screen on time was more than four and half hours. While when we used the phone more heavily, we still achieved twelve hours of use with six and a half hours of screen on time.
Camera
It has a 13 MP camera with f/2.0 aperture which provides with average images. In good lightning condition the camera performs well, pictures taken are nice in good lightning condition. Dynamic range is decent most of the times and saturation level is good.
It consists of laser autofocus which do provide quick focus of objects. But when shooting in low light the performance drastically deteriorates. Oversharpening is an issue and noise appears in large amount. But in this budget you are not going to get something much greater than this.
Software
ASUS ZenFone 3 Laser runs ASUS’ ZenUI 3.0 skin over Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box. Well the software experience is not going to be the best and definitely there are devices out there providing better experience.
The interface feels outdated and design is not really that great. Number of ASUS banded apps is quite overwhelming but they all work fine.
Conclusion
The Asus ZenFone 3 Laser is a good phone, for $200 you are getting a premium design, excellent battery life. But still there are few drawbacks, camera performance is not that good, RAM provided is only 2GB and design is pretty outdated.
Also compared to its competing options it doesn’t really stand out. There are many options that can really stand out this device and also if you are willing to wait Moto G5 may be worth considering.