Nothing Like Everything: Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe : Review

Ever since the Zenfone 3 series launched in India, it has been since then they have come up in the top players in Indian smartphone market. Today we are going to discuss about one of their premium model in it Asus Zenfone Deluxe. Even after so long this is one the top performer in entire Zenfone 3 series. We have tested the basic version of Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe having 6GB RAM with Snapdragon 820 SOC on-board. Let’s have look at the different aspect of this device.

Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe Look and Feel:

The ZenFone 3 Deluxe grabs our attention is the invisible antenna design. For a unibody metal smartphone, this is quite an achievement considering most other flagships, other companies have visible antenna bands around the back. Asus seem to have found a way to solve problem without compromising on signal quality. You can still see bits of radio-friendly material embedded into the bezel.

The rounded sides and slightly curved back offer good ergonomics when you hold. But if you used to use 5 inches screen then this will be the bit troublesome for you. But instead of metallic unibody design, it feels really light too, and the matte finish on the back doesn’t attract fingerprints. There’s also Asus’s trademark at the bottom of the back side.

Asus has chosen 5.7-inch Super Amoled display panel with a full-HD resolution. With the respectable pixel count of 386ppi. We like the fact that the narrow bezels make this phone only slightly larger than a Google Pixel XL. Colours are nicely saturated and brightness is very good, even though it have Amoled display panel lowering the brightness still gives viable view with less light.

There’s a USB Type-C port at the bottom and a speaker grille beside it, while the 3.5mm audio socket is placed on the top. The Zenfone 3 Deluxe has a hybrid SIM slot (Micro + Nano) with 4G support. Around the back, there’s a slight bump for the camera, and a fingerprint sensor below camera module.

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe ships with a Quick Charge 3.0 compatible power adapter, Type-C cable, ZenEar headset, SIM ejector tool, and warranty information. Overall, the Zenfone 3 Deluxe is a stylish and very well-crafted smartphone.

Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe Specification and Performance:

Asus sent us the 64GB version, which is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 SoC and has 6GB of RAM. On the other hand, the 256GB version is powered by the higher Snapdragon 821 chip but the rest of the specifications and features are same the same. Other connectivity features include a dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, NFC, USB OTG and FM radio.

Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe perform well in benchmark test. For AnTuTu returned a score of 151,041. All the numbers point to very good performance, which is also reflected during actual usage.

On the software side, we have the familiar ZenUI 3.0 skin running on top of Android 7 Nougat. The software tweaks are similar to what we've already seen on the ZenFone 3 Ultra and the ZenFone 3 Max (Review). The bundled apps include Puffin, Truecaller, Amazon Kindle, SimCity and Need for Speed: No Limits. There are many of apps from Asus too, including PhotoCollage, MiniMovie, ZenCircle, etc, which you cannot uninstall if you don't need them.

On multimedia front The Zenfone 3 Deluxe handles multimedia playback very well. All full-HD and 4K video files played flawlessly. The Amoled display makes watching movies experience excellent, audio quality is especially good. There’s only one speaker but the sound is amplified so it’s much louder than your average smartphone. Asus’s provided their AudioWizard app that lets you tweak audio settings on a global level, but we were expecting Dolby digital sound that comes with Zenfone 3 Ultra.

Now we come to main and most important part of all camera. Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe packs a 23-megapixel rear camera sensor with four-axis OIS and electronic stabilisation. There’s also laser autofocus in addition with PDAF to help get faster locks on your subjects. Image quality is very good in daylight shots, resulting in detailed pictures and Colours are captured accurately and the sensor delivers a good depth of field effect in close-up shots. Even Auto mode works well for this device. Camera app along with Asus Pixel master technology provide wide range of modes to click your images viz. Night mode, low light, Super resolution, HRD mode, Manual and so on. The front camera does an excellent job of capturing detailed selfies even in indoor lighting. The quality of recorded video is very good, and the framerate is stable and no fame drops issues while recoding videos.

On the battery juice we can say is the only problem with this device. It have 3000 mAh of battery juice packed inside it, which will not last entire day. If you are average user then too you have to charge your device twice a day. Well Zenfone 3 Deluxe (ZS570KL) priced around 45000/- INR in Indian market.

Final Words:

Overall Zenfone 3 Deluxe one of the excellent performing device well as per used expectations. device have vivid display guarded with Gorilla Glass 4 with 5.7 inches screen with Full HD resolution having Amoled display panel. Camera also performs well in natural, artificial and even in low light. Autofocus speed of the device is also excellent. Capture good detailed pictures and videos having excellent media quality. Call quality is also good and hardly face any call drops during the usage. Have option to switch between 64 and 256 GB variant, can select one with your preference with change in price obviously. Overall device is good. Our rating for Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe: