ZenFone 8 review: Asus' small but mighty phone is a winner

Are smartphones here to stay? A Soos is betting they will stick around with the new Zenfone 8. Its new mid range flagship billed as the ultimate compact Android phone. Hi everyone. I'm Serena and I've been using this phone, the Zenfone 8, which I assume is just launched for maybe a week now. So I'm going to do a review video on this and I'm going to start off. by covering the design then move on to display the camera battery and performance then wrap up with an overall summary on the device. [MUSIC] Now this phone should be releasing in Europe soon if it hasn't already and it will start at 599 euros. A us launch is Also in the cards but pricing there might vary from $599 to $799. So that price is not confirmed. Now for some housekeeping for those tuning into my videos for the first time. I'm, for the sake of transparency know that asuw sent me the Zenfone eight ahead of its official launch. But don't worry that won't affect my analysis or opinions on the phone compared to a Seuss's bold effort last year with Zenfone seven, the company went down a much safer path with the Zenfone eight. So don't expect to turn heads with this one. This year the camera bump does not flip the bump houses two cameras a flashlight and a microphone. Flip it around and you'll see a crisp 5.9 inch an OLED panel rounded off with a punch hole camera on the upper right. On the right side there's a volume rocker and a power button. That can be customized to access system features and apps. On the bottom, there's a dual SIM card slot a notification light, and on the top there is a headphone jack. With dimensions of 148, by 68.5, by 8.9 millimeters. The Zenfone eight is certainly small for today's phone standards, and it's probably one of the most compact 5g phones around. It's also lightweight weighing 169 grams, but it's still slightly heftier than the iPhone 12 Mini either way as someone who otherwise prefers to use a large phone. It was great to be able to talk the phone into my back pocket without it sticking out too much. Zenfone eight is slim and lightweight to weigh in just 169 grams. So one of the views was Comfortable at least for me. As Sue said the Zenfone eight is the most durable phone. it's built yet partly thanks to the Gorilla Glass victory shielding and ip 68 rating for water and dust resistance. Let's talk about the display now the Zenfone eight features a flat 5.92 inch OLED panel from Samsung Was visible in various lighting scenarios thanks in part to high peak brightness of 1100 nits. In addition Zenfone eight has full Quad HD plus resolution that's 2400 by 1080 pixels and 120 hertz display, which can be dialed back to 90 hertz or 60 hertz to preserve battery life. Most phones have refresh rates of 60 hertz which means the screen refreshes 60 times in a second 120 hertz displays can look a lot smoother by comparison. That's also the same speed seen across Samsung's latest Galaxy S 21 lineup, including the 12 $100 Galaxy S 21 Ultra as well as Xiaomi superlux mi 11 Ultra phone In practice, the display was super responsive and there's also an in screen finger reader which worked like a charm. Taking all this into consideration I can say the Zenfone eight has a fantastic display for its price range and even though it's not the highest resolution one around, I still think it's one of the Zenfone eights most attractive features Now moving on to the cameras the Zenfone aids rear camera module consists of a 64 megapixel main sensor and a 12 megapixel ultra wide sensor one less than last year's price your models which featured a third telephoto lens. Infront there's a 12 megapixels [UNKNOWN]. In general, the rear cameras produce solid images, whether I was clicking away, and right indoor, and even dark environments, because there is no telephoto camera on this device. Know that all zoom is digital, and that the digital zoom maxes out a eight times. Now here's the zoom in action starting with the ultra wide shot all the way up to eight times zoom, you can see how it gets blurry when zoomed in fully. Now for some shots at night These are pictures of Hong Kong's iconic skyline. I think the photos look pretty good but they aren't true to life. The sky was gray but as you can see on the photo, the sensors captured a bluish sky. I don't really mind it because I was happy with the end result. Now for selfies the front facing camera struggled to capture detail in lower light environments. Sometimes images turned out whitish like this one. I'm not a selfie aficionado, so I don't mind but for reference, take a look at the same picture. It's much warmer and this one was taken with 2018 iPhone XS Max. On the spectrum of smartphone cameras, this isn't the best camera I've ever used not even close, nor is it the best phone camera for its price range. But I think that's forgivable because the camera isn't the main selling point of the Zenfone 8 nor is it marketed to be. I think pictures turned out respectable in most lighting environments. Let's talk about battery and performance. Now from my experience, the phone eight battery lasted me roughly 25 to 26 hours with what I would describe as medium use. That means I didn't use the phone for power intensive games. Instead, I use it for things like reading the news or emails making a few short phone and video calls or scrolling through my social media feeds and taking photos of course I'd expect less than a day's worth of battery life when you're gaming or using the phone for more intensive tasks. But if you want the charge to last longer, you can take advantage of a suite of battery care tools tucked away in the settings menu. Zenfone eight has five different system modes that let you optimize battery life depending on your needs. For demanding tasks, we could crack the system all the way up to high performance mode When juice is running low, the phone intelligently switched to Ultra Durable mode to preserve as much power as possible. When I eventually ran out of juice, I use the bundle 33 watt charger to replenish the 4000 milliamp hour battery. Took about an hour and 20 minutes to hit a full charge But I need just 30 minutes for the battery to get refilled more than halfway. Powering the Zenfone 8 is the top of the line Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip along with 8 gigs or 16 gigs of RAM in the most expensive model with 256 gigs of storage. The pricier Samsung Galaxy S 21 Ultra also has 16 gigs of RAM, but this isn't just a bunch of numbers when I put the phones through their paces the Zenfone 8 was peppy and fast and handled everything I threw at it without a hitch. In the benchmark tests I performed the Zenfone eight perform somewhere between the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12 lineup. Signaling this phone is nothing short of a powerhouse. I wasn't able to get an overall score for 3D slingshot unlimited, which didn't output an overall score because the phone was apparently too powerful. But the Zenphone 8 doesn't have everything, of course, as soon as you remove the micro SD slot for expandable storage and last year Zenphone 7 lineup had expandable storage of up to two terabytes There's no support for wireless charging either. Now based on my experience with the Oenone eight I think a sess achieved exactly what it set out to do guided by its design anthem of building a phone that was big in performance but also compact in size. I mean, it crafted a durable phone with a stellar display. Respectable battery life dependable cameras and very powerful internals and all that is crammed into a small and lightweight device. So That's pretty much all I have to say on the Zenfone eight but if you enjoy this video, feel free to like and subscribe for more but thank you for watching. Also, if you want to read this coverage, pop onto the CNET website there's also a link in the description box below. Thanks for watching.