Asus ROG Phone 5 Review: Gaming to the Max By Digit

Dog phone five: that's what this video is all about. We've had the phone for a while been testing it out thoroughly, and I'm gonna not waste any of your time and get right into all the juicy details that you want to know about this phone, but before we do, of course you have to subscribe to our channel and, of course, don't forget to hit the bell icon so that you don't miss any future updates from us with the basics. Out of the way, let's begin. First, the specs, the ROG phone 5 comes in multiple flavors this time around. There are three variants, and we've got the simple basic one, which is the ROG phone 5. , not the pro one, not the ultimate.

The ROG phone five is powered by the Qualcomm snapdragon triple eight offers 12 GB of ram on our review variant and comes with 256 gigs of UFS 3.1 storage. It's also got this gorgeous super AMOLED display, which is quite the stuff to write about with the top-of-the-line refresh rate of 144 hertz. This panel was meant for gaming, but that's not all the ROG phone 5 also packs a 6 000 William hour battery and there's also support for 65 watt charging. In addition to that, the ROG phone 5 features air triggers gesture control, motion control, additional USB ports on the side and other knickknacks that we've come to expect. So, while on paper, the phone really has jaw dropping specs, how do they really translate to performance? Let's get right into it.

Now the performance of the ROG phone five. Well, we expect something amazing to come out of this phone, but here's the thing, unlike the first two years, where ASUS had access to Qualcomm's special bin chipsets this year round, is just a triple eight. This is the same triple eight you'll find in the OnePlus 9 and the OnePlus 9 pro and interestingly, our benchmark numbers tell us the same story. The ROG phone 5 is clocking benchmark numbers that are in line with what we've seen from the 9 and the 9 pro. For example, the geek bench score single core geek bench score for the dog.

Five is one, two one, whereas for the one plus nine, it's one, two five, the multi-core score is three six, eight five for the ROG four and five and three 3629, like literally a few points up and down. Well within the margin of error. We see this behavior on 3dmark wildlife, uh for GFX bench even and the only area where the rog45 clocks, a significantly higher score, is an tutu with a score of 807 019 versus 708 100 on the OnePlus 9. So benchmark numbers tell us that the 888 chipset in this phone is pretty much the same as what you'll find in other smartphones, with this soc, but there's a lot more to the story than just the chipset, while the hardware on the smartphone is definitely top of the line and common amongst other smartphones, it's the experience that really sets this phone apart as a gaming, smartphone, ASUS and ROG well, they're deeply rooted in gaming, and the experience on this phone tells us a great story of that. For example, ASUS has built an entire suite of software, for example armory crate, which allows you to tweak a number of settings on the phone allowing you to get better performance, manage thermals, manage battery life, etc.

Any of you laptop gamers or PC gamers out there would be familiar with armory crate, which allows you to tweak laptop settings, maybe battery life and stuff. You know, similarly on the ROG phone 5 armory crates allows you to choose between x mode, not just that, but it also allows you to control exactly how much performance you can get out of your CPU in any given profile. How much cooling can be given to your phone with the proactive cooler? What refresh rate your display will run at how much battery life it'll draw what bright everything it's kind of insane the level of detail you can go into do. Remember, though, the snapdragon triple eight is a chipset that runs hot. There is a lot.

Asus has done to keep this phone cool, including a brand new proactive cooler, which does run uh much faster and does move more volume of air compared to the previous generations. But if you max out your CPU and GPU performance in armory crane do expect the phone to easily hit the 60 degree range. Now, let's talk gaming, I mean that's what this phone is all about right, so I've actually got a game of Call of Duty mobile running right now the interesting thing is analyzing games by a game bench on the ROG phone five. We see that well, they all run at their peak frame rates of 60 fps um asphalt, 9 as well with a stability of well above into 99, and there is no doubt that the ROG phone will be able to handle that. But the real star of the gaming experience is things like the proactive cooler which I've got right here.

Um we have these triggers the touch sensitive triggers over here. Air triggers as ASUS calls them, and we've also got this crazy controller contraption, and this is like a transforming thing. It works blue over Bluetooth. It works over uh USB. So it's I'm going to show you all of this.

Now I'm just going to get into a game of cod right away, because you know we can talk about gaming while I game- and that's probably the best thing about it now. The ROG phone five well is limited in terms of its frame rate deliverance by the games and not by the hardware. There are not a lot of games out there right now, at least not the popular titles that support higher refresh rate gaming, cod mobile, for example. No matter what you device you play it on is capped at 60fps. There is just no two ways about it, so, while ASUS cannot improve the frame rates, what they can do is make your gaming experience better and that's where these air triggers come in and boy are they helpful? The proactive cooler, for example, now comes with two additional triggers.

You can map any function to it for that matter, whether it's shooting jumping reloading whatever you say. Additionally, you also have air triggers over here, which you can also configure, and it's kind of amazing, the level of customization offered. Now some may argue that the use of this proactive cooler or even the lunar game pad 3 or even these air triggers for that matter, is cheating. Well we'll leave the semantics up for debate, but honest truth. Is it just improves your game? Man, like honestly, my KD ratio has gone up ever since I started using this.

My headshots have gotten cleaner, and I have, in general, been performing better or in cod mobile than I have in the past. So you know if I can do it, and I'm not that great of a cod player just, just so you guys know so if I can do it, so can you if you feel that the proactive coolers triggers are? Maybe you have hands too big? They overlap, or maybe your hands are too small. You can't reach the triggers. Well, that's where the lunar game pad 3 comes into play now. This is actually a two-piece contraption.

Well, actually, it's not even two pieces. It's three pieces, so you've got the battery pack. This is the battery pack, which charges your these two joy-con style controllers, and what you could do is you can either slot them into this case and then turn your entire phone into a little portable gaming console like a Nintendo Switch, or you could dock it right back into the battery pack like so, and then use it as a regular. I mean sudo, Xbox or PlayStation type controller if this grip isn't comfortable enough for you, you've got this as well. Now, interestingly, in the office, a bunch of us have been trying out both of these configurations and turns out.

We a lot of us favor this over this simple reason being uh, just closer proximity to all the trigger buttons. There are two over here in cod mobile, for example. I found that these are really, really helpful when you want to reload or, let's say, jump uh. Some of you may also want to configure this to maybe zoom in and shoot up to you, uh, reloading, jumping, etc. So this is extremely configurable, so the level of customization offered is incredible.

It's like ASUS has thought of practically everything. There was to think of with respect to these accessories and how they would translate to your gaming experience. Of course, if you like to play something like temple run or subway surfer, all of this stuff is of no use to you. In fact, why would you even buy the ROG phone five? The ROG phone five is genuinely for the guy, who is always who takes his gaming seriously? Who takes his gaming as seriously as ASUS ROG does now? Let's talk about the other cool feature of the ROG phone 5 and that's its mammoth display super AMOLED 144hz, pretty insane that ASUS has managed to get this kind of spec working on a smartphone, I mean we don't have 144 hertz, OLED, monitors or TVs, even for that matter, the TVs kind of cap out at 120, so this could potentially be considered. The most advance doled display for gamers could be.

Potentially, there are a lot of interesting things about this display, and there were a lot of claims made as well. Asus has claimed that this panel is capable of 100 DC ip3 111 DC ip3, apparently and 150 RGB color space reproduction and has also claimed some very impressive delta e numbers. Well, we've actually run our analysis on the panel, and I'm not going to get into all the details, because that's actually part of a separate video where we compare the display quality of the ROG 4.5 with that of the OnePlus 9 9r 9, pro Vito, etc. Like you guys have been asking, but to cut a long story short the ROG phone five offers four display profiles, the cinematic the standard, there's natural and then there's the default profile. Now, interestingly, it's only the standard and the cinematic profile that actually conform to a standard, color gamut and give very impressive delta e numbers standard, conforms to the RGB color space and has delta e of 1.7 average with the maximum delta e of 3.1. The grayscale delta e is also very, very little at 1.8. Now that's very impressive when you're dealing with the RGB color space, if you guys want absolute color, accurate rendition and are willing to give up this over saturated look.

This is the profile for you for those of you who want to make the most of your content from Netflix YouTube, HDR or Amazon, prime HDR, etc. The profile that you would want to send this phone to is cinematic. The reason for that is the in the cinematic color profile you do get 99 of the DC ip3 color space coverage, which is very impressive again, no doubt about it, but you also get a very impressive delta e number of just 1.7, which is a delta e average of 1.7 and a maximum delta e of 3.3. Again, the grayscale is also impressive, with an average delta e of just 1.9, so ASUS has basically made sure that it's covered the two primary color profiles very well and that's impressive. The other two profiles on the other hand- and this is for those of you who think that color accuracy doesn't matter- and you just want big brightness, and you just want more saturation.

Well, you have the other two profiles for that in the default color profile. We see that the RGB gamut coverage does jump up to 148 very close to the 150 percent that ASUS has talked about, but the color accuracy is all over the place. The gray scale is terrible. I would not recommend using this for color anything, that's color-sensitive or, if you like, color accuracy, the other color profile left, which is the natural color profile, sees the display. P3 gamut, get expanded all the way up to 101 percent, not quite the 111 percent, that Jesus claims, but still very impressive.

So while the gamut coverage is definitely impressive, the color accuracy, on the other hand, is absolutely garbage for those of you who want to know why. I'm saying things I'm saying well, you've obviously seen the charts on your screen, but there will be a detailed analysis in a separate video, so do make sure to subscribe and hit the bell icon so that you don't miss that video, which is coming out very soon. Moving on from the display. Let's talk about the battery life, we really have to talk about the battery life on the ASUS rot phone. Five ASUS has packed a six thousand William battery into this behemoth of a phone.

It's basically two batteries of three thousand William hours each, and that's also what allows the phone to support a charging speed of up to 65 watts, very impressive by every measure. If you want to charge it from zero to 100 you're, not waiting more than 45 minutes, but there is a small problem. If you want to power this display at its full resolution and highest refresh rates at all times and also have it in power configuration where your CPU is unlocked. Your GPU is at its maximum. Let's say peak performance mode, don't expect more than a day's worth of battery life.

In fact, you'd be lucky. If you get to the end of the day, for example, I had this phone I charged at up to 100 last night right now, as I'm shooting this video at one in the afternoon, the batteries already dropped to about 30 percent. The reason for that is, there's been about two and a half hours of cod mobile been played on this phone using the aero active cooler and, of course the phone's display has been set to 144 hertz, even though the game doesn't run at it, and the CPU and the GPU are both running in their fully unlocked. Configuration point being that there are a lot of settings in here which change the battery life numbers from anywhere between less than a day to about a day and a half whatever configuration you choose to do remember to carry the charger with you so that you can top the phone up whenever you need to, and then there's a side note about the charging situation. You do get two USB c ports, one at the bottom and then there's one on the side over here.

The one at the bottom is actually a full-fledged USB 3.0 type c port, but the one on the side operates over USB 2. So you can charge your phone from here, yes, but don't expect a lot more out of it. The other really cool thing is, if you're, using the aero active cooler. You also get an additional 3.5 mm headphone jack on to built into the side, which you also have at the bottom. So that's pretty cool, so overall, the battery life situation on the ROG phone 5.

Honestly, if you were to ask me, is completely in your hands. You will have to change the profiles as and when your use case changes if you're just using it as a daily driver, leave it on a conservative profile. There's no harm in that you want a game. It's literally two clicks away, guys, like literally two clicks, to get it into performance mode. That's the battery life situation on the rot 4.5, but perhaps the most notable thing that I want to talk about is its design. Now the ROG phone 5 also comes in a white colored variant, which I would assume would be far more forgiving when it comes to fingerprints than this black.

One like this thing is just riddled with fingerprints and that's when it even had the case on by the way um now here, okay, first we'll go over the good stuff about the design. I really like the design this year. Asus has done away with any of those stupid openings which actually serve no purpose and uh. It's just one clean slab of glass, but it's not just all black there are flares of pink, which is basically, I feel coming from the fact that around 2019, the ROG division started experimenting with this whole concept of electron punk, where they introduced pink colored variants on certain devices, and it's actually worked very, very well for them. So I think that's sort of where this whole pink theme is coming from.

It's the same thing that you'll find on the know: electron punk version of the ROG accessories like keyboards, there's, even a scar coming out. So there's that there's nice branding on the back we've got a pink shaded power button. I really like that, and perhaps the most eye-catching feature is, of course, this uh sim tray at the very bottom, which is also pink. So, overall, the design wise, it's nice, it's of course, being glass. It is slippery, it'll slip out of your hands very easily and which actually brings me to the stuff that I don't like about this phone's design and there's a few things.

Firstly, there's no IP rating, there are no vents. This time, like I said last year on the ROG phone 3, we had cuts and nibbles all over the place. None of that is that yet this phone lacks an IP rating, and it's most probably because of the additional ports on the side which, as we've seen the Jerry videos, is also a problematic thing like this. These ports are causing some major structural flaws on the phone. I would not sit down with this phone in my pocket, let alone my back pocket like.

I would not have this phone in my pocket at all. If I was to sit down, it's just been so paranoid uh using this phone for a few days. The other really problematic thing- and this is something that I absolutely detest about all the ROG phones. Is this little rubber gasket? This thing is the first thing: you're going to lose: I've lost it twice already and had mild panic attacks, because this is a review unit. Somebody else who's got to review.

This phone should get it in proper working condition, and I don't want to be responsible for giving them a phone that comes without a gasket. This is the stuff that protects these ports and it's so easy to lose. I am absolutely baffled that for all the clever engineering the ROG guys are capable of, like, I think the mothership guys remember. The mothership, I think, was an engineering marvel. These guys still haven't figured out how to make these ports safe without this little rubber gasket like at least heal.

Anybody like really this right here now in terms of the ergonomics you're gonna, either like it or not like it. It's there's nothing to really hate about the ergonomics of this phone. It's large, you know it's large, it's slippery, it's something you have to accept, but it's not that hard to manage as long as you're sort of mindful of the fact that this phone does mostly require two hands. The other problem with the ROG phone five happens to be the fact that, unfortunately, there aren't a lot of cases that you will get for it, which will offer full protection like a case should- and that's mostly to do with the fact that you should have access to these side ports. You should be able to access the air triggers and, of course, the fact that any case that you buy for this phone should also support the attachment of the proactive coolers there.

Is it really significant limits significantly, so it significantly limits the kind of cases you can use ASUS ships, one in the box- it's not the most protective thing out there. In fact, it doesn't even really have a considerable lip if you drop this phone, and it falls either on its side or the front, get ready for heartbreak, big heartbreak, guys, probably worse than the last heartbreak. You had probably the most decent case. Is this uh one, the one that ships with the lunar controller uh? It does offer a little more protection, but at the same time, it's not really very practical, because it's got contacts, metal, beads on either side- and I don't know if you want to carry that in your pocket with other metallic objects. Well, you're not going to be carrying anything in your pocket.

If you've got this in there, so, overall the design situation on the ASUS ROG phone five is bittersweet at best um, it's easy to overlook a lot of flaws when people it's easy to get impressed by what this phone has to offer. It's serious like really serious, dazzle, dazzle, guys really, really serious dazzle dazzle over here. It impresses you've got this light up, ROG logo, which everybody goes well, what is a phone? What you know, so you've got all of those tricks, but when you start spending time with it, that's when you realize it's not all roses: it's not all peaches and gravy, and that's why I say that the ROG phone's design story is bittersweet. Next up, let's talk cameras, and this is once again another thing that sort of mostly goes, I won't say, ignored, but hasn't really gotten that much attention. So the ROG phone five comes with a 64 megapixel primary sensor.

This is the Sony mix 686 with an aperture of f 1.8 um, it's a 1 by 1.7 inch sensor. So it is a large format sensor, but unfortunately, the primary camera as a whole does not come with optical image stabilization and has only as. The secondary camera is a 13 megapixel, ultra-wide camera and, of course, this time around, there's also a 5 megapixel macro camera. Now the performance from these three: let's just talk about the primary camera. First in daytime, pretty good like it's like any other 64 megapixel camera out there good detail decent dynamic range color reproduction.

Well, I will genuinely leave that up to you, whether you like it or not, but overall here's the thing. The camera app, thankfully, is a quick and responsive one. There's not a lot of lags or a lot of delay in it. It seems like ASUS has really worked on speeding things up mind. You this is the same camera app you find in other ASUS phones as well.

So, overall, the app experience is good. The images coming out of the camera. All three cameras are decent when you factor in their limitations. What do I mean by that? Well, for example, the ultra-wide camera does exhibit distortion, which is natural for something of this focal length and also is a poor performer when it comes to low light, which is again to be expected, because it is a regular 13 megapixel sensor now when it comes to the macro camera. On the other hand, well, that is just uh.

It's going to be tricky to use it. Let's just put it that way, and I don't think that you guys will be using it a lot, and it is definitely nowhere as impressive as the macro camera that we've seen on the VIVO x60 pro or even the OnePlus 9th row for that matter. So you know, there's, unfortunately, that the front of course houses a 24 megapixel selfie camera which again produces great photos for basically anybody, if you're, just looking to take casual photos, even shoot videos for that matter, you're not going to find the output disappointing, of course, as long as you're shooting an ample light, once you move into the low light situation, you'll see that there is noise that comes in quickly. So overall, the camera experience is like one of those things that are just sort of standard on this ROG phone five, and it's not one of those wow experiences that you know otherwise, is what the ROG phone 5 is all about, and that's sort of okay, because this is more of a gamer's phone than the photographer's phone. It offers a decent shooting experience.

It offers a reliable output, but it's not the best out there all right verdict, time. So the ROG phone five, with its hefty price tag of almost 60 000 rupees, which, by the way, does not come with an proactive cooler, the standard kg phone five does not. You have to buy it separately for 3k uh and, yes, you would want to buy this for multiple reasons. The ROG phone 5 offers an incredible gaming experience just as a phone by itself, the air triggers are very, very handy, especially for people who are into shooters if you get the proactive cooler. On the other hand, your shooter experience is further enhanced for those of you who take gaming ultra seriously, there's always the lunar game pad 3, which is actually pretty amazing.

So as a gaming device, the ROG phone 5 may not be about the highest fps, but it is definitely about the most amazing gaming experience on a smartphone hands down, but looking past it as a daily driver. Surprisingly good. There is absolutely no room in the performance segment for complaints. It handles anything you throw at it with complete ease. Obviously the display is class, leading no doubt great color accuracy and the two profiles that we've talked about and great saturation at the cost of accuracy.

For those of you who care about saturation battery life is again goes anywhere from decent to good, depending on how you configure the hardware on the phone and overall, is just a beautifully designed phone with some critical flaws. Structural flaws are not okay, guys, you can't have a phone that breaks if you bend it a little so overall, if you are looking for a hardcore gaming device, the ROG phone 5 is the perfect smartphone for you. No doubts about it, especially with the proactive cooler and the lunar game pad. Your gaming chops will be sorted for life as a daily driver, again a great device. No doubt this phone is bound to turn heads, even if you take it into your workplace and just use it.

As you know, a device in your office environment no doubt about it either, but if you're, a photographer or rather, if your smartphone is something that you rely a lot on for taking photos, there are better options out there maybe consider the OnePlus 9, maybe consider the VIVO x60 pro. So those are better options when it comes to photo and video in comparison to the ROG phone 5. So the question really is: does the ROG phone 5 justify its price point? Well that I will leave up to you gamers if I had to buy this phone at the price point? If I was a hardcore gamer, I just bought a PS5, so I would buy a lg phone five, that's the truth, but it is definitely worth the money. No doubt about it. I wouldn't say that you should go for the higher end variance this one is just about good enough.

So thank you guys for watching this video uh. I hope you've enjoyed it. I know I have, so before you leave make sure to hit the subscribe button on our channel and, of course, also hit the bell icon so that you don't miss any future updates from us. As for me, I don't know if you're going to see me in the next one we'll find out.

Source : Digit