Asus Zenfone 8 review: The best small Android phone, hands-down

Our Verdict

The Zenfone viii is a compact, powerful telephone. WIth its top-tier specs and decent photographic camera performance, it punches well above its weight, especially given this cost point.

For

Meaty and like shooting fish in a barrel to handle
Clean, minimal software
First-class performance
Good cameras

Confronting

No wireless charging
Portrait style leaves a lot to be desired

Tom'due south Guide Verdict

The Zenfone eight is a compact, powerful telephone. WIth its top-tier specs and decent camera functioning, information technology punches well above its weight, specially given this price betoken.

Pros

+
Compact and like shooting fish in a barrel to handle
+
Clean, minimal software
+
Excellent performance
+
Good cameras

Cons

-
No wireless charging
-
Portrait mode leaves a lot to be desired

Asus Zenfone eight: Specs

Os: Android 11 / ZenUI 8
Display: 5.9-inch AMOLED (2400 ten 1080)
Refresh rate: 120 Hz
CPU: Snapdragon 888
RAM: 6GB, 8GB, 16GB
Storage: 128GB, 256GB
Rear cameras: 64MP (f/1.eight) main, 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide
Front camera: 12MP
Battery: 4,000 mAh
Battery life (Hrs:Mins): x:52 (60Hz) / 10:sixteen (90Hz) / ix:58
(120Hz)
Charging speed: 30W
Colors: Obsidian Black, Horizon Argent
Size: v.9 10 2.7 x 0.4 inches
Weight: five.96 ounces

The Asus Zenfone 8 is here and it's quite the head-turner. Asus may be a big proper name in the computing earth, but it's quite the underdog when it comes to phones. A few years back, the visitor rejected camera notches and cutouts, turning to a flipping camera module on the Zenfone 6. But the Zenfone viii takes a more conventional approach to smartphone pattern and refines it. It does this in a small, compact frame with a ton of horsepower, a great display and good cameras.

With a large battery, a fast-refreshing brandish, and a headphone jack, the Zenfone 8 ticks all of the boxes for what nosotros'd expect for in a dandy smartphone. The only question is one of availability: at this point, nosotros don't know if or when this is coming to North America.

Despite that, the Zenfone viii is an excellent device and perfect for people who want the near power out of their pocket-sized telephone. This is easily the all-time small Android phone with a screen that'south smaller than vi inches. Read our full Zenfone 8 review to find out why.

Asus Zenfone viii review: Price and availability

Asus has non yet revealed full pricing and availability, though nosotros do know that the phone volition showtime at €599. That's for the model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

The Zenfone 8 besides comes in 8GB and 16GB flavors. You lot tin pair that 8GB of RAM with either 128GB or 256GB of storage. The 16GB version comes with 256GB.

We still don't know full pricing and availability, simply stay tuned for an update when we detect out more than.

Asus Zenfone 8 review: Design

From all appearances, the Zenfone 8 is quite unassuming. In fact, information technology looks a bit similar phones from a few years ago. The metal body curves to fit your hand and I beloved that. The phone is very small by modern standards, with a sub-6 inch brandish, just like the best modest phones.

The dual lens camera module protrudes ever so slightly from the back of the Zenfone 8, and the front photographic camera sits in a hole punch cutout in the superlative left corner of the display.

On the Obsidian Blackness model I tested for this Zenfone 8 review, the power button is a blue that contrasts well with the dark frame. The Zenfone viii also packs in a wonderful surprise: a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The compact body makes 1-handing information technology a breeze. It'southward also IP68 rated, and so yous need non worry about water being an upshot. At that place's an in-display optical fingerprint sensor, which worked quite well in my experience.

Bluntly, the simply thing missing from the Zenfone 8 is a micro SD bill of fare slot. The lack of wireless charging due to the metal body is a bummer, but no phone can be perfect. All told, I love the phone's subdued design.

At 5.ix x 2.seven x 0.iv inches, the Zenfone 8 is a diminutive trivial guy. I savour picking it up, particularly given how accepted to large phones I am. Asus did a keen chore on build quality and design.

Asus Zenfone 8 review: Display

Coming in at 5.9 inches, the Zenfone 8's AMOLED display is pretty small in this age of behemothic phablets. It packs a FHD+ resolution and upward to 120 Hz on the refresh rate. You'll go punchy colors and deep blacks with excellent viewing angles, too.

You can lock the Zenfone 8's display at 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz. Or you lot can get out it in the auto mode, and the phone will arrange the refresh rate as needed, like we've seen on other phones recently.

While not quite equally striking as the OnePlus 9'due south brandish, the Zenfone 8'south screen is still very skillful. In our testing, information technology reproduced 154.5% of the sRGB spectrum and 109.five% of the DCI-P3 gamut in its default color contour. It managed a Delta-East score of 0.27 — 0 is perfect, then the lower the number, the better.

Compare that to the OnePlus 9's Delta-E of 0.28 for its AMOLED panel. That telephone managed 199.four% of the sRGB and 141.3 of the DCI-P3 color gamuts in its default manner. The Zenfone viii gets brighter in our testing at 727 nits versus the OnePlus 9'due south 696 nits.

Asus Zenfone viii review: Cameras

The Zenfone 8 uses two camera lenses, not unlike the Pixel 5. It has a 64MP wide-angle primary shooter and a 12MP ultrawide lens. For reference, the Pixel 5 has a 12.2MP primary and 16MP ultrawide.

Information technology might seem a bit unfair to pit the Zenfone viii against the Pixel 5 in the photographic camera department, equally Google's phone still ranks among the best camera phones. But both phones are similar in price, and this lets us see just how practiced of a bargain the Zenfone eight actually is.

In this shot of flowers, the Zenfone 8 overexposed the scene and the focus is a bit soft. The color of the flowers is vibrant, aye, but it teeters on being too bright. The Pixel, meanwhile, kept its shot toned downward since the image was captured in shadow on a bright, sunny twenty-four hours. I wouldn't call the Zenfone's image bad, merely the Pixel'due south is definitely amend.

I next took the phones to a part of the wood almost my house. Once again, you lot can encounter the slight differences between the two phones. The Zenfone is almost overexposed over again, with greens that border on oversaturated. The Pixel kept the scene subdued and rich, with the green of the copse lush and verdant. Once more, the Zenfone'southward shot is dandy, but the Pixel's is better.

Moving indoors, the Zenfone 8 captured Merida's likeness extremely well. The well-lit room certainly helped, but this image actually impressed me, especially when compared to the Pixel's photo. It's hard to tell a difference between the two because they're both excellent. The blue of Merida's dress, the yellow candle, and the dark-green fern all come together in a great composition.

The Zenfone 8 holds its own in the dark mode section, too. In fact, I similar its image ameliorate than the Pixel'south. It comes down to the noise. Yes, the Pixel five brought in more low-cal, merely at the cost of making the smoker noisy. The Zenfone 8 still brought in a ton of light, and the metallic of the smoker is a bit smoother.

The Zenfone 8 does not put out nearly the aforementioned quality of portrait shot as the Pixel does. The Zenfone's endeavor has a terrible mistiness radius, overexposing on my face and doing too much face smoothing. The Pixel's photo captures the wrinkles near my eyes, the dry out skin I need to moisturize, and the private curly hairs of my beard. While the Zenfone eight has done well thus far, information technology tin't hold a candle to the Pixel's portrait shot.

Finally, for selfies, you tin't go wrong with the Zenfone 8 and its 12MP forepart camera. Information technology photographed me quite well, taking in the blue of my shirt, the blackness of my chapeau, and even the color of my eyes. The difference between the two selfies comes downwardly to exposure and saturation. The Zenfone takes a similar approach to Samsung's camera phones, boosting the colors in the scene, whereas the Pixel takes a more naturalistic approach, looking toned downwards overall. Regardless, I'd gladly post the Zenfone'southward selfie.

Asus Zenfone 8 review: Operation

The Zenfone 8 sports a Snapdragon 888 processor with upwardly to 16GB of RAM. It's a little powerhouse, crushing anything else Android-based in this size class — even the Pixel five. This phone is no slouch, and it proves that both in real-world applications and in testing.

In Geekbench five, the Zenfone 8 scored 1,120 in unmarried-core and 3,659 in multicore. That's right in line with the numbers we tallied with the Snapdragon 888-powered OnePlus ix, which were 1,126 and 3,618 respectively. Those are expert scores, but the iPhone 12 mini beats both phones at 1,602 and four,123, thanks to Apple's A14 Bionic processor.

In the 3DMark Wild Life Unlimited graphics test, the Zenfone 8 achieved 34 frames per second, which lines up perfectly with the OnePlus 9. Yet, it still falls brusque of the iPhone 12 mini's whopping 54 fps.

We've seen several Snapdragon 888 phones past this indicate, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Zenfone viii does as well every bit it does, even though it lags backside the iPhone 12 mini. In real life, though, the phone performs amazingly well. It'due south snappy, quick, and I don't find any lag when performing certain tasks like opening an app in Recents.

Asus Zenfone 8 review: Battery life and charging

The Zenfone eight packs a 4,000 mAh battery, which is quite big considering the phone's physical size. In my use, the telephone got decent bombardment life, enough to get me through almost days. Push it hard with Google Duo calls or gaming and you might be looking for a charger before winding down for the 24-hour interval.

In the Tom'southward Guide battery test, where a device is left to endlessly reload web pages on a cellular connectedness, the Zenfone 8 managed some decent times. In the sixty Hz mode, it lasted for 10 hours and 52 minutes, which is shut to the eleven-60 minutes mark that devices on our all-time phone battery life listing reach.

Upward the display to 90 Hz and the phone managed a respectable x:xvi result on our battery test. Crash-land it upward to 120 Hz and the phone just barely fell beneath the x-hour mark we'd similar to encounter at 9:58. So you can become a lot of life out of the Zenfone 8, especially if you lot accept the heart route and ready the dislay's refresh rate at xc Hz. I've stuck with the auto mode and I've had no complaints about battery life.

We noticed some inconsistencies with charging speeds in our lab testing. Asus includes a 30W charger with the Zenfone viii, which should provide decent charging numbers. Instead, we saw that it only managed to recharge to 22% in thirty minutes. This heavily contrasts with Asus' claims that information technology can recharge to 60% in 25 minutes.

Asus Zenfone viii review: Software

Asus took a folio from OnePlus' volume all the mode back with the Zenfone 6. The company radically changed its software design to more than closely resemble OxygenOS. The result was a make clean, minimalistic UX with plenty of tweaks and features tucked away in settings. I remember remarking at the fourth dimension that Asus had finally gotten ZenUI to a good place.

That decision continues all the way through the ROG Phone five and here with the Zenfone 8. ZenUI 8 looks a lot like what you lot'd detect on a Pixel and it does a cracking job of doing what you want it to exercise and staying out of the way. Whereas OnePlus has since diverged a bit from Google's vision, Asus sticks pretty close to information technology.

Based on Android eleven, ZenUI has a few tricks up its sleeve to set it apart from stock Android. First off, the ability button can act every bit a Smart Central, meaning that yous can modify its behavior. You tin can customize both a double click and a press and hold activeness. There are quite a few options to choose from, though I've stuck with launching the camera and bringing up the power menu on my review unit.

Elsewhere, yous'll notice a gaming mode to reduce distractions while you're gaming and push the Zenfone 8 to its max for intensive titles. Asus' OptiPlex feature, wherein the software learns your habits and pre-loads commonly used apps, returns once again. You can disable or tweak information technology to your liking. There's also a ane-handed mode, making this small phone even easier to employ single-handed.

And so far, Asus has not committed to any number of software updates for the Zenfone 8. We're hoping for at least three every bit the visitor continues to put an emphasis on expert software. Stay tuned for an update on this in one case we get confirmation.

Asus Zenfone 8 review: Verdict

The Asus Zenfone 8 is a bully phone, though its availability might leave some confused. Simply the hardware is first-class, the software is neat, and the cameras perform way better than expected (especially afterward the farthermost thwarting I had with the ROG Phone 5's cameras). You're getting a ton of phone with the Zenfone 8 and it'south definitely the best small Android telephone, handily beating the Pixel v in every manner except camera performance.

I have few qualms with recommending this Zenfone 8, peculiarly compared to some of its Android competitors, like the OnePlus ix. The value proffer is stiff here, fifty-fifty though we don't know full pricing just withal.

But at a starting price of €599, this is one hell of a telephone to beat out. While it may non hold OnePlus' feet to the fire in terms of scale, it certainly gives the OnePlus 9 a run for its money and should have the upcoming Pixel 6 quaking in its boots.

Jordan is the Phones Editor for Tom'southward Guide, covering all things telephone-related. He'south written nigh phones for over v years and plans to go along for a long while to come. He loves nothing more than than relaxing in his home with a book, game, or his latest personal writing project. Jordan likes finding new things to dive into, from books and games to new mechanical keyboard switches and fun keycap sets. Jordan tends to lurk on social media, but you tin can all-time accomplish him on Twitter.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/asus-zenfone-8

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