Asus Zenfone 6 review

Until recently, large screen phablet phones were dominated by a single handset: the Galaxy Note 4. The Nexus 6 went even larger with a 6in screen for £100 less, but its lack of phablet-specific features in Android 5.0 Lollipop and rather average battery life meant it couldn’t best Samsung’s phablet king. The Asus Zenfone 6 is larger still, measuring a massive 167x84x9.9mm and weighing a hefty 196g, but unlike its premium rivals, it costs just £240 SIM-free and has plenty of useful features to help make it an attractive alternative for those on a budget.

A large part of this is down to Zen UI, which runs on top of the Android 4.4.2 operating system. The home screen feels like the default Android interface, but the lock screen shows a lot more information than either the Nexus 6 or the Galaxy Note 4. As much as we like Android 5.0 Lollipop’s actionable lock screen notifications, the Zenfone 6 shows you the weather forecast and your upcoming calendar appointments, as well as shortcuts to the camera, dialler and messages.

This gives you a useful overview of your day as soon as your turn on the screen, and you can even set countdown reminders so you know how much time you’ve got left before your next meeting. You’ll still need to unlock the phone and tap the respective widget to interact with your calendar, but being able to see what’s coming up at a glance is better than unlocking and swiping through multiple home screens.

The Zenfone 6’s sheer size won’t appeal to everyone, though, as it’s even taller and wider than the Nexus 6, which was already quite a handful. The slightly thicker sides provide a lot more purchase than the thin, tapered edges of the Nexus 6, though, making it easier to grip while still sitting comfortably in your hand. The screen bezels are still comparatively chunky compared to other phablets, but this is to be expected on a mid-range device.

The large 6in screen looks pleasantly detailed at first glance, despite the 1,280×720 resolution. Compared to Samsung and Google’s top-end phablets, the Zenfone 6’s pixel density of 244 pixels-per-inch is pitifully low compared to the 515PPI Note 4 and 489PPI Nexus 6. Slightly fractured, jagged edges creep in on the weather widget and certain letters on the main home screen, suggesting 1,280×720 doesn’t provide enough pixel definition for such a large screen. However, most app icons still looked sharp and crisp, and the vast majority of text was perfectly legible.

On closer inspection, image quality isn’t as good as we might have hoped, as our colour calibrator showed it was only displaying 86.4 per cent of the sRGB colour gamut. This is lower than we’d normally expect from a phone of this price and its red, magenta and green coverage was particularly short. This made images appear rather cool and lacking definition, with whites appearing noticeably grey. The rather low peak brightness level of just 273.19cd/m2 didn’t help this, but at least blacks were reasonably deep, measuring 0.27cd/m2. A contrast ratio of 997:1 was decent, too, producing wide viewing angles and lots of onscreen detail.

The Zenfone 6 is surprisingly quick for a £240 handset. While its dual-core 2.0GHz Atom Z2580 processor lags behind Intel’s newer Baytrail Atom chips, it still produced a respectable 851ms in our SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks using its proprietary internet browser. This isn’t far behind the Nexus 6, which scored 792ms, and is easily on par with other flagship phones such as the Sony Xperia Z3 and Motorola’s 2nd Gen Moto X.

In practice, web browsing was wonderfully smooth and desktop pages looked stunning on the large 6in screen. Smaller text was a slight strain on the eyes at full resolution, but panning round the page was virtually judder-free once all the images had loaded.

Gaming performance was also impressive, managing an average of 52.8fps in Epic Citadel on Ultra High quality settings. We were a little worried when it only scored a slightly jerky 4,700 or 23.2fps in our 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme test, but our fears were soon quelled when we loaded up games such as Real Racing 3 and saw a high level of detail present with no judder whatsoever.

It’s not such good news for the Zenfone 6’s battery life, however. While its respectable score of 10 hours and 53 minutes in our continuous video playback test with the brightness set to 170cd/m2 is nothing to be sniffed at, this is still on the low side for a 3,300mAh battery. The Note 4, for instance, has smaller 3,220mAh battery yet lasted a massive 18 hours and 55 minutes under the same conditions. You’ll still be able to get through the day on the Zenfone 6, but we were nevertheless hoping for a little more from this huge handset.

We were surprised by how fake and artificial our test shots from the 13-megapixel camera looked. On Auto mode, the central part of the frame looked overly saturated while lighter areas to the sides looked hazy and washed out. If it wasn’t for the large patches of over-exposed sky, it was almost as though we’d forgotten to turn HDR off. Strangely, enabling HDR mode actually toned down the level of colour saturation and images actually looked pretty good. The sky also looked much more natural, but we did notice large patches of noise begin to crop up in the dark clouds.

The screen and camera are a little below average, but the ZenFone 6 still has a decent battery life, excellent performance and a useful, intuitive UI. With no other 6in phablet quite this cheap, it’s a great choice if you’re after a large phone without paying extra for either the Note 4 or Nexus 6.

However, it faces strong competition from the 5.5in HTC Desire 816, which is just £50 more SIM-free at time of writing, and has a better screen, longer battery life and is easier to hold. If you’re set on having the biggest screen possible, the Zenfone 6 is a good choice, but if your budget can stretch a bit further, the Desire 816 is the better buy.