ASUS Zenfone 2 Deluxe Review: A pegasus among the flooded mid-segment smartphones

Asus has launched its three aces in mid-range smartphone segment in Zen festival 2015 - Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe, ZenFone Selfie, and the ZenFone 2 Laser.

Asus ZenFestival 2015

We got the chance to review Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe. Asus is targeting the mass mid-range buyers with some attractive features and stunning crystal design. As like the previous ZenFone 2, this one also has 4 GB of RAM for seamless performance.

Elegant slim design and excellent Full HD display

The Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe is basically the same as a ZenFone 2 except that it comes with a unique 3D crystal design at the rear. This has slim profile measuring just 3.9 mm in thickness and features has 5.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution screen with ASUS TrueVivid Full Screen Lamination technology. The IPS display is equipped with anti-scratch Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and supports glove touch, enabling you to use the smartphone even when you wearing gloves. It offers 178˚ viewing angle means you can share the screen with friends and family while watching videos or playing games. Although, this is a 5.5-inch device but feels comfortable while using it with a one hand thanks to its smart dimensions and thin bezzles. This smartphone display has 284 Lux brightness which is bright enough to be used in various lighting conditions, even in direct sunlight the text were clearly visible.

First Look: Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe

A High-Res camera

Asus really done well in improving the camera by adding lots of features to magnify the quality of images and videos. It packs 5MP front camera with large f /2.0-aperture, wide-angle (85˚) lens and 13 MP rear camera with large f/2.0-aperture, 5-element auto-focus lens / dual-color Real Tone flash, Blue Glass IR Filter / Zero Shutter Lag.

Image taken by ASUS Zenfone 2 Deluxe camera

Various modes included are Manual Mode for DSLR-like camera detail settings , Real Time Beautification, Night mode, Depth of field, Selfie mode , Photo Effects, Panorama mode , Miniature , Time Rewind, Smart Remove, All Smiles, Time Lapse.

While using the camera in outdoors, we clicked some colorful images of birds, monuments and lake. The camera really catches the vivid natural colors. Though, the rear camera is quite good but it disappointed us with the HDR mode. In lowlight conditions, it produced noise and the image tone was yellowish. THe front camera is good to capture selfies. It comes with preloaded beautification mode that focuses on face and optimizes the image, which will surely be loved by selfie freaks. The only lag is in front camera is when you zoom-in, it produces noise.

Image taken by ASUS Zenfone 2 Deluxe camera

Processor that is good on running multiple apps and heavy games 

It is powered by Intel 64-bit Z3580 processor clocked at 2.3 Ghz with Intel exclusive 3D Tri-Gate Transistor Technology. The phone is backed by 4 GB RAM for faster processing that gives you freedom to do multitasking and play around with the phone without any visible lag. We run more than 3 games and four different other apps as well as opened browser at the same time to test its performance. We switched between apps, and played games, but it didn't lag at any point of testing.

This smartphone has 64 GB ROM, which is huge, additionally you can expand the memory up to 128 GB as well. If it's not enough, then Asus has some additional storage space for you - ASUS WebStorage 5 GB (lifetime) and Google drive 100 GB free space (2 years).

We also tested Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe by running various benchmark and the results are,

Antutu - 48494

3D Mark-19987

Quadrant-12360

Vellamo- 3617

Smart Gesture for easy going to your favorite apps

This smartphone also has some smart gesture controls that lets you directly go to the desired app. The screen wakes-up when you pinch in the gesture. For instance you can open browser by swiping letter "W" on the display, imilarly C for camera and more. The gesture control worked really well.

Huge Battery

Well, this deluxe smartphone is having 3000 mAh battery, which gives you a good battery back up, almost a full day in normal usage, calling, browsing, etc. While, in our video test, we played videos continuously through Wi-Fi in full brightness and sound, it was able to play videos for more than 10 hours.