ASUS ZenFone AR review: ready for AR, but is AR ready for ASUS?

Overview

Barely two months after the ZenFone Zoom S comes ASUS’s latest experiment – the ZenFone AR (ZS571KL). This is the world’s second smartphone that supports Google Tango’s augmented reality engine (the first being Lenovo Phab 2 Pro). However, the ZenFone AR is one of the first to support both Tango, and Google’s virtual reality platform, Daydream VR. 

Besides these novel features, the ZenFone AR also doubles as ASUS’s current flagship offering – it packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC along with a whopping 8GB RAM.  While it may sound a bit dated in today's sea of Snapdragon 835 equipped flagship phones, when the ZenFone AR first appeared in January this year, it seemed possible that it could trump all other phones. 8 months has passed and much has changed in the playing field. According to ASUS, the phone's equipped configuration is sufficient for powering VR and AR apps. However, ASUS Singapore prefers to see the ZenFone AR as an enthusiast phone with a niche appeal, and it’s shouldn’t be considered as their current flagship device (even though in reality, it is).

The last time we tried Google Tango’s AR capabilities on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, it left us wanting. To that end, this review will attempt to learn if the AR capabilities are more practical with the ZenFone AR, or if the performance will justify its price tag. Also, the ZenFone AR is a chance for ASUS to rectify the lackluster impressions left behind by the ZenFone 3 Deluxe. So, let’s find out!

Design & Handling

From the front, there’s nothing peculiar about the ZenFone AR. If you’re used to mid-range smartphones, the ZenFone AR’s choice of bezels, glass display, and button placements should come as no surprise. The fingerprint sensor doubles as a physical Home button that can be pressed. The power/lock button and volume rockers feature a machined, concentric pattern. Pretty standard stuff and as expected of a ZenFone product.

The side of the ZenFone AR measures up to 9mm in thickness, and its slimmest point is around 4.6mm. By our own measurement, the phone’s thickness is approximately 6 to 7mm at the point below the power button (the very center of the entire length). Here, you can see that it has an aluminum alloy frame, and it features a sandblasted finish with chamfered edges. 6mm phones are certainly on the slimmer side of things, with most flagship devices typically ranging between 7 to 9mm. To add, the ZenFone AR does so while keeping the 3.5mm headphone jack intact.

The main downsides to its handling is how the slim profile doesn’t stop the phone from being too broad for a comfortable grip, and that the lock button isn’t tactile enough for a phone user to confidently enable or lock the device without visual confirmation. The Home button had the opposite problem, where the tactile feedback hinted that it’s a very thin plastic that could give way if we were to press it frequently (not a good sign for Home buttons).

Aesthetically, the ZenFone AR’s rear doesn’t do the phone justice. We didn’t mind the outdated burnished faux leather look (fashion is cyclical, after all) but the average consumer deserves better than a plastic imitation when they are paying for a phone to the tune of S$1,198. A polished glass rear or an aluminum back (as seen on lower-priced phones like Xiaomi Mi 6, HTC U11, Oppo R11) would likely be more attractive, and definitely less patronizing to both fans and converts. 

What's worse is that the camera system housing ruins the 'leather' appearance further by tacking on a raised metal plate on a prominent part of the device, which is more distracting than plastering a tacky brand logo across the phone’s rear.  While our photos above don't really convey the unappealing rear back design, you would likely agree with us once you've tried handling it at the storefront.

Ugly appearance aside, the plastic-based burnished leather look makes the rear durable against scratches, and it does hide the antenna lines by simply obscuring them.

Display & Audio

The display is a 5.7-inch, Quad HD (2,560 x 1,440 pixels resolution) Super AMOLED display with a 79% screen-to-body ratio. It’s made of Gorilla Glass 4. ASUS noted that it has a 1ms response time and 2ms persistence (a metric for motion blur reduction that affects VR experiences).

The Super AMOLED display has the common properties and expectations of AMOLED screens where it leans towards a warmer color temperature, and that's most visible in the whites of our test image (the snow-capped mountains). This characteristic lends its vibrant appearance, which may be a preferred experience for some users. It doesn't have the same type of content upscaling technology found in the Sony Xperia XZ Premium, so our Full HD (1080p) test image does not render as sharply as it did on the Sony 4K HDR phone.

On another screen related note, we found the ASUS Smart Brightness toggle found inside the Gallery app is buggy. Technically, it’s supposed to brighten any picture or video content viewed through the Gallery app. In our experience, it actually dims the display when you are already operating at maximum brightness (from our understanding, if the screen cannot be brighter, it shouldn’t adjust any further and most certainly not make it less bright than it already is). Take note that this is not related to the phone’s brightness settings, which is located in the traditional Settings app.

Its external speakers are serviceable, and it uses the same “5-magnet NXP Amp” profile found on recent ZenFone models. Like the ZenFone Zoom S, the phone did not sacrifice the 3.5mm audio port, and it has been certified for Hi-Res Audio, making it compatible with fellow Hi-Res Audio headphones.

UI & Features

The ASUS ZenFone AR uses Android 7.0 OS (Nougat) with its very own skin, ZenUI 3.0. ASUS did away with the juvenile gradient outlook of its earlier skins by opting for single-hue palettes instead. Their notifications dropdown and settings have also turned a new leaf with a cleaner look, although it uses a garish shade of cyan on white background by default, making it difficult to work with under bright sunlight.

Google Tango AR

We’ve actually covered the finer details of Tango back when it was known as Project Tango (and when it first debuted on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro here). However, the project itself is a massive undertaking, so we’ll take the opportunity to check out its current iteration – on top of trying the ZenFone AR’s augmented reality capabilities.

In a nutshell, the "Tango" term refers to the entire ecosystem that makes augmented reality apps functional on a smartphone. It requires a combination of sensors and Google’s software, and it allows a smartphone to understand human concepts like three-dimensional physical space, relative distance, and depth-perception, all via its motion-tracking features. Once the ZenFone AR understands "computer vision", the phone can generate assets to enhance user experience. In the case of a smartphone, such assets are limited to your phone’s display. Ideally, combining augmented reality with the convenience of a phone means getting useful help and information at your fingertips.

To utilize Tango, the ZenFone AR uses ASUS’ TriCam camera system. As the name implies, it combines the effort of three different components to give Tango the data it needs. The standard 23-megapixel rear camera acts as Tango’s eyes, while the motion-tracking sensor repositions the phone relative to its surroundings. Finally, the depth-sensing sensor offers an accurate measurement between real-world objects in front of the ZenFone AR.

Play

We have a short video showcasing various AR-type apps on the ZenFone AR (above). There’s no doubt that ASUS’s hardware is sufficient for Tango, since the TriCam camera system allows it to measure distance rather accurately, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor is sufficient at rendering assets in a timely manner, provided that you don’t use AR for an extended period of time.

By far, the most useful feature that also demonstrated Tango’s capabilities was Measure (a Google made app), and it was limited to the phone camera’s depth-sensing capabilities. To calculate distance, it fires infrared beams at real-world objects, and it waits for the beam to bounce back. That makes it hard to measure large distances or open spaces since the infrared beam would not be able to travel back to the phone.

At this stage, AR-related ideas have been quite sensible in general – you only need to look towards the camera-based apps like Google Translate, or Samsung’s Bixby Vision, and its rival alternative Google Goggles. Other AR implementations have been covered via the Lenovo phone as well, but we felt that it was limited in practicality. You can also see a list of compatible Project Tango apps here.

The pre-installed AR apps don’t exploit the precision offered by Google Tango, and neither do they add value like the examples provided above. It’s a mixed bag of half-baked content, bloatware, and blatant advertising. For instance, the Raise pet AR app is an incomplete game with broken links to absent assets, and the visualization apps are nothing short of advertisements for their respective brands – be it furniture or car. You can scale some of the graphical assets to fit into any space, which defeats the purpose of Tango being accurate to the centimeter. While we may seem critical of ASUS’s choice in tie-ups, the biggest responsibility lies with Google, since the growth of AR is largely dependent on their support and their blessings (if you want your app to make it to the app store).

While ASUS offers a functional AR-capable smartphone, the current slew of compatible apps leaves plenty to be desired. AR technology is limited to its implementation, and it is not much more practical than where the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro left it at, even if it’s better in technique.

Google Daydream VR

Daydream is Google’s VR branding term and platform. While smartphone VR isn’t a new concept, Google’s implementation would make it possible for capable Android smartphones to run VR apps, which are made available on Google Play.

There is one catch – to use Google’s VR platform, you’ll need their proprietary remote control, since it’s paired with the Daydream app on the phone. It comes with the Daydream View – the proprietary headset for fitting your phone within. Sadly, the Daydream View headset and remote aren’t officially sold by Google in Singapore (although you can find them listed on online shopping sites).

Like Tango, Daydream’s practicality is limited to the apps that are available in the store, but it was nowhere as desolate as AR (given that it had more time to grow). Both pre-installed apps and random VR apps we tried felt fluid, easy to understand, albeit simple in concept.

The Daydream View headset and controller are quite intuitive for most Google VR apps because of the view-centering feature that also re-calibrates your controller with ease. Games work best with the VR ecosystem, and it’s the only genre that works well at the moment. The ZenFone AR itself is powerful enough to run VR smoothly, and we’d recommend that you keep VR operation strictly to short bursts if you care for the phone (it gets really hot after extended use).

Between LG’s, Samsung’s, and now ASUS’s VR implementation, the Samsung Gear VR headset and its accompanying phone still feels the best, but none of them can hold a candle to the dedicated-hardware Oculus Rift headset when it comes to handling more rapid head movement.

Benchmark performance

The ASUS ZenFone AR comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 quad-core chipset, backed by 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. According to ASUS Singapore, these component choices are sufficient to power the phone’s AR and VR content properly – we agree that it works well, generally speaking.

We’ve also noted (in our Overview section) that the Snapdragon 821 processor is a 2016 chipset, while flagship smartphones from April 2017 and later are now touting the current-gen Snapdragon 835. Even with an impressive RAM allotment and fairly generous storage space, we believe that the Zenfone AR will be up against very fierce competition at its asking price.

As it is ASUS’s most technologically adept phone to date, we will compare it to others with similar hardware, or rivals with similar price tags. The ZenFone 3 Deluxe is also included in our comparisons for reference.

Sunspider Javascript

SunSpider JavaScript measures the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. The ZenFone AR was certainly fast at loading news sites and e-commerce sites we’d usually visit.

Quadrant

Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. Take this benchmark with a grain of salt, because both the U11 and XZ Premium massively underperformed here. Also, the ZenFone AR underperformed when compared to the less powerful ZenFone 3 Deluxe, when it’s supposed to report numbers that are closer to the LG G6 instead.

3DMark Sling Shot

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. We're running this benchmark in Unlimited mode, which ignores screen resolutions. The ZenFone AR performed better than we expected, as it’s ahead of the LG G6 (which is also equipped with the Snapdragon 821 chipset).

Imaging

The ASUS ZenFone AR uses a 23-megapixels resolution Sony Exmor RS IMX318 sensor for its rear shooter. That’s the same sensor found on the ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the Xiaomi Mi Note 2. It’s further supported by a six-element lens with an aperture of f/2.0, 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization for photos (shifting and pivoting compensation for both pitch and yaw), and TriTech Autofocus – a combination of laser, phase detection, and contrast detection autofocus that debuted on the ZenFone 3.

Within the default phone app, the ZenFone AR packs 20 shooting modes. Notable ones include Manual (self-explanatory) and HDR Pro, which adjusts the brightness of the resulting photo with its own algorithm.

The image quality seems to be on par with what the ZenFone 3 Deluxe offered.  Good points are its color control, and its general attention to detail in the focused area (center of the image, around the War Machine figurine). Like its peer, it suffers from the lack of detail and higher noise levels when you are away from the focused area – the white halo around the vodka bottle is still present even if it’s less pronounced, but it came at a cost of sharpness (check out the embossed logo figurehead and compare it to the image produced by its preceding device). Quality-wise, the imaging is functional, but it's certainly below expectations for S$1,198, seeing how the cheaper ZenFone 3 Deluxe’s image quality was already “a little disappointing”.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The ASUS ZenFone AR has 3,300mAh with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. ASUS said that their Snapdragon 821 was specially tweaked to work well with AR and VR, and that would certainly explain the drastic drop in battery life when compared to the 3,000Mah ASUS ZenFone 3 Deluxe. The performance is also on par with the 3,300mAh LG G6, so the findings here are acceptable, even if it’s not the best in its price tier.

Conclusion

The ASUS ZenFone AR has an average battery uptime for a phone that does regular smartphone tasks expectedly, and it’s sufficient for performing its intended AR purposes. If we’re looking strictly at the ZenFone range, this is certainly ASUS’s most powerful phone to date, even if it has subpar imaging performance for its class. Moderate phone capabilities aside, the ridiculous asking price begets certain baseline smartphone expectations, which ASUS seems to actively work against on multiple points –they are listed below.

Do you really need AR and VR today?

Google Tango and the augmented reality it provides could have been a unique selling point, but there’s the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro which already offers that at S$300 less (and our Phab 2 Pro review was hardly glowing, either). There’s new, but no groundbreaking AR applications since the Phab 2 Pro. The showcase apps are also impractical, as detailed in our review. Given the phone’s general performance and its niche offering, we were expecting it to compete against the Phab 2 Pro by being better-specced, with better handling, at a better price, instead of being more expensive for very little difference. As a consumer, AR doesn’t offer any immediate practicality, and as a startup app developer, you’d likely go for the cheapest Tango alternative in an attempt to manage limited funds for R&D.

On the other hand, the phone's VR implementation feels better thought-out than AR, but it is still a toy at its current stage of development, so it doesn’t add anything new to the stagnated VR scene for smartphones. The ZenFone AR’s VR is further hampered by requiring buyers to go through third-party Daydream View resellers, increasing its final bill. For ASUS to argue that it’s the only phone to offer both Google AR and VR technologies would require us to factor in the headset as a sunk cost, which is another S$110 to S$150 extra to the phone’s S$1,198 price tag. In comparison, Samsung generously offered a free VR headset for getting their Galaxy S7, and 20% off accessories (like a headset) for getting Galaxy S8 at their respective launches. Furthermore, the current crop of Samsung handsets and next batch of LG flagship phones will get Daydream support too, so you also wouldn’t move away from an S8 to the ZenFone AR if you specifically want Daydream VR.

Stiff competition

While other 2017 flagships don’t have that AR ecosystem going on at this depth, they don’t need to, because they offer far more practical features. Huawei P10 may have a similar class SoC to the ZenFone AR, but it costs S$400 less and it has a wicked dual rear camera system. Sony offers a 4K HDR display alongside intersting camera features with up-to-date specs at S$100 less. Samsung and LG are playing their own game with impressive display ratios and appealing build quality at lower price points, while the HTC U11 marks itself as the first true 2017 flagship smartphone in Singapore that’s under the thousand-dollar threshold and has proven to be a good all-rounder. Other Snapdragon 821 phones currently sit around the S$800 price range, but more importantly, they had a better all-round standing even if the unique features are lacking. We’ve also explained (twice) in our Overview and Benchmark Performance sections as to why the phone should not be asking for such a high price.

Too little, too expensive and too late?

In a nutshell, the ZenFone AR isn’t a competitive option in the current smartphone climate and to say otherwise would be misleading to our astute readers. As iterated in the beginning, it was a promising handset when it was showcased in January 2017. However, it is debuting in a market where more powerful devices have been around for months. Granted that if you close an eye to the processor used, the rest of the specs on the ZenFone AR still rank well like its nice screen, ample built-in storage, decent audio characteristics and others. The problems with the ZenFone AR start to surface when you start using the device such as its less than appealing handling and design choices - especially, when the basic ZenFone 3 actually feels better than the ZenFone AR that costs more than twice its asking price. While it manages decent overall performance, where it lets its guard down is in the imaging department. It's not bad, but we've certainly experienced better for less. This concern becomes more acute when you consider that imaging ranks very high on smartphone capabilities these days and more so when you pay top drawer price.

So what are you paying for? Basically, only because the ZenFone AR is the first to support both Google Tango, and Daydream VR. But we've already talked about the concerns we've for AR and VR, both from the market adoption perspective and how the device is positioned. If you’re serious about the development of AR, we’d recommend the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro instead since it offers the same key feature from the same developing firm at a much lower price and you've a much larger screen to enjoy the AR effects, which you can personally experience in this local exhibition at the ArtScience museum.

What about for regular phone users? If for some reason you need to have the most 'advanced' handset with AR capabilities to toy around, then yes, we cannot deny that the ASUS ZenFone AR is the best option there is at the moment. For everyone else looking for the next best upgrade, you might want to pass on the ZenFone AR as it's unjustifiably expensive, with unimpressive design and performance when compared to the current crop of flagship smartphones. As such, The ASUS ZenFone AR sadly doesn’t fix the problems left behind by the lackluster ZenFone 3 Deluxe.

Last, but not least, ASUS has only set aside a 100 sets for retail locally and that only confirms its status as a technology showcase model rather than a bona fide option to bolster the ASUS ZenFone lineup - at least in the local context.

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