Asus ROG Phone 3 review
Our Verdict
The Asus ROG Telephone 3 is a powerful and robust Android gaming phone, although it gets hot easily and can be cumbersome to utilize. It's surprisingly well rounded for a gaming-focused handset, though buyers interested in other luxuries, similar camera quality, may want to consider a more than traditional flagship phone like the Galaxy S20 or OnePlus 8 Pro instead.
For
- Powerful gaming performance
- Long battery life
- Pretty display
- Useful native software
Against
- Gets hot quickly
- Extremely expensive (probably)
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Asus ROG Phone 3 is a powerful and robust Android gaming telephone, although it gets hot easily and tin be cumbersome to employ. It'south surprisingly well rounded for a gaming-focused handset, though buyers interested in other luxuries, similar camera quality, may want to consider a more traditional flagship phone like the Galaxy S20 or OnePlus 8 Pro instead.
Pros
- +
Powerful gaming performance
- +
Long bombardment life
- +
Pretty display
- +
Useful native software
Cons
- -
Gets hot quickly
- -
Extremely expensive (probably)
Asus ROG Phone 3: Specs
Starting price: €999 ($1,184)
Brandish: vi.6-inch AMOLED (2340x1080; 144 Hz)
CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus
RAM: 12GB, 16GB
Storage: 512GB
SD Card slot: None
Rear cameras: 64MP wide (ƒ/1.viii), 13MP ultrawide (ƒ/ii.iv), 5MP macro (ƒ/2.0)
Front photographic camera: 24MP (ƒ/2.0)
Battery: six,000 mAh
Charging: 30 watts
Security: Fingerprint sensor, PIN
Operating system: Android 10
Size: half dozen.7 10 3.1 10 0.4 inches
Weight: 8.5 ounces
The Asus ROG Phone iii may non be as powerful equally the upcoming PS5 or Xbox Serial 10, just information technology's a heck of a lot more practical. Retrieve about information technology. Which is going to get more apply: A device that y'all have to hook up to your living room TV for games and movies, or a device that you lot can take with you lot admittedly anywhere and use for whatsoever number of productivity and leisure activities?
And withal, the ROG Telephone 3 isn't just the best gaming telephone available right now; information technology'due south arguably one of the best handheld gaming consoles out there — provided you like Android games, at any charge per unit.
Equally a gaming device, the ROG Phone iii succeeds in just about every way. It plays high-end mobile games beautifully, and its born software gives you all the tools yous need to customize and optimize your experience. Long bombardment life means that y'all tin game for hours, and a handy included fan/kickstand makes it easy to hook upward a controller and play for hours. Naturally, since the phone is and then powerful, it besides excels at about day-to-mean solar day tasks.
Granted, the ROG Phone 3's ambitious specs come with some drawbacks. The phone heats up very easily when gaming, and using the fan to keep it cool creates a whole new set of problems. Information technology's too possible to chew through the bombardment pretty fast, depending on how fancy you desire your games to expect. The phone'south sheer size makes information technology a little unwieldy for everyday use — only it'southward still not quite big plenty to stream PC or console games in great detail.
Still, if y'all want a gaming organisation that besides happens to be a well-rounded smartphone, the ROG Phone iii is a compelling, albeit potentially expensive, option. Read on for our total Asus ROG Telephone 3 review.
Asus ROG Phone 3: Price and availability
The Asus ROG Phone iii is not widely available nevertheless. In that location's no official U.South. pricing for the ROG Phone 3 right at present, and there won't be until September. In the meantime, Asus France has listed the 12GB RAM variant for €999 ($1,184) and the 16GB RAM variant for €1,099 ($1,302). Both come with 512GB of storage, and in that location'south no SD card slot to expand that further. Granted, phones in Europe tend to be a little more expensive than phones in the Usa, merely we nonetheless wouldn't wait the ROG Telephone 3 for less than $i,000 when it makes its style here.
Asus ROG Phone 3: Design
The showtime thing I noticed about the ROG Phone 3 is that it's enormous. The phone itself is 6.seven inches long, which will surely try even the deepest pockets. Information technology's also quite heavy at 8.5 ounces. Carrying it around tin exist a pain (virtually literally), and it's non easy to concur for long periods of time — for the oestrus as much as for the weight, but we'll get to that.
While I never did quite get used to the screen'southward ratio, the ROG Telephone 3 is a pretty device otherwise. The front of the device is almost all screen, with small black bezels on the top and bottom. On the right, in that location's a ability push and a volume button. On the back, there's a shiny reflective surface with a tasteful ROG logo in the center. While the telephone is a chip of a fingerprint magnet, I do accept to requite it credit for some of its subtle artful choices.
The left side of the phone is where things get interesting, as in that location's a hard-to-remove plastic plug that reveals a proprietary port. This is where the fan plugs in, and I tin safely say that the ROG Telephone 3 is the very showtime smartphone I've ever used to come with its ain external cooling organisation.
While the fan enables some cool features (and is downright necessary to play demanding games at college settings), I establish myself less thrilled with the device than I'd hoped. Outset off, the fan can be a existent pain to connect and disconnect, between the hard-to-remove rubber plug, extendable clamp and very tight kickstand. While the fan is not that loud on its own, it's close enough to the telephone'south mics that it can be extremely disruptive if you get a telephone call or need to record something. It besides drains the battery to the point where you'll probably want to plug in when yous employ it.
Asus ROG Phone 3: Display
The Asus ROG Phone 3 features a 6.six-inch, 2340 x 1080 AMOLED screen, which supports frame rates upwardly to 144 Hz. I never quite got used to the extremely wide 19:five:9 aspect ratio, but otherwise, it'south a gorgeous display, with rich colors: 168% of the sRGB spectrum, to be precise, with a Delta-E color accuracy score of 0.31. The latter even beats out the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus' Delta-Eastward score of 0.36. (Numbers closer to cipher are better.)
In terms of brightness, the screen tin get up to 419 nits under ordinary circumstances, and upwardly to 646 nits with automatic brightness on. Considering that even reckoner monitors tend to max out somewhere around 350 nits, the ROG Telephone 3 is plenty vivid, and I had no trouble reading the screen in wide daylight.
The telephone'due south frame rate is what really sets it apart from non-gaming models. By and large speaking, information technology'due south a huge benefaction in demanding games, and not really necessary otherwise. Simply information technology's also easy to command, thanks to Asus's proprietary software, so information technology does no harm, at worst, and a lot of good, at all-time.
Asus ROG Phone 3: Camera
With three powerful rear cameras and one loftier-res front camera, the Asus ROG Phone 3 doesn't skimp on picture quality. At the aforementioned time, information technology's arguably not upwards to the standards of a phone that sells itself on its camera, such every bit the iPhone 11 Pro or the Pixel four.
Without going into excruciating item about the cameras, the iii lenses on the back incorporate a 64-MP primary shooter, a 13-MP ultrawide one and a 5-MP macro, respectively, while the one on the front is rated at 24MP. There are a respectable number of options for taking photos and videos, including Pro Video, Fourth dimension Lapse, Motion Tracking, Portrait, Dark Mode and Macro — which is specially interesting, since information technology lets you get ultra-close-ups, within but a few inches of your subject.
Since I don't think many people will be buying the ROG Telephone 3 primarily for its camera, I spent almost of my time in its general Photo mode, and was reasonably pleased with the results. Indoors shots were sharp, although the colour balance felt a niggling washed out, peculiarly when the camera had to balance a lot of dissimilar colors at once, every bit in the instance of books or DVD cases. Outdoor shots fared much improve, with more than naturalistic colour balance — although reds felt supersaturated and not as lifelike as greens, whites and blues.
The ROG Telephone iii'south camera options are neither as subtle nor every bit all-encompassing as what yous'd get from a defended camera phone, but it does boast some very powerful hardware and enough tweakable options that you lot tin can do some impressive photography with it, if you're and then inclined.
My one large complaint was that no matter what I did, the camera would non automatically rotate horizontal shots. If you take a lot of pictures and demand to upload them afterward, having to rotate them manually, one at a time, is an enormous hurting, and something that barely whatever other telephone forces you lot to practice. I can't imagine why Asus made this baffling choice, and I hope a futurity software update offers some kind of motorcar-rotate option.
Asus ROG Telephone 3: Performance
A gaming phone — specially one that costs more $1,000 — lives or dies by its performance, and the Asus ROG Phone three has a lot to offer in this category. Allow'south get the easy stuff out of the fashion first: Everyday tasks are effortless on the ROG Phone three. Social media, calls, texts and so along pose no challenge to a system that's geared for gaming, then navigation is quick and responsive, videos are shine and colorful and if there's an app that the phone can't handle, I couldn't find it.
In terms of bogus benchmarks, the ROG Phone 3 scored 3,393 on the Geekbench multi-core test. Compare and dissimilarity to the Samsung Milky way S20, which scored 3,147, and the iPhone eleven Pro, which scored iii,509. With its Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus processor and up to 16 GB RAM, the ROG Phone 3 is one of the most powerful phones on the market, although Apple's A13 scrap seems to nonetheless accept a slight edge.
The more interesting question is how the ROG Phone 3 handles games, and the answer is: extremely well, with one moderate exception. The timing on this ROG Phone 3 review worked out extremely well, as Bandai Namco has just released Tales of Crestoria: an intricate mobile RPG that can have total advantage of powerful phones with detailed and demanding graphical settings. (More Western fans really need to play the Tales series, merely I digress.)
As someone who's been playing the Tales series since the PlayStation days, I can safely say that the ROG Telephone three fabricated Tales of Crestoria expect ameliorate than any of the series entries on the Xbox 360 or the PS3; the character models gave the PS4 entries a run for their coin. Battles were fast and fluid, even when characters launched one particle-effects-laden special attack after another, and the colorful screen made every grapheme look unique and full of personality. The organisation's robust speakers also gave me a lot of control over the book level, and sounded surprisingly good for music, voicework and sound effects.
The ROG Telephone 3 too plays very nicely with game-streaming services, such every bit Google Stadia and Nvidia GeForce At present. In my tests, games similar Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Doom Eternal ran very fluidly, although the screen was yet too small — and perhaps a piffling too dark — to brand out a lot of the fine details necessary for those games. It'south a workable option if y'all need a second screen, although a tablet would probably work better.
What helps Tales of Crestoria, and other enervating games Android like PUBG and Fortnite, excel is the ROG Phone 3's Game Genie overlay software, as well as its optional Ten Manner. Without going into excruciating particular about either function, Game Genie (non to exist confused with the '90s cheat lawmaking generator of the same name) is a simple overlay that lets you optimize your games as yous play them.
By simply swiping from the left of the screen, you lot can apply the Game Genie to control frame rate, brightness and other performance metrics for whatsoever Android game. You can as well tell it to cake calls and texts while the game is open up, if you want some uninterrupted gaming fourth dimension. Game Genie doesn't irksome down games at all, and information technology'southward trivially simple to use. It'south a smart and functional way for the ROG Phone 3 to distinguish itself as a "gaming telephone" beyond simply offering powerful specs.
10 Mode, on the other hand, is a way to sort of supercharge the organization specs at the cost of estrus output and battery power. There are three different levels, which get progressively more powerful as you lot get. Level 3, in fact, requires you to plug in the fan, or information technology won't even activate. Ten Mode is a worthwhile choice, although generally speaking, even the most enervating Android games are well within the ROG Phone three'southward regular parameters, and then I wonder how useful information technology will be.
(If you decide to employ the ROG Phone 3 as an emulator, of grade, your performance requirements may vary. But since that'south legally murky territory, that's all we can say well-nigh it hither.)
10 Mode does highlight the biggest problem with the ROG Phone 3, however: It generates a massive amount of heat. The phone comes with a rubbery grip that covers the back of the device, and I learned quickly that it's not just for show. After gaming for a while, without the grip, the phone feels nearly too hot to touch. Overheating tin be a problem for games like Tales of Crestoria, which crashed frequently once the phone started to get too warm. The fan helps mitigate this trouble, to an extent, but that also ways you'll demand a cumbersome, battery-draining attachment to facilitate the phone's principal activity.
Gaming phones are going to get hot; at that place's no escaping the laws of physics. Just when it gets hot enough to regularly crash games, the tradeoff feels less worthwhile.
Asus ROG Phone 3: 5G connectivity
The Asus ROG Phone iii supports 5G from most GSM-based networks in the United States, including AT&T and T-Mobile. (The telephone doesn't support Verizon mobile networks, as I learned the difficult way after trying to insert my ain SIM bill of fare.) I don't live near a 5G hotspot, and was unable to examination this connectivity firsthand, but subscribers who have access to this engineering should be able to leverage information technology with the ROG Phone iii.
Asus ROG Phone three: Bombardment
1 affair that consistently impressed me virtually the Asus ROG Phone iii was its battery life. In our Tom'due south Guide battery examination, which sets the screen brightness to 150 nits and measures how long it takes the phone to run down while continuously browsing the Web on an LTE network, the ROG Telephone 3 lasted for an impressive xiv hours and thirty minutes. Compare and contrast to the ix hours and 31 minutes you go from a Galaxy S20 or the 10 hours and 24 minutes you go from an iPhone eleven Pro, and the ROG Telephone iii has a big edge in this category.
Granted, its 6,000 mAh battery contributes to the phone'due south weight, and you lot'll never go 14 hours of uptime if you use the phone primarily for gaming. Merely information technology's an impressive number nonetheless. The telephone tin can fully accuse in less than three hours with a standard 5V charger, although it doesn't support wireless charging.
Asus ROG Phone 3: Software
The Asus ROG Telephone three'southward most of import pieces of software are its Game Genie and 10 Way features, discussed in the Functioning department in a higher place. From an OS standpoint, the telephone runs an extremely make clean installation of Android 10. All the same, the phone gets software updates from both Google and Asus, since X Mode and certain other gaming features are built right into the Os itself.
Asus has non discussed just how long it plans to back up the ROG Telephone iii with security and performance updates. However, based on its strategy with the original ROG Phone and the ROG Phone two, buyers should expect at to the lowest degree one year of support, and possibly no more ii years. Unfortunately, there'due south no standardized amount of time for Android phones to receive support, and so we can only say that this is (probably) less than the three years of support offered by Google and Samsung.
Asus ROG Phone three: Verdict
Our Asus ROG Phone three review discussed how the device runs hot, and how it will likely be extremely expensive once information technology hits the United States. But in spite of a few shortcomings, the ROG Phone 3 accomplishes almost exactly what it sets out to do. It runs demanding Android games beautifully, and gives users a ready of intuitive, flawlessly integrated tools to optimize their experiences.
At the moment, there aren't many truthful "gaming phones" on the market place, since Razer seems to be out of the pic for right now, and Xiaomi'southward models are a little niche and not sold in many parts of the world. Every bit such the ROG Phone 3 is 1 of the merely viable options if y'all want a phone that's a game console showtime and an everyday accompaniment second.
In the same price range, it's still worth considering the Galaxy S20. That phone's raw power is enough to run simply about any Android game you'd desire, and the camera takes much prettier pictures. But who needs pictures when you've got a portable panel in your pocket?
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/asus-rog-phone-3
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