Review: Asus ZenFone 4

Camera and Conclusion

Camera

Click for full-size pics - Picture 1 Picture 2

Click for full-size pics - Picture 3 Picture 4

I'd say the strongest part of the ZenFone 4 is its main camera. Quick to focus and producing clean, crisp images on a bright day, it's miles better than the wide-angle second camera, and I'd recommend users staying away from that unless absolutely necessary - it's pointless in anything other than perfect ambient light. Asus makes bold claims for low-light performance, though, like many, even the main camera struggles to focus and pick out adequate detail, even if you go on over to manual (Pro) mode. The longer exposures and relatively small sensors mean that no smartphone is great in this respect, and optical image stabilisation, present here, can only help so much. HDR, too, is reasonable, if not spectacular, and takes a while to process.

Videos can be recorded at 4K30 while the slow-motion mode goes up to 720p/240. Taken by the main camera, video quality is about average for a phone of this ilk. Electronic image stabilisation helps smooth the judder, but I'd recommend using a tripod for any serious footage.

Conclusion

The Asus ZenFone 4 is something of a Marmite smartphone. Slim, relatively light and possessing an above-average main camera, punchy audio, solid battery life and decent build quality, Asus gets a number of important factors right for this upper-midrange handset. However, the list of potential gripes is equally as long, with the ZenFone 4 outfitted with a slippy back, average screen, and, for the price, only a Snapdragon 630 chipset.

This means that the £450 retail price is hard to stomach, especially when some of the competition, notably One Plus, has upgraded its latest price-comparable flagship phones to the far more potent Snapdragon 835.

Bottom line: Asus is moving in the right direction with its ZenFone line, but this particular model needs to be around £350 for it to make sense in a congested market chock-full of impressive competition.

Asus ZenFone 4

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The Asus ZenFone 4 is available to purchase from Amazon.

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