ASUS ROG Phone 6 Review – A Serious Gaming Phone

Among most segment available on the market today, we all do know there is several categories that usually attracts when comes to power, performance. That will always be the Flagship and Gaming segments. The ASUS ROG Phone series, as the name already implies, falls into the ultimate gaming segment in the market today with some features that is really hardcore even gaming itself.

Lets take a look in this review of the ASUS ROG Phone 6, a Qualcomm Flagship Elite Gaming phone offering from ASUS.

Unboxing

The ASUS ROG Phone 6 comes with the following

• ASUS ROG Phone 6
• Plastic Hard Case
• 65w fast charger
• USB C to C Braided Cable
• User Manual and Warranty Statement

Design

ASUS objective remains the same as the previous ROG phone, to bring in all the gaming in mind aesthetics in it. However you see it, you wanted just to pick up and looking at the back, which the red LED DARE TO PLAY glows up followed by the ROG RGB logo that is customizable for charging, notifications, calls, gaming, X MODE, just to name a few via the Armory crate app which we will touch in to it.

The back of the ROG Phone 6 is inspired by the ‘Cyberpunk’ approach which is a theme that represents the future of cities that we usually seen on games. The rest may look similar to the ROG Phone 5 series such as the form factor and build with extra protection at the back with Gorilla Glass 3. There is a reason why you see the build is bulky, which one of the reason was the Boron Nitride Thermal Compound was inside to constantly keep the device cool and reduce any possible throttling on the SOC. There is also a larger dual cell battery inside, which is a great combination of long lasting gameplay and speed formula for this phone.

Over on the sides, on the right hand side, there is a power button followed by Volume UP/Down buttons and a microphone. While on the left side there is a SIM Card/MicroSD card slot with slightly on the middle there is an additional USB C port and accessories pin ports for charging and attachments.

If you look closely on the left side top and bottom, you will spot a pair of pressure sensitive virtual triggers which acts like L1/R1 like your traditional game controller, giving additional access just like playing on a console with games such as Asphalt 9 and Call Of Duty Mobile. The bottom portion houses the microphone, USB C slot for data and charging and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Over on the top part of the phone there is a noise cancelling microphone .

Color Choices

You will have only two choice for this, Phantom Black, Storm White. To me both of it looks as appealing regardless. The ASUS ROG Phone 6 comes at a quite hefty weight of 239 Grams.

Display & Audio

The ASUS ROG Phone 6 display is one of the premium fast dynamic 165Hz, 6.78inch, AMOLED 1B displays which able to display up to 1080 x 2448 pixels with a density of 395PPI. This gives a color accurate display with smooth scrolling when browsing or just your normal day to day replying your social media feeds. Gaming is where the advantage comes with 720Hz touch sampling rate for fast touch responses with Delta-E < 1 color accuracy giving accurate visuals output with HDR10+. Further protection on the display is with the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.

Audio side, the ASUS ROG Phone 6 has a pair of front facing 5-magnet stereo speakers that is specifically tuned via Dirac HD Sound which is very loud, but clear with good bass and treble in any game or streaming environments, which in return, its an exhilarating experience combined with the displays.

Camera

When it comes to the camera setup, the ASUS ROG Phone 6 rear camera consists of one SONY IMX766 50MP camera with PDAF, one 13MP ultrawide camera, 5MP macro lens, followed by a single LED flash. While the camera got an upgrade, this changes the perception of gaming phones having sub par camera, the IMX766 is known to be a popular choice for some of the even higher end phones. Pictures taken were clear during day with good amount of light and clarity produced on each picture with good color reproduction and better contrasts. During night shots, it came may produce some amount of noise on environment shots with clear shadows and details produced much better compared to the ROG Phone 5s. The selfie images are bright and good during day time as well which is powered by a 12MP wide angle shooter with panorama.

A few shots were taken over different modes as above and the result are as above. A sample of 10x zoom, normal and automatic shots taken. Besides that other modes such as Macro and Light Trail shots mode are also supported over the rear camera.

On video recording you get support up to 8K at 24FPS, stutters are very minimal during our test with 4K 60FPS recording but it’s with represented with good amount of details during recording, even walking slightly faster can still capture recording fairly stable although OIS is not present.

Performance

When looking at the performance and hardware, the ROG Phone 6 is powered by the flagship range Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 5G Octa-Core Processor, up to 512GB of internal storage and whopping 16GB of RAM with Android 12 enhanced by the ROG UI which comes with Armory Crate app and Game Genie that allows you to customize your game quality, performance settings, RGB light customization, framerate, and the pressure sensitive side triggers.

Over to the gaming side, basically this phone will perform well on games such as Mobile Legends and Call of Duty Mobile with low mix medium settings applied and with such good lightweight feel on it. With Armory Crate, you can also monitor your game FPS information or even setup your in game recording to capture all you winning moments.

Above is the Benchmark performance, which delivers an overkill scores on each of the test between its graphics, and processor performance. The ROG Phone 6 is suitable for those seeking for a device that does all that is designed for gaming, some social media post, your day to day work, call and entertainment companion. eSports and flagship game titles will have absolute no issues with its powerful Adreno 730 GPU with Snapdragon Elite Gaming Certification, one of the best that you can look out for today.

Battery performance wise, you will get around 12 hours of it, a mix of calls, surfing, email, streaming, and a few Mobile Legends matches with brightness set to 50%. Turning on the battery saving mode under 20% will get you around extra 4 hours of conservative usage. The ASUS ROG Phone 6 comes with a 65W fast charger and built in 6000mAH capacity dual cell battery, which will charge up the phone to 60% from 10% in around 25min average. 

Specifications

Verdict & Conclusion 

The ASUS ROG Phone 6 is a gaming phone and a beast in every way that we see on a Smartphone. If you want the best of gaming and multi tasking, editing, work, social media, stream your movies, this phone can take it without a sweat. The camera is a marked improvement and ASUS proved that even gaming phone can be a capable camera shooter for your daily upload feeds. With a huge battery capacity and cooling system, you will not be disappointed as it can actually last through one day of usage.

Pros

• Good AMOLED display
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• Large battery standby capacity

Cons

• Definitely a heavy phone
• OIS is not present on the rear camera

Pricing and availability

As of this writing of the review, the phone is selling at a retail price from RM3599 for the 12GB/256GB configuration and RM4399 for 16GB/512GB from various online and ASUS outlet dealers.

For more information on the ASUS ROG Phone 6, Visit here to find out more.