Special, strong and cheap: Asus Zenfone 7 Pro is a flagship killer

The Asus Zenfone 7 Pro is a top smartphone with a sophisticated reversible camera, high performance and great endurance. With a price of 800 euros and an excellent overall impression, it makes most of the upper-class competitors look rather old.

Asus is known, among other things, for its excellent notebooks and gaming devices, but its smartphones have been a niche for years. This is by no means justified, as the Zenfone 6 proved last year with its innovative reversible camera and a strong price-performance ratio. Now the successor is on the market, which shows that the Taiwanese manufacturer knows how to make something good even better without overshooting the mark.

Hard alright

Main camera, …

(Photo: kwe)

Asus has largely retained the design. With its sanded edge around the display, it looks a bit old-fashioned, on the other hand, in the uniformity with rounded front and back sides, it is also refreshingly different. In addition, the glass gem becomes a bit more handy.

Like its predecessor, the Asusphone 7 Pro is a bit chubby, but you can forgive it because of its 5000 mAh battery. It is a little more important that the device pulls down a lot with 230 grams in your pocket. Overall, the smartphone looks very high quality, as one can expect from Asus.

The Zenfone has made a big step forward in terms of the display. Instead of an LCD like its predecessor, the 7-series model now has an almost 6.7-inch OLED display. It shines with magnificent colors and strong contrasts and with great luminosity. It also has a high refresh rate of 90 Hertz and is protected by the current Gorilla Glass 6.

… wide-angle camera, …

(Photo: kwe)

The fingerprint sensor is no longer on the back, but in the power switch on the right. He reacts quickly and precisely. If you want, you can assign additional functions to the key. For example, you can take screenshots by pressing twice or start a freely selectable app by pressing the power button longer. You won't find a jack socket in the frame, the Zenfone 7 Pro joins the ranks of smartphones without a special headphone input. In addition, the device is not waterproof.

Very good flip camera

While when the Zenfone 6 was introduced, it was impossible to know how durable the mechanism of the flip camera is, after almost a year and a half you know that it is robust enough not to shorten the life of the smartphone. In the successor, the motor is a little quieter and more precise and it is fun to manually extend and retract the camera with the toggle button on the camera app. In practice, however, this is left to the reliable automatic system, which also quickly retracts the notches when the sensors register a possible fall.

… telephoto camera, …

(Photo: kwe)

Instead of two, the Zenfone 7 Pro has three cameras: a 46-megapixel main camera, a macro-capable 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera with three times optical magnification. Main and telephoto notches are optically stabilized.

Each of the three cameras delivers good to very good results, you won't find any real weaknesses. There may be devices that give better laboratory results, but the overall impression of the triple camera is excellent. The smartphone can also record 8K videos at 30 frames per second.

… panorama.

(Photo: kwe)

Then there are tricks that rigid cameras cannot offer. These include automatic object tracking and the easiest way to take panoramic photos: press the shutter release, hold your smartphone still. The flip camera does the rest. And when it turns into a front camera, the Zenfone 7 becomes the undisputed selfie champion.

The finest interior fittings

Asus did not mess with the inner workings either. The device is powered by Qualcomm's top 5G chip Snapdragon 865 Plus, which can access a whopping 8 gigabytes (GB) of RAM with the fastest currently available LPDDR 5 standard. The 256 GB internal memory is also up-to-date with UFS 3.1. If you need more memory, you can insert microSD cards, which does not take up space for an optional second SIM card.

In addition, there is the fat battery, which brings the device effortlessly even over playful days. It is a shame that the battery cannot be charged inductively, but not bad. A no-frills Android 10 is used as the operating system, with Asus promising two major updates.

Great value for money

For 800 euros you can hardly get a better smartphone than the Asus Zenfone 7 Pro. Flagships with more powerful cameras are usually much more expensive, while competitors at the same price cannot keep up with the exquisite interior. However, you have to accept the somewhat bulky shape and the heavy weight to be completely enthusiastic about the smartphone. If you want to save, you can also choose the simple variant. For 100 euros less you only have to do without optical image stabilization and "only" get the normal Snapdragon 865 and 128 GB flash memory.