Review: Asus ROG 5 Phone

[gentle music]

Gaming on a phone kind of sucks.

Your hands can feel strained, the screen feels hot

and your fingers can block your view of the action.

Well, enter the ASUS R O G phone 5,

that stands for Republic of Gamers

the company's line of gaming products.

This Android phone has several cool tricks up its sleeve

to make mobile gaming a whole lot more fun.

For starters there are two touch sensitive

ultrasonic buttons on the right edge of the phone.

You can map these to touchscreen buttons in your games

effectively reducing the need to touch the screen.

They accept a wide variety of gestures,

like taps and swipes.

It's really granular.

Now, some games offer support for physical controllers,

which is great, but the vast majority don't.

The R O G is special because ASUS's Game Genie software

lets you map every single button on a controller

to a function in the game

and you don't need to buy ASUS's Kunai 3 game pad

to do this.

It works with Xbox, PlayStation,

or Google Stadia controllers too.

It takes a few minutes to set it all up

but it's easy to get the hang of it.

By the way,

you still might want to pick this controller up

because you can practically turn the phone

into a Nintendo Switch of sorts, which is awesome.

Game Genie is full of all sorts of tricks,

you can pull it out mid game,

and disable calls and notifications,

it lets you monitor your phone's temperature,

frames per second,

and you can even pull up Google search results

if you're stuck somewhere in mid game.

It also makes it very easy to record your gameplay

which might be important if you want to stream.

Another special software feature is X mode.

Turn it on

and it'll offer up the maximum amount of power possible

with the Snapdragon 888 chip inside this phone

and it will restrict background activity from other apps,

so the phone is delivering the best performance

for your gameplay.

There are presets you can choose from

if you want to prolong battery life instead,

but all of this is very customizable

and something you don't really see in any other phones.

With X mode turned on

I found it delivered a smoother gaming experience

with demanding titles like Genshin Impact

compared to other flagship phones

like Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra.

It even scored slightly higher on benchmark tests

despite both phones using the same chip.

And finally, there is Armoury Crate.

It's your hub for all these software features

plus it lets you easily find good games

that support some of the key aspects of the phone

like the 144 Hertz screen refresh rate, for smoother gaming.

I prefer browsing this list

instead of spending a long time hunting for a game to play

on the Google play store.

Heat is a smartphone's biggest nemesis.

Phones heat up the longer you play games,

which eventually means performance will get throttled

as the phone tries to keep cool.

Now, ASUS has several tricks under the hood of this phone

to dissipate heat but one visible method,

the AeroActive Cooler 5.

It's sold separately but it's literally a fan

that clips onto the phone to potentially reduce temperatures

by as much as 10 degrees,

it even has two extra buttons you can use

to map to your games, a kickstand and a headphone jack.

The phone itself has a headphone jack, too,

so you can always plug in with your favorite headphones.

Now, gaming an X mode does mean the battery will take a hit.

You'll probably want to plug in while you play

and ASUS has thought of that too.

There are two charging ports on this phone, you can recharge

without a cable ever getting in the way.

Even better is the ability to slow charge it down

so the system doesn't produce as much heat.

Outside of gaming, the 6,000 mAh battery

usually lasts me a full day

with around 40% remaining before bed

and it does come with a 65 watt adapter

so you can fully recharge the phone in about an hour,

which is pretty amazing considering the capacity.

Other highlights include the really bright,

6.8 inch AMOLED screen

which also has that 144 Hertz refresh rate

for [indistinct] and responsiveness,

not to mention the dual front firing speakers,

which sounds pretty spectacular but it's not all rosy.

The camera system can take some pretty great photos

with the main 64 megapixel sensor

producing solid low light shots and portraits

but it doesn't match the features or quality

you'll find from other thousand dollar phones.

There's also no wireless charging,

there's no micro SD card slot, no Verizon support,

no water resistance, and ASUS has a poor track record

with issuing software updates.

Also, if you hate big screen phones

well, this is not something for you.

It's design will also split opinions, too.

Yes, this is a customizable RGB lighting system on the back.

Still, gaming phones aren't just about

having the best specs possible,

they're about making gaming more fun and comfortable

and the R O G phone 5 does just that.

Just make sure to pick up a controller

to get the most out of it.

It goes on sale later this year in the U S.

ASUS hasn't shared U S pricing yet,

but it'll cost 799 Euros

so it'll sit somewhere likely between $800 to $1,000

if last year's R O G phone 3 is any indication.

By making mobile gaming more ergonomic and comfortable,

the R O G phone 5 has me finally enjoying the experience

far longer than any other smartphone.