Gadget review: Asus Zenfone 2 - Spoilt for choice

Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551MLRating 910Design With the Zenfone 2 ZE551ML Asus has improved on the body design of the Zenfone 5 The Zenfone 2 looks slimmer edgier and has a more premium feel to it Despite featuring a 55inch screen it looks smaller than its competitors The power button has been moved to the top whereas the volume rockers are placed right under the camera mdash a useful change that makes adjusting the volume easier even whileon a phone call The back cover gets a glossy silver metallic finish available only in ZE 551ML variants and offers decent gripRating 810Display The ZE551ML features a 55inch IPS display with Full HD resolution of 1920x1080 and pixel density of 400 ppi The indoor clarity is superb and a 178degree viewing angle makes it easy to use It also gets Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection to prevent unfortunate scratches However we faced lot of difficulty using it under sunlight The screen is very reflective and makes reading a painful task even in full brightnessRating 910Connectivity The ZE551ML is a dualSim device and supports 2G 3G and 4G LTE FDD Band 3 and TDD Band 40 networks However only Sim 1 supports all the three networks whereas the second Sim Sim 2 is limited to just 2G connection Other connectivity features include WiFi 80211 ac NFC Bluetooth 40 WiFi Direct WiFi Tethering Bluetooth Tethering Theres no support for OTG thoughRating 510Audio Despite the fact that Asus seems proud of the SonicMaster technology in the Zenfone 2 we found it disappointing The speaker placed at the bottom does a decent job while playing music but when it comes to listening to calls on loudspeaker the Zenfone 2 fails miserably Even during quiet hours one can hardly listen to the other party on the loudspeakerRating 910Camera The rear camera is a 13MP auto focus with dualLED flash and f20 aperture which allows it to capture decent pictures even in lowlife conditions The flash however is a bit outofplace as despite repetitive attempts we were unable to get any decent results with it We are impressed with 5MP secondary camera too which according to Asus comes with an 85degree wideangle lens Its easy to use and offers plenty of camera space its very useful while taking selfies its possible to also include large group using the selfie panorama mode We are also impressed with how Asus has managed to simplify things in the Zenfone 2 camera app offering live features such as adjustment of brightnessdarkness with a simple slider to initiate press your finger longer against the screen easytouse selfie timer button on the screen a beautification tool and the special owl icon that helps brighten up images in lowlight conditionsRating 810Battery The ZE551ML is powered by a 3000 mAh LiPolymer fixed battery same as in other variants If you are an average user its sufficient to get you by a whole day However heavy users may find the battery a tad too less for their appetite Users would however appreciate its fastcharging ability which can bring the power up to 60 in just 40 minutesRating 710User Interface amp OS The Zenfone 2 runs Android Lollipop 50 on the box you will be asked to update soon after installation but its ZenUI kills the awesomeness that Lollipop is supposed to be Besides Asus eats on your storage and memory space with a long lineup of useless preloaded Asus and third party apps served as system appsRating 910Hardware amp Performance The Zenfone 2 ZE551ML is available in four different variants mdash a 16GB model with 2GB RAM and Intel Atom Z3560 quad core processor clockable upto 18GHz a 32GB model with 4GB RAM but with the same Z3560 processor clockable upto 18GHz and two superefficient 64GB and 128GB models with 4GB RAM but with a different Intel Atom processor the Z3580 clockable up to 23GHz Each variant come with PowerVR G6430 graphic processor with OpenGL 30 support The device that we received was a 32GB variant and should have featured the Z3560 processor Instead it featured the Z3580 we are not sure if a different model is in the offing Its good to have options but its also confusing to users this exists with Asus laptops too Our advise is to check product specifications closelyIts most striking feature is the 4GB RAM which should give enough memory to multitask It does as we didnt face any issue mdash be it abnormal heating or major lags apart from two separate instances while playing games These aside working with the Zenfone 2 was a breeze We are also impressed that Asus managed to keep SAR values low at 0351 WKg on head and 0332 WKg at the body