Asus Zenfone 10: High Spec Compact Phone reviewed

By Calvin Jones

With its Zenfone line, Asus continues to fly the flag for those who want a phone they can comfortably carry in a pocket, and use with one hand, without compromising on flagship grade specs and performance. This year’s Asus Zenfone 10 brings the range bang up to date with the latest high-performance internals, while retaining the same compact form-factor as last year’s Zenfone 9, offering what is, in contemporary smartphone terms, a small device with few compromises.

Asus Zenfone 10: High Spec Compact Phone reviewed

Pros:

• Blistering all around performance
• Compact, pocket-friendly design that’s easy to use one-handed
• Excellent build quality, a premium feel and full IP68 water and dust rating
• It STILL has a headphone jack!

Cons:

• Software updates is the biggie here: Asus still only guarantees 2 Android updates plus a further 2 years of security updates, which isn’t bad, but falls short of competitors
• Charging speed from the bundled 30 watt charger is adequate but no more
• Lack of autofocus on ultrawide and selfie cameras feels like a downgrade

Asus Zenfone 10: Full Review

The Zenfone 10 is more of a subtle refresh of last year’s Zenfone 9 than a complete revamp. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the Zenfone 9 design had a lot going for it. The phone is the same width and height as its predecessor, but is a smidgen thicker at 9.4mm (from 9.1mm), and slightly heavier at 172g (from 169g). Those differences aren’t noticeable in the hand though — and the phone feels every bit as comfortable and compact as last year’s model.

The Zenfone 10 sports a 5.9” AMOLED display with a maximum refresh rate of 144hz — which is great — but that higher refresh rate is only available on compatible mobile games through Asus’s Game Genie game optimisation tool. For day-to-day stuff it tops out at the 120hz refresh rate found of the Zenfone 9 — which is ample for buttery smooth scrolling and interaction with the UI and whatever apps you’re rocking. It’s bright and vibrant too, with punchy colours, deep blacks and lots of contrast. Maxing out at 1,100 nits, the Zenfone’s display is bright, but not as bright as some contemporary rivals. While it remains visible in bright sunlight, there are scenarios where you might notice it struggling.

The panel is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, which should be able to take some abuse and be none the worse for wear, although a decent screen protector is always an option if you’re concerned about knocks and scrapes.

The back of the Zenfone 10 is a tactile, textured material very similar to that found on the Zenfone 9, but is described as an eco-friendly bio-based polycarbonate that’s kinder to the environment. It doesn’t feel remotely plasticky, and has a rough, almost paper or cardboard like texture. It feels great, has a unique look, provides plenty of grip, and while it might not feel quite as premium as glass, it is certainly a lot more robust.

The Zenfone 10 comes in five colours: the new Aurora Green (like our review unit), Eclipse Red, Comet White, Starry Blue and Midnight Black — so there’s plenty to choose from.

Oh… and it still has a headphone jack. Hallelujah!

Performance & Battery Life

Under the hood the Zenfone 10 is powered by the latest flagship chipset from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, paired with 8GB or 16GB of blisteringly quick LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB or a whopping 512GB of super-fast UFX4.0 storage (we reviewed the 16/512GB variant). That makes the Asus Zenfone 10 not just one of the best performing compact phones out there… but according to benchmarks this little beast is one of the best performing phones on the market… period.

There is no SD Card slot to expand that memory though, so you’ll need to make sure you get enough on-board storage for your needs. The Zenfone 10 supports dual nano-sims, but there’s no support for eSims… which is a shame.

Day-to-day performance on the Zenfone 10 is exemplary. Scrolling through content, launching apps, switching between them, etc. is all flawlessly smooth and fluid, with never a stutter. To be honest, in most use-cases you’ll struggle to notice a difference, performance wise, between last year’s Zenfone 9 and the Zenfone 10. Both phones perform superbly. Where you will see a marked uptick though is in battery life.

Though the Zenfone 10 has the same 4,300 mAh battery as last year’s model, thanks to the more efficient Snapdragon 8 Gen2, battery life on the Zenfone 10 is insane for such a compact phone. Not that the Zenfone 9 was bad; there was plenty of juice to get through a day and then some in all but the most extreme usage scenarios. It’s just that the Zenfone 10 will get you through a full day of average usage and almost all of the following day before forcing you to reach for the charger. I’ll often have over 40% battery remaining when I go to charge the phone around midnight after a full day of use.

And when it comes to charging, the familiar 30 watt Asus charging brick is once again included in the box, however, unlike with the Zenfone 9, you don’t have to plug your Zenfone 10 in to charge it. Finally, wireless charging has arrived in a Zenfone, with the 10 supporting up to 15 watt charging from any standard wireless charging pad. This was one of the biggest compromises highlighted in reviews of the Zenfone 9, so it’s great to see Asus stepping up and addressing it here.

Cameras

The Zenfone 10 has the same large camera bumps as the Zenfone 9, but the cameras themselves have been tweaked. Whether or not these changes represent upgrades depends on your perspective and personal use-case.

The main camera uses the same 50mp Sony IMX766 sensor as last year, with all the same specs, but incorporates version 2.0 of Asus’s Hybrid Gimbal Stabilisation, for even better image stabilisation for low-light shooting and smooth video. In practice stabilisation works well, and does seem a bit smoother/more effective on the Zenfone 10 — although it worked superbly on the Zenfone 9 as well.

There’s been some software tweaking to the image processing from the main camera — with results from the Zenfone 10 varying significantly from the Zenfone 9 shooting the same scene. Photographs from the 10 appear to be more aggressively sharpened and slightly over-saturated — which isn’t a look I tend to favour. Hopefully this is something Asus can tone down a bit with a software update in the not too distant future.

The ultrawide camera on the Zenfone 10 uses a new 13MP sensor with a slightly wider 120° field of view, but loses the PDAF autofocus of the previous camera, and no longer supports close-focus for macro shots. The front-facing selfie camera is also new, up from 12mp to 32mp, using pixel binning to deliver an 8mp image with a larger equivalent pixel size that’s supposed to improve noise levels in low light images. The sensor also supports RGBW technology, which further improves low-light results according to Asus, but again it sacrifices the PDAF autofocus that was present on the Zenfone 9’s selfie camera.

All of which swings and roundabouts lead to a pretty mixed bag on the camera front to be honest. Does the Zenfone 10 take good photographs? Yes… although it’s not going to match the best phone cameras out there, the cameras produce very good results most of the time. But are they an upgrade over the Zenfone 9? The jury is still out on that one.

When it comes to video, that main camera supports up to 8K at 24fps, 4K at up to 120FPS and 1080P at up to a staggering 240FPS for ridiculous slow-motion shooting and playback. The hybrid gimbal does a great job of stabilising video for smooth footage, and there’s also a new feature dubbed Adaptive EIS, which can adjust the field of view dynamically and intelligently apply electronic image stabilisation as required in tandem with the 6-axis hybrid gimbal for super smooth moving video.

But again, there’s a step backwards when it comes to video via the selfie cam. While the Zenfone 9 supported video up to 4K/30 on the front-facing camera, the Zenfone 10’s selfie cam maxes out at 1080p/30.

Conclusion

The Zenfone 10 is a very compelling phone that ticks almost all of the boxes if, like me, you prefer a more compact handset, but don’t want to compromise on specs. With performance to burn, great battery life, wireless charging on-board and very good overall camera performance, particularly from the main camera with its hybrid gimbal on board, there’s a lot to recommend here.

If you already have a Zenfone 9, unless you absolutely need that wireless charging, there’s probably not enough of a jump to warrant upgrading. If, however, you’re in the market for a compact flagship smartphone, or looking to downsize from a 6.7” monster to something more manageable, the Asus Zenfone 10 is well worth a look.

 About the Author

Calvin Jones is an author and online content specialist based in West Cork Ireland. Alongside his writing projects, he runs Ireland’s Wildlife, helps small business clients improve their websites and reviews the latest tech gadgets.

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