Zenfone 8 Review After 90 Days!

well right out the gate i gotta say if you're like me proud member of the compact phone crew i think you're really gonna like this device i mean first off at only 148 by 68.5 millimeters it's not only manageable with one hand but it'll actually fit in your pocket too amazing i know and with a 5.9 inch display and begrudgingly average sized hands i can reach pretty much 75 of it we've got frosted gorilla glass 3 on the back i like it i've always said a frosted back is the way to go the aluminum rail and skinny buttons are pretty typical these days although i do appreciate the placement of the power button just lines right up with where my thumb wants to be and i love that sharp click the volume rocker is pretty mushy though there's a headphones jack on the top i still haven't used because bluetooth there's an led indicator on the bottom that i only have enabled because nostalgia it's kind of nifty the display is solid it's using gorilla glass victus and even though i haven't been using a screen protector i've taken it out on a lot of dirt and rock-filled adventures and it's still flawless the glass is flat with slightly chunkier bezels so as a result i haven't had nearly as many false positive touches compared to displays with curved edges but the gap between the frame and display does seem to collect grime which i've had a hard time with cleaning out it's sporting a 2400 by 1080 amoled panel with sincerely great colors i think it covers something like 110 of the dci p3 color space and there's several options to really dial in the look you like now outdoors with auto brightness enabled according to dxo mark gets up to around 800 nits with a peak brightness of a thousand so not quite as bright as some other current phones but it's been bright enough for me and i spend a lot of time outdoors it also has an up 220hz refresh rate and a 240hz touch sampling rate which has been buttery smooth and ultra responsive but depending on how much you value battery life you might find yourself using one of the other refresh rate options now there isn't always on display but in my experience it chews up battery like i've never seen any other always on display do before like on average it seems to eat up about 20 of a full charge so i just disabled it and kept it off i'm hoping it's not just my phone and that asus is aware of the issue so it can get fixed but you know we'll see i mean it's been a few months there's an in-display fingerprint reader i think it's in a good position it's not too low and even though other reviewers have said it's not as snappy as others personally i disagree i think it's just as fast accuracy consistency could use some work though but of course it works flawlessly for me on camera of course there's a couple of stereo speakers so one on the bottom and the other is an amplified earpiece speaker yeah they sound okay um but they don't get very loud unless you enable the outdoor mode which does increase the volume to reasonable levels but then they go from sounding okay to sounding all tinny and distorted at least in my opinion other reviews i've read would disagree my user experience has been nothing short of awesome snapdragon 8 16 gigs of ram which is completely unnecessary and 256 gigs of ufs 3.1 storage feels like firing up a fresh pc for the first time every time so of course general usage like navigating around the phone launching apps and scrolling through social media is as smooth as ryan reynolds but if you're a mobile gamer you'll be happy to hear this phone performs like a champ playing my favorite mobile game right now shadowgun war games which does support 120 hertz displays the zenfone 8 does a great job of maintaining high frame rates but doesn't seem to consistently hit 120 frames per second averaging about 100 as the phone heats up to its thermal limit which seems to be around 48 degrees celsius now once the phone reaches past that which you can monitor with the asus game genie software it seems to throttle down to about 60 fps for a little bit but that doesn't last for long and honestly doesn't happen all that often but when it does you sure can't tell the difference in gameplay fluidity most everything feels like stock android but there's a bunch of great settings options and small details like that power buttons double press or long press can be customized to launch apps or act as a shortcut it's got a great one-handed mode that you can actually customize further you can change the font style system colors and icon shapes limit the status bar icons and the battery settings has a bunch of options to really squeeze every mil amp out of this thing and actually while we're on the topic for battery we've got a 4 000 milliamp hour capacity and support for 30 watt charging no wireless charging though so that might be a bit of a bummer for some that being said with the displays refresh set to auto i was fairly satisfied with between five and a half to six and a half hours of screen on time while gaming or rotting my brain on tick tock for too long and watching a bunch of youtube but when i locked it to that 120 hertz refresh everything went south real fast man maybe four and a half hours which isn't ideal so when i head into the woods to do some exploring i always fire up the gaia gps app throw it in my dash mount and immediately plug in the car charger otherwise the phone drains faster than i can drive so how about those cameras well the main 64 megapixel sensor from sony is set to 16 megapixels by default but of course you do have the option to switch to the full 64 although you will be sacrificing hdr and of course small file sizes but 16 megapixels has been totally fine for me and i want all the dynamic range i can get so with hdr on most colors don't get oversaturated like we see from so many other phones it does still overdo bright reds just like other phones but by and large strong natural colors is what asus seems to be going for here with good contrast and surprisingly good dynamic range having optical image stabilization helped keep images looking sharp and blur free and i found the auto focus to behave the way you'd expect with very little focus hunting the 12 megapixel ultrawide also from sony has an f 2.2 aperture so it won't let in quite as much light as the main camera's f 1.8 but just like the main camera it's no slouch either with good natural colors although lacking some of the contrast compared to the main but still producing strong and clear images with the added benefit of real-time distortion correction and a closer focal distance to help with what i guess you could call macro shots [Music] um 4k video looks good detail and clarity is there but i'd argue that the electronic image stabilization isn't as solid as a lot of other phones i've tested video stabilization with like it's fine with bigger movements but not so great with the smaller vibrations the 12 megapixel front facing camera does well you know skin tones look good and details are clear but of course like most front-facing cameras with lower dynamic range highlights can get blown out pretty easily so the zenfone 8 is probably going to be my new main phone for a bit you know the size is right the performance and software experience is what i'm looking for the display's awesome the cameras are you know good enough and even though the battery life could be better when the display is locked at 120 hertz auto refresh seems to give adequate battery savings and you know i'm fine with that so yeah drop me a comment and let me know if you're a member of the compact phone crew 2 and what you think of this phone uh anyways i think that's going to do it for this one thanks as always for watching and i'll talk to you on the next one cheers [Music] you

Channel: Jared Busch

Views: 94,350

Keywords: ASUS Zenfone 8 Review, Zenfone 8 camera, Zenfone 8 battery, Zenfone 8 gaming, Zenfone 8 long term review, Zenfone 8 after 90 days, Jared Busch

Id: zvYCQ2nhSDQ

Length: 7min 19sec (439 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021