Asus ZenFone 3 Laser – Review

Gone are the days when budget mobiles look like entry-level smartphones. These days every mobile has killer looks and stylish design. The Zenfone 3 Laser is one such mobile which looks like a star, but still affordable. Is this beauty just skin deep or is it a solid performer as well? Let’s check out.

Design

This year 3rd generation Asus Zenfones have a refreshed design language. Zenfone 3 Laser does not look like last year’s laser variant in any angle. Instead it looks a lot like the Zenfone 3 flagship model this year. The display is a 5.5 inch screen with 2.5D curved Corning Gorilla Glass.

At the back the mobile flaunts a mildly curved brushed aluminium finished body. It has the finger print sensor, camera with laser sensor and LED flash at the back. The design offers a good grip and it is easy to hold and operate the mobile, though it is a 5.5 inch phablet.

The power and the volume buttons are on the right while the left has the hybrid SIM tray. The headphone jack is on the top and the bottom has the micro-USB port along with speaker grills.

Having used the mobile for over 2 weeks, I find it to be very comfortable to use. It has a very light weight and sturdy construction. Asus has taken a tried and tested route and leaves us with nothing to complain in the design department.

Display

The 5.5 inch IPS LCD display on the Zenfone 3 exceeds expectations. The display is bright and produces vivid colors. Touch responsiveness is smooth. Day light visibility is average. Text and images are crisp and it has good viewing angles. Asus has mastered integration of display in their mobiles and we can clearly see that it is a step up from the earlier Zenfones. ZenUI gives you the ability to tweak the color temperature of the display and you can change it to suit your needs. I particularly liked the Blue light filter mode to help the display to stay easy on the eyes. I leave it on by default.

Though it has a 5.5 inch display, it does not feel like a large device. 77% of the body is the display as the bezels are very thin. There is literally nothing that I can find to complain about, in the Asus Zenfone 3 Laser display.

Fingerprint Sensor

The fingerprint sensor is placed at the back and it is quite fast. It detects valid finger print from any angle. I wakes up the display from the lock screen and the sleep screen. additionally the fingerprint sensor can be used to answer incoming calls, launch camera app and also capture photos. It is fast and accurate. I would still prefer fingerprint sensor on the front, compared to back or side. That is just my personal preference. In the Zenfone 3 laser, I found the placement and performance of the fingerprint scanner to be good.

Hardware and Performance

The mobile is powered by a Snapdragon 430 octa-core 64-bit processor with Adreno 505 GPU. It has 4GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. Memory is expandable but only via the hybrid SIM, by sacrificing the dual sim capability of this mobile. Well, I am using the Zenfone 3 as my primary mobile and switching to the Zenfone 3 laser as my second base, I find the performance a bit low. But that wont be a fitting comparison. Zenfone 3 is a high-end mobile and the Zenfone 3 is a mid-range device. The SD 430 processor is an old war-horse and I feel that it still has some steam left. The 4 GB of RAM comes to the aid to support smooth operation of the mobile. However switching between apps, playing high-end graphics and using resource intensive application shows signs of lag and the mobile starts to stutter when pushed to the limits. It is a mid-range mobile and it behaves like one. I don’t go by benchmark scores, but this is a mobile that will take you through your day-to-day task with ease.

Telephony and Entertainment

The mobile supports 3G/4G along with VoLTE. Call quality was superior as I found the ear piece speaker to be refined. Network latching was not a problem and there was call drops. The display is very bright and the audio is through 5 magnet speaker that is powered by a “Smart Amplifier”. This is ideal for all your media consumption needs. Audio through the headphones was also decent. The in-ear headphones supplied in the box is of very good quality and I enjoyed using it.

Camera

Like the other Zenfones, Asus Zenfone 3 Laser is also “Built for Photography”. With photography as its core DNA, the ZenFone 3 Laser has a 13 MP Sony IMX214 sensor at the rear with laser focus sensor and color correction sensor. It is also capable of shooting 1080p videos with image stabilization. It lacks 4k recording.

As far as the image quality is concerned, the ZenFone 3 Laser can shoot decent shots at all lighting conditions. It shoots decent shots at low light as well. Focusing is fast and accurate. The camera UI is also rich in experience and features. Along with Manual controls, it offers a bunch of modes like HDR, Beautification, Super resolution, Children, Low light, Night mode, Depth of focus, panorama, GIF animation, miniature, time rewind, etc… The controls are easy to access and the app is intuitively designed. Here are a few camera samples uploaded on our FaceBook page. Hope you have liked our page already!

Software

The Zen UI as usual comes with a truck load of pre-installed applications and a few can be uninstalled. The base android version is 6.0.1 and it gets all the goodness of Android marshmallow. Asus Zen UI has not gone through major evolution over the years, but it is certainly refined. The UI is a lot sleeker than the earlier versions. But I found the transition animations a bit slow and hence annoying. Asus must not blindly throw in their software in all the mobiles. The software must be optimized for the hardware and this SD430 is not fully capable of handling the ZenUI. A little tweaking would have given a non-sluggish UI experience on this mobile.

Here are about few among the 30 apps that comes pre-installed with the Zen UI.

• Audio Wizard – Audio presets for different situations
• Do it Later – To do reminder that syncs with native applications like Dialer and messenger. I found this really useful. If you miss a call, it goes to your “do-it-later” list and you will reminded to call the number later.
• My Asus Service Center, ZenFone Care – Helps you with locating a service center and get online support
• Zentalk – Asus Forum
• Photo Collage – Make interesting photo collages
• Mini Movie – Cool movie editor
• Puffin – a crappy browser
• SIM city – An useless game
• Splendid – Must have been part of the settings. This feature lets you adjust the colors of the display
• WebStorage – Cloud storage
• Mobile Manager – Cache cleaner, Notification management, privacy and data control, Permissions manager – All in one mobile management app which I found really useful.

While most people may not like pre-installed software, there are a set of people who are not going to download apps from app stores. For them, these pre-installed apps would make a lot of sense. Some of these apps can be uninstalled and can be re-installed from the app store. The Zen UI supports a whole bunch of touch gestures and motion gestures. There are plenty of options under themes to customize and personalize the mobile as per your liking. The Easy mode is a mode with a minimal set of large icons that are easy to accessed. This is an accessible theme for senior citizens and people with special needs. Kids mode is my favorite mode. I can choose a set of apps that my kids can access and put the mobile on Kids mode and hand it over to them. I can also block calls while in Kids mode. Kids mode can also control the play time duration for the kids. This mode may also make you the most hated parent, but its a need of the hour.

Battery

Zenfone 3 Laser is equipped with a 3000 mAh battery. With moderate usage, it lasts for a day. With intensive usage, I get a screen on time of 3 hours and 35 minutes.

Conclusion

There is very little to complain about the ZenFone 3 Laser. Asus has taken a winning formula and applied it in a mid-range segment. There is nothing that can go wrong with it. But the pricing of the Zenfone 3 Laser is a bit high. It is priced at Rs 18,999. A few thousands more and you can get the Asus Zenfone 3 ZE520KL for Rs 21k. I would strongly recommend you to buy the ZE520KL compared to ZenFone 3 Laser. It has all the goodness of a ZenFone and also a better camera and hardware performance. But if your budget is tight and cannot extend beyond 19k, you still won’t regret buying the Asus Zenfone 3 laser. The Moto G4 Plus is a serious competitor for the ZF3 Laser and it is a better mobile. But it lacks the design finesse and feature versatility, which the ZF3 offers. To sum it up, the ZenFone 3 is a decent mobile with great features, design and build quality. But it is priced higher than it competitors and Asus has other options which will keep its own mobile, the ZF3 laser in the shadows.