Asus 6Z is a unique kind of phone that comes with a flip camera. It is the successor of impressive Zenfone 5Z. Asus 6Z has been launched to compete directly against OnePlus 7. The phone has impressive hardware specs at a low price, but what about the performance? Let’s find out.
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What’s in the box
- 18W charging brick
- White USB-A to USB-C cable
- Clear protective case
- Asus earphones
Asus 6Z Review
Asus 6Z impresses with its design and solid build quality. It isn’t bulky even when it packs a large 5000 mAh battery. It weighs 190 grams. The phone has a full frontal display with no notch or hole. Nothing but the screen with narrow bezels around. Above the display, it has a slim earpiece and Asus has also managed to hide a tiny notification LED next to it.
The right edge of the phone has a volume rocker along with the power button. There is also a multifunction Smart Key that triggers Google Assistant by default but can be customized to do several other things. This button is located at the top portion of the edge and isn’t easy to reach. Positioning it below the power button could make a better placement.
The left edge has SIM card a try that can accommodate two Nano-SIMs and a microSD card. The base side has a USB Type-C port, 3.5mm audio jack, and a speaker. This speaker works as a stereo pair with the earpiece.
The flip camera module makes this design very special. The flip module rests at the top of the back and triggers when you switch to front camera or manually flip it using the camera app. Flipping takes the time of little over a second and there’s also a sound when it flips. This module contains two cameras with a dual-LED flash and laser autofocus sensor between them.
I also asked a few people if they really like this design and almost all were worried about the durability of the flip module. I am not sure about long term usage because I have been using this for 15 days. But I have tested this flip module a lot and also put a lot of pressure on it to see if this fails. It didn’t. When you stop it from opening or closing, it shows an error message and then stops trying. This flip module also opens the opportunity of capturing some of the unconventional shots easily. Asus has also given a few sound effects for flip camera that you can enable. When the Flip camera rotates, selected sound will be played.
The in-display fingerprint is now common in smartphones of this segment, but this phone has a fingerprint sensor on the back panel.
It sports an aluminum frame around the rim and the body is made of Gorilla Glass. The glass back isn’t much slippy but it attracts fingerprints and smudges. Asus offers a transparent protective cover to keep the phone safe without hiding its beauty. This phone doesn’t carry any IP ratings, might be due to this Flip module. SO the phone is not waterproof or splashproof by any means.
The phone features a 6.4-inch IPS LCD display offering 2,340 x 1,080 pixels resolution, 403ppi pixel density and 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The display also has a Gorilla Glass 6 protection. The display bright enough when it is set to full brightness settings. The display is good and performs well in both indoors and outdoors. Viewing angles are also great and color accuracy looks good. Due to full-screen display with no notch or hole to interrupt, you get a good video experience.
Asus has also given options to control the color temperature and color mode. You also have other options like Adaptive brightness, Night Light for the blue light filter, option for app scaling and more.
Most of the high-end and even some of the midrange phones use OLED panels for better battery life, sharper colors, and better dynamic range. So, the LCD panel isn’t an impressive choice. But Asus did the cost-cutting to compensate for the flip camera module. Still, I feel the addition of OLED panel could make this phone better even if it was adding few bucks in price.
Asus has also improved the software experience by making lots of improvements to ZenUI. Now it feels more like stock Android with useful utility features. The new skin is lightweight. It has an app drawer that opens on swiping up anywhere on the screen. It comes with standard three-button navigation arrangement but you can also switch to full-screen gesture navigation if you want.
There’s a feature called Twin Apps that lets you create copies of app for using multiple social media accounts in apps that don’t support multiple accounts. There are also several gestures you can try for improved productivity. There’s also a fingerprint gesture that opens notification panel on swiping down on fingerprint sensor.
There is a Digital Wellbeing section that gives you an idea of your smartphone usage. If you really want to get rid of smartphone addiction, this section will surely help you.
Another notable thing in the OS is the dark mode that replaces the white background with a black one to give comfort to your eyes.
Asus 6Z packs octa-core Snapdragon 855 processor with Adreno 640 GPU. You also have 6GB RAM and 8GB RAM option. The phone is powerful and feels smooth most of the times. I didn’t face any lag during my usage in the past 15 days. It handles everything you throw on it. Multitasking is impressive and it hardly forces any app to go out of memory. Even after this if you want better performance, try the AI Boost Mode, but I don’t recommend it as it drains the battery faster.
The gaming performance of the phone is also excellent and all the high-end games I tested were smooth. Graphics is also good and all games are playable at high graphics settings. While using the camera in outdoor conditions, the phone becomes hot. So, I was expecting the same kind of heating during the game. But a full PUBG session of 30 minutes was smooth and didn’t increase much temperature of the phone.
There’s also a Game Genie section gives you an option to live stream your gaming sessions to YouTube or Twitch. You can set the live streaming resolution and select the live audio source. Gamers who would like to live streaming their gaming sessions will surely love this option.
The phone also does well in benchmarks. It scores around 350,000 points on Antutu but the score goes up to 380,000 points if you enable the AI boost. On Geekbench, it scored close to 3500 in single core and more than 10500 on multi-core.
Asus 6Z comes in 64GB and 128GB storage options. Storage is also expandable up to 2TB. It also comes with a dedicated microSD card slot, so you won’t have to compromise with dual SIM function.
The phone has a dual camera setup located on the flip module. The camera setup includes a primary 48-megapixel camera having Sony IMX586 sensor. This camera delivers 12-megapixel images by default using Pixel bin technology. The secondary 13 megapixels wide-angle camera has a 125-degree field of view. The same setup flips to be the front camera. The camera setup can also record up to 4K 60 fps videos and supports EIS. The flip camera gives this phone unique features like auto-panorama and motion tracking video recordings. I published a detailed camera review, so read the Asus 6Z camera review to know about camera in detail and have a look at the camera sample.
The fingerprint sensor of the phone is really fast and accurate. It recognizes every time I tap my finger on it and unlocks the phone in a fraction of a second. The phone also has a face unlock option that flips the camera up, recognizes, unlocks and flips down the camera. This process is slower, I don’t think people will use it. But it is also accurate and you can use it if you are comfortable with waiting for flip to open and close.
The phone features a dual-speaker setup. There’s one speaker at the bottom edge while the earpiece works as another one. The sound is decent and loud. The NXP TFA9874 smart amp keeps the sound experience better. There’s also the Audio Wizard option that lets you select an audio profile or make a custom one for personalized sound experience.
The phone also includes a headphone jack and the Audio quality from a headphone jack is good. Asus 6Z also supports Bluetooth 5 with aptX HD, LDAC, and HWA codecs. So audio experience over wireless earphones is also good.
The phone comes with dual SIM connectivity and both slots support 4G VoLTE. I used the phone with Jio and Vodafone SIM cards and never faced any issue. Other connectivity options also work well.
The phone packs a large 5000 mAh battery that also performs well and lasts for 2 days in normal usage. You can easily get the screen-on-time of more than 6 hours. My usage involved lots of Instagram, YouTube, and camera usage. I also played PUBG a few times.
This large battery takes 3 hours in charging from 0 to 100% using the 18W charger Asus provides with the phone.
Asus 6Z is an impressive phone that offers solid performance, good battery life and good camera experience. The new user interface also impresses. The phone doesn’t come with wireless charging or an official water resistance certification but it has many things like a headphone jack, expandable storage, and notification LED that are more useful and not available in most of the other flagships. The only downside I feel is the LCD panel. With OLED display panel, this could be even better. At a starting price of Rs. 31999, Asus 6Z is a good one to recommend. The Flip camera makes it the best selfie phone and gives a unique approach to smartphone photography. Vloggers may also prefer this phone who need good video recording from the front camera.
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I tried to cover everything about Asus 6Z. if you still have any question, you ask using the comment section.
