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Introduction
Another year, another ROG Phone. Asus has relentlessly been keeping up its efforts to deliver "The ultimate smartphone gaming experience" for four years now. With great success, we might we add.
This time around, we have the shiny new ROG Phone 5 to get acquainted with. A Republic of Gamers product through and through, but one that does things a bit differently than its predecessors in some regards, while staying true to form in many others. There's plenty to discuss, so without further ado, we'll just jump straight into it.
First things first, Yes, it's the ROG Phone 5 instead of 4. Don't worry about it; you haven't accidentally skipped an iteration along the way. The explanation is actually simple and one that we have encountered before with Chinese and Taiwanese naming conventions. The number 'four' in Chinese just happens to sound similar to their word for death, so naming products after this number is considered unlucky and is avoided.
That's ironically, probably the least intriguing bit about the ROG Phone 5, though. Let's start with the fact that the ROG Phone 5 is more of a family of devices than a single model.
Asus ROG Phone 5 specs at a glance:
- Body: 172.8x77.3x10.3mm, 238g; metal body; RGB light panel (on the back), Pressure sensitive zones (Gaming triggers).
- Display: 6.78" AMOLED, 1B colors, 144Hz, HDR10+, 800 nits (typ), 1200 nits (peak), 1080x2448px resolution, 20.4:9 aspect ratio, 395ppi.
- Chipset: Qualcomm SM8350 Snapdragon 888 (5 nm): Octa-core (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 680 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 680 & 4x1.80 GHz Kryo 680); Adreno 660.
- Memory: 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM, 256GB 16GB RAM; UFS 3.1.
- OS/Software: Android 11, ROG UI.
- Rear camera: Wide (main): 64 MP, f/1.8, 26mm, 1/1.73", 0.8µm, PDAF; Ultra wide angle: 13 MP, f/2.4, 11mm, 125˚; Macro: 5 MP, f/2.0.
- Front camera: 24 MP, f/2.5, 27mm (wide), 0.9µm.
- Video capture: Rear camera: 8K@30fps, 4K@30/60/120fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240fps, 720p@480fps; gyro-EIS; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
- Battery: 6000mAh; Fast charging 65W, Reverse charging 10W, Power Delivery 3.0, Quick Charge 5.
- Misc: Fingerprint reader (under display, optical); NFC; 3.5mm jack.
There are anywhere between two to five distinct versions available, depending on how you count them. The vanilla ROG Phone 5 has an A, B and C variant, denoting their differences in available bands and network connectivity, as well as memory variants. Starting from variant "C", the base configuration is an 8GB/128GB one with a 12GB/256GB tier also available. Variant "B" adds a third option to the list - 16GB/256GB. Variant "A" is not available in the base 8GB/128GB tier, but can be had in both 12GB/256GB and 16GB/256GB configs.
Granted, clearly, some of these variants are meant for different markets. Still, that's already plenty confusing in our mind, but things extend past the vanilla ROG Phone 5 this year. And we're not talking about a "Strix" variant, like in previous generations, which might still be a thing. Instead, this year Asus has an ROG Phone 5 Pro, as well as and ROG Phone 5 Ultimate.
The Pro variant has 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, while Ultimate ups the RAM to a whopping 18GB of capacity. The Ultimate edition is expected to be an extremely limited offering.
There are some physical differences compared to the Pro/Ultimate. Both of these have PMOLED ROG Vision displays on the back, instead of the ROG RGB logo, as well as a pair of extra touch inputs. There are some exclusive colors and finishes - Glossy Black on the Pro and Matte While, with a satin matte finish on the Ultimate. You also need to buy either the Pro or the Ultimate to get the Asus Aeroactive Cooler 5 snap-on active cooling accessory in the box. And if you go Ultimate, you will also get an exclusive gift bag of ROG "swag" beyond that.
This particular review and all of the testing and benchmarking was done on a regular ROG Phone 5 unit with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
This variant situation is undoubtedly a bit confusing. Still, there are different ways of looking at it from a more positive angle, namely that of extra choice for the end-user and Asus trying to cast a wider net this time around in hopes of appealing to as many prospective buyers as possible.
On the flip side of this argument, there are definitely some questionable decisions with the ROG Phone 5 as well, that could be passed-off as simplification or diversification measures, but are actually kind of downgrades or "side-grades" at best. Notable examples include the rather odd fact that after two consecutive years of deliberately preserving the same footprint with ROG Phones and compatibility with the growing ROG accessory ecosystem, the chain is officially broken with the ROG Phone 5. It is slightly taller than its predecessors and leaves behind support for such killer gadgets as the Desktop Dock and the TwinView Dock.
Also, the Aeroactive Cooler is not bundled with every unit for the first time ever. And in a more general sense, while still clearly on top of its game, the ROG Phone 5 is arguably a bit "lighter" in the innovation department compared to its predecessors.
We'll definitely dig more into these "interesting choices" surrounding the ROG Phone 5 in the following pages.
Unboxing
A great place to start seems to be the retail box itself and its contents. Getting a new ROG Phone package has always been a bit of an experience in itself. Doubly so for us, since Asus used to send actual briefcases chuck-full of accessories our way. With last year's ROG Phone 3, the packaging started getting a bit tamer, sort of synergistically so with the design of the phone itself, which was justifiable and rather sensible.
The ROG Phone 5 takes things to the next level in more ways than one. The box we got was just a regular rectangle. A fancy one, for sure, complete with some art, but it only took us a split second to open the magnetic flap and get to the unit. No alien tetrahedranes, pyramids sliding into each other, hidden compartments, and magic augmented reality symbols. Joking aside, we appreciate the extra sensibility in an otherwise costly package that will ultimately end up in a closet somewhere.
We are a lot less appreciative of the omission of the ROG Aeroactive Cooler 5, though. Every other ROG Phone in the past used to have its corresponding Aeroactive cooler bundled. You can definitely choose whether to see this as a convenient way to save less-demanding users some money or an otherwise manufacturer-beneficial cost-saving measure. It's up to you. Plus, you do still get one if you go for the Pro or Ultimate variant of the ROG Phone 5. Probably the former, since the latter will be extremely limited in availability.
We didn't get any spare plastic plugs for the ROG Side connector this time around, which is not a major deal, but is still worth mentioning. On the plus side, Asus still throws in its highly-specific Aero case in black or white, to match your unit's color. It has a particular shape mostly mandated by the need to be compatible with the Aeroactive Cooler 5, to allow for the ROG logo to be visible, while still providing at least some protection. At least the corners are covered.
For charging you still get a very versatile HyperCharger unit from Asus. It is a 65W brick that uses Asus HyperCharge technology, based on Power Delivery 3.0 + PPS at 3.3V to 21V and 3A of current. This means that you only need a decent USB 2.0 or 3.0 Type-C to Type-C cable rated at the base 3A to take full advantage of the charger. Asus provides a nice braided one in the box.
The ROG Phone 5 actually has two separate 3,000 mAh cells, with MMT tech and double-wired split design, which works in conjunction with the HyperCharge tech to allow the 65W charging speed - a clear upgrade over the ROG Phone 3, while also generating less heat. More on that later.
One interesting side note is that the 65W charger also supports Quick Charge 5.0, making it surprisingly versatile to just have on hand for all sorts of charging needs. Plus, it's compact, especially for a non-GaN unit.
Design
It's hard to mistake a ROG Phone. And this is still true for the ROG Phone 5. Though with that said, four iterations in, its styling is very different from the original ROG Phone. Asus has clearly been working towards less-bold and eccentric looks overall. Gradually toning-down the "gamer" aesthetic, if you will, on most of its ROG Products, including phones.
We already deemed last year's ROG Phone 3 slick and "low-key" enough to confidently take into a boardroom. The ROG Phone 5 takes this trend one step further still. The key elements are all there, like the big ROG RGB logo, now off-center a tiny bit, as well as the sharply-angled camera island.
No exposed inner cooling surfaces or even enclosed windows with shiny metal showing through this time around. There are fewer "fighter jet/alien" shapes and lines as well. Instead, a much tamer and stylish assembly of text and branding elements, paired with a geometric match in one bottom corner and a "dot-matrix" style background around the centerpiece ROG Logo. One that instantly reminded us of the distinctive back design on the ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop. There is clearly some design synergy going on, and we love it.
Speaking of the ROG Logo, it has a new trick this time around - simply put, there are now two distinct RBG LEDs for you to control. This allows for some eye-catching shades to be achieved. Of course, you can still choose from a wide selection of effects and animations (8 different lighting schemes in total) and also sync-up the pattern with other ROG Phones.
On the Pro and Ultimate version of the ROG Phone 5, the ROG RGB Logo is swapped for an actual display, dubbed ROG Vision. Color in the former and monochrome on the latter to better fit the black and white aesthetic. Like the logo, the display can be used to react to certain events, like incoming calls and notifications or X-mode being enabled, and you can use it to display both static images and animations. Those are available via download from Asus repositories, or you can make your own using a built-in editor.
Asus is even partnering with game publishers to have certain titles show relevant content on the rear display during gameplay.
There is still an RGB Notification LED on the front side of the ROG Phone 5, above the display, as well. It is great to see that Asus doesn't think one is a substitute for the other.
That's probably enough beating about the bush, though, unlike both of its predecessors, the ROG Phone 5 does not retain the same body dimensions. Well, to be fair, the ROG Phone 3 did get 0.4mm wider and thicker than its predecessor, but, crucially, it was exactly as tall, making it compatible with many of the existing ROG Phone II accessories. This is no longer the case for the 172.8 x 77.2 x 10.29mm, 238-gram ROG Phone 5. That's thicker and taller than the ROG Phone 3, while a bit narrower.
Of course, the biggest consequence of this dimension change is the loss of compatibility with some existing ROG Phone accessories. These are notably the TwinView Dock II and 3 and the Mobile Desktop Dock. Arguably - the two most sophisticated and unique gadgets one might already have or want to get. Asus is yet to announce replacements. Perhaps there wasn't enough interest in them.
On the plus side, the ROG Phone 5 now has notably thinner bezels than its predecessor - 25%, as per Asus' own numbers. Thinner bezels in term allowed for a slightly bigger 6.78-inch display, up from the ROG Phone 3's 6.59 inches. Slimming down the top and bottom bezel also involved a reduction in the selfie camera diameter by 27%.
Asus actually has a brand-new internal layout for the ROG Phone 5 - quite unusual at that. It's based around a central-positioned mainboard and chipset, flanked by two 3,000 mAh batteries and then two symmetrical speakers - bigger than on the ROG Phone 3. The on-board 3.5mm audio port is also making a triumphant return, along with a high-end DSP to go with it. All of this definitely requires extra space, so it's easy to see Asus' justification for going bigger this year. Even if that meant losing some accessory compatibility.
It comes as no surprise that the ROG Phone 5 is extremely well put together. The only notable omission being a formal ingress protection rating, which we definitely get with all of the additional side connectors and exposed pins. It is basically built like a rock and features an extremely rigid middle frame, with practically no flex, sandwiched between two glass surfaces. The front one is Corning Gorilla Glass Victus, which promises increased drop resistance, up to 2 meters and twice the scratch resistance of Gorilla Glass 6.
On the back - there is a nicely-rounded sheet of Gorilla Glass 3. The black finish on our review unit looks great but is a fingerprint magnet. Also, it is smooth and provides little grip, making the ROG Phone 5 a very slippery device while being held and while lying on a table. A case is highly recommended.
Thanks to its curved back, the ROG Phone 5 sits very comfortably in your palm. As long as you have a fairly large one, that is. It is a chunky phone, no question about that. However, compared to the ROG Phone 3, which has always felt uncomfortably top-heavy, the ROG Phone 5 is surprisingly balanced and more comfortable. This is mostly down to its totally re-designed internal layout.
Internal design
Cooling a phone is no easy task, especially when you cram the most powerful chipset around and then overclock it, like Asus does for its ROG Phone models. The ROG Phone 5 is no exception.
The keen-eyed among you, however, might have noticed that unlike all previous ROG Phone models, this new one has absolutely no obvious exposed internal cooling elements or air ducts on its surface. This time around, the back of the ROG Phone 5 is a solid piece of glass. What gives?
Well, Asus engineers have completely redesigned the internal layout of the phone. It all revolves around having the main PCB on the phone and the chipset it houses positioned in the center of the device. This has more than a few benefits, just one of which is the improved weight distribution, which we already noted.
Having the biggest heat-generating components in the middle means that the entire middle frame can be used for heat dissipation more efficiently. Plus, the heat is kind of naturally kept equally distant from both hands while holding the phone horizontally. Asus also reshaped the internal vapor chamber and the large graphite sheets that are typically found inside ROG Phones in such a way as to better dissipate heat and also focus it upwards through the back panel.
As per the company's own numbers, all of these changes, combined with the fact that the new and also redesigned AeroActive Cooler 5 sits right above the main heat source in the phone, allows for improved cooling efficiency and up to 15 degrees drop in surface temperature and 10 degrees to CPU temp. Simply put - the ROG Phone 5 should handle heat better both with and without the AeroActive Cooler 5.
Having a central-mounted CPU PCB also allowed or necessitated, whichever way you choose to look at it, the use of two separate symmetrical 3,000 mAh batteries, instead of one big 6,000 mAh one. This has its positives and negatives, which we will cover in the battery section.
Internal symmetry extends one step further still, with the dual front-facing stereo speakers. These are now both bigger and more powerful than even in an ROG Phone.
The main theme here is that clearly there have been more than a few internal changes with the ROG Phone 5. Easily enough to justify its increased footprint, regardless of whether you personally think the tradeoff of diminished accessory compatibility was worth it or not.
Controls
Asus is well known for its deliberate control design and placement on the ROG Phone line, with plenty of consideration for gamers and their needs. In no particular order, we can start with a great example in the signature Asus Side port. At its core, it is a convenient way of hooking-up extra accessories to the ROG Phone 5 and is placed in such a way as to be as least intrusive as possible.
Seeing how the ROG Phone 5 is expected to spend most of its time in a horizontal orientation, doing heavy and battery-intensive gaming tasks, it only makes sense for to have a cable or other attachment handing out of the bottom side, where it won't interfere with your hands. That, indeed, is one great use for the Side port, which consists of a full-featured USB Type-C in one half and a newly-redesigned set of custom pogo pins filling the rest of its length. On the one hand, the switch to shallow pins eliminates any confusion as to which side of the port is the normal Type-C one. On the flip side, however, the little plastic dust cover tends to come off quite a bit easier on the ROG Phone 5 than the deep one on the ROG Phone 3. Since there are no spares in the box, we thought this was worth mentioning.
The Type-C port, part of the Side port on the ROG Phone 5 is actually more potent than the other Type-C port, located on the bottom frame of the phone. While both handle charging just fine and support the same Asus HyperCharge/Direct Charge and PD + QC 5.0/3.0 protocols at up to 65W, the side port is USB 3.1 gen 2 in terms of transfer speed. That means theoretical speeds of up to 10Gbit/s. All the while, the bottom Type-C comes with a simple USB 2.0 data link. The side Type-C is also the way to get video out - DisplayPort 1.4, in particular. That means 4K@30Hz, 144p@75Hz or 1080p@144Hz without any chroma subsampling. Theoretically, that is, since your best chance to use it is with the Asus Professional Dock accessory, which can get you 4K@30 and no higher refresh rate beyond that.
Circling back to that second or rather first, depending on how you look at it, USB Type-C port, you will notice that it is also deliberately tucked-away as far to one side as possible. The same goes for the 3.5mm audio jack, which is making a triumphant return to the ROG Phone 5. Both of these are placed so as to be as out of the way as possible. The same goes for the 24MP selfie camera, which now has a smaller lens, measuring just 2.7mm. It is pushed nicely to the side to make covering it up or smudging it during gaming that little bit more difficult. We also have to praise Asus for still finding space for the said camera in the now narrower top bezel and leaving the gorgeous 6.78-inch AMOLED panel uninterrupted by notches or punch holes. And let's not forget also managing to fit the two symmetrical and identical front-facing speakers.
On the flip side, the top and bottom bezels surrounding the now taller 20.4:9 display on the ROG Phone 5 are unquestionably smaller. In fact, the side bezels have shrunk as well. On any other phone, this would be a reason for extra praise. However, Asus has always been very deliberate in its decision to have that empty space there and for a good reason - comfort while gaming. You need to have a convenient place to rest your thumbs and avoid accidental touches. And while there is still some room left, having gamed on every ROG Phone thus far, we can remark that the situation has gotten worse. For the sake of pure gaming comfort, we kind of wish Asus hadn't elongated the panel and slimmed the bezels down.
While we did allow ourselves to be a bit nitpicky about the size of the bezels, there is still no denying that Asus continues to put a massive effort into the proper, functional and non-obtrusive placement of its hardware. Just to give a few more examples, the ROG Phone 5 has three Wi-Fi antennas strategically placed in such a way that the phone can always dynamically switch between them and get a good signal, regardless of your hand position.
There is also a Quad-Mic Noise Cancelling Array, with the four units, once again, scattered strategically all around the phone so as to never be covered all at once. Having so many microphones also allows for some nifty audio focusing and wind suppression tricks during video recording.
Continuing our control tour with some more-traditional entries, there are a standard volume rocker and a power button right underneath that on the right-hand side of the device. Both are also strategically placed to avoid accidental touches, which has surprisingly also left them in a convenient location for reaching with a thumb.
The in-display fingerprint reader on the ROG Phone 5 is nothing fancy in terms of hardware, which we very much appreciate. It is a regular optical module which is snappy and reliable. The tech has matured nicely over the years. Plus, Asus still brings that extra bit of flare to it with a new set of unlock animations.
Apparently, there is some machine-learning smarts under the hood that promise to make reading even faster and more reliable as you use the phone, but we would honestly be perfectly happy if it manages to not mess-up the performance we got from day one.
For the last boring bit, we have a dual nano-SIM card slot on the ROG Phone 5, within an eye-catching accented cradle that takes a card on each side.
AirTrigger 5 and Ultrasonic buttons are where things get really fun. This supplementary control system has remained a staple of the ROG Phone line and has been continually evolving generation to generation. Two ultrasonic sensors sit at the core of the experience. There are positioned on either end of the right side of the phone. For the ROG Phone 5, Asus decided to move them towards the edges even more, with the claimed intention of making them easier to reach for people with smaller hands and to make gestures easier.
This is going to be a subjective matter, for sure, but we actually find the new position less convenient than the old one. Your mileage may vary, but using the sensors involves quite a bit of finger-flexing for us. Especially if you decide to separate the two sensors into halves and map each one separately. Which is a thing you can do and could also do on the ROG Phone 3, as well.
In fact, most of the base input types the system recognizes seem to be carried over from the ROG Phone 3. You can tap on the whole area on half of it, long presses, swipes and slides. Each of these can be individually and meticulously mapped to an on-screen control in-game for what is nothing short of a massive advantage. You can also get pre-made maps for many popular games and even skip some setup steps while still retaining access to an impressive array of tweaks to things like sensitivity, area, trigger distance and distance multiplier. It is an industry-leading system on a level of its own that no other manufacturer has even come close to matching.
Ultrasonic Trigger tweaks and options
Asus did still make improvements to the new version of the system, though. The regular ROG 5 can be mapped up to 14 specific touch points on the screen simultaneously to ultrasonic controls. The sensors themselves are more precise now, as well.
If you go for an ROG Phone 5 Pro or Ultimate, you also get access to two additional rear capacitive sensors, dubbed Rear touch for mapping. Toss-in the AeroActive Cooler 5, which now has two extra physical buttons of its own, and you get a whopping 18 mappable inputs.
Beyond in-game use, the AirTrigger sensors also provide squeeze detection during the general use of the ROG Phone 5. This aspect of the system is fairly versatile, as well. The phone can differentiate between a short and long press. They can also be assigned different actions depending on whether the phone is locked or unlocked. The list of actions for locked squeezing is understandably shorter and does not include just freely launching any app you want. From an unlocked phone, there are very few limitations to worry about. You can also choose to only have the gesture active when the screen is unlocked, if you are worried about accidental activation. A surprisingly precise force level slider offers another layer of accidental trigger protection. Playing around with this menu is also a great way to appreciate just how precise the Asus ultrasonic sensors are on a hardware level.
Then there are Motion controls, which are now greatly improved since last gen. On top of the shake gesture that the ROG Phone 3 could recognize, the ROG Phone 5 can now distinguish pushing and pulling the phone, tilting it left and right, turning it left and right, sliding it left and right and tilting it backward and forward.
If for some reason you feel like the ultrasonic mapping system does not provide enough inputs for your need, you can map the gestures to inputs, as well. For what it's worth, we did try to test a few of these out and they did seem to work. Ultimately, though, we were way too overwhelmed by the sheer number of things to remember.
This is actually an ongoing trend with the ROG Phone line and the ROG Phone 5 - the sheer depth and scope of the available features and extras are enough to make anyone's head spin. That, however, is the sign of a good and versatile professional tool. It's kind of par for the course, and we respect it for that. And if you don't plan on using these features or you are reluctant to fiddle with them, they stay out of the way.
Connectivity
In terms of network, the ROG Phone 5 has Dual-SIM support, including 5G on either slot, though not concurrently. You can have two concurrent LTE connections, though. There is only 5G Sub-6 support and no mmWave.
Beyond that, all ROG Phone 3 variants support Dual-Band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac/ax and Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6E is also available for supported markets. You get a total of three Wi-Fi antennas, with 2x2 MIMO support and intelligent seamless switching for the best possible signal. HyperFusion technology also allows a simultaneous connection to both Wi-Fi and a mobile network, with intelligent detection of quality and switching between the two.
You also get Bluetooth 5.2, along with HFP, A2DP, AVRCP, HID, PAN and OPP as Bluetooth profiles. For Bluetooth audio, there is code support for: LDAC, aptX, aptX HD and aptX Adaptive.
Glorious 144Hz OLED display - bigger, faster, brighter and more efficient than ever
Asus has spared no expense when it comes to equipping the ROG Phone line with premium, cutting-edge displays. The ROG Phone 5 is no different. Granted, this time around, there is no instantly eye-catching jump in panel specs. The 6.76-inch OLED panel in question is just slightly larger than the 6.59-inch one on the ROG Phone 3 and has the same 144Hz refresh rate. The resolution is also mostly unchanged at FullHD+ and is now just a tad taller/wider, depending on how you hold the phone at 2448 x 1080 pixels.
Honestly, even if the PR department didn't get many shiny new figures to flash on banners and posters, this setup still represents the optimal sweet-spot for mobile gaming. Asus has its priorities straight and still has ultimate gaming performance as its main goal, which is admirable. Upping the resolution would have meant more power consumption, a greater strain on the CPU and GPU, potentially lower refresh rate and average frame rates and higher input lag - all detrimental for pro-level gaming.
Plus, there are still less obvious advancements in display tech that Asus is reaping the benefits from. The particular panel inside the ROG Phone 5 is manufactured specifically to order, in the 20.4:9 aspect ratio by Samsung, using the modern E4 display tech. Simply-put, E4 denotes a new generation of materials Samsung is using to craft these Organic Light-Emitting Diode displays. Materials that result in higher brightness levels, improved contrast and color accuracy, all while saving power in the process.
Asus advertises this panel as being capable of anything from as low as 5 nits to 800 nits at APL100 and up to 1200 nits at APL1, with a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1. This would make the ROG Phone 5 23% brighter than the ROG Phone 3.
Naturally, we did some tests of our own, and while we didn't quite manage to match Asus' claims, the ROG Phone 5 is undoubtedly brighter than its predecessor. It has stellar outdoor visibility.
Display test | 100% brightness | ||
Black, |
White, |
||
0 | 1024 | ∞ | |
0 | 1023 | ∞ | |
0 | 926 | ∞ | |
0 | 822 | ∞ | |
0 | 807 | ∞ | |
0 | 806 | ∞ | |
0 | 802 | ∞ | |
0 | 719 | ∞ | |
0 | 626 | ∞ | |
0 | 538 | ∞ | |
0 | 504 | ∞ | |
0 | 498 | ∞ | |
0 | 497 | ∞ | |
0 | 492 | ∞ | |
0 | 485 | ∞ | |
0 | 479 | ∞ | |
0 | 464 | ∞ | |
0 | 458 | ∞ | |
0 | 333 | ∞ |
Asus also implemented some notable improvements to touch sampling and the entire touch latency chain in the ROG Phone 5. Starting with the display, which is now polling touch data at an industry-leading 300 Hz. That was then combined with end-to-end optimization of the touch data pipeline, from hardware to software. The result is an advertised touch latency of just 24.3ms and a slide latency of 18ms. An achievement Asus is not shy in calling:
Currently the world's lowest latency
Naturally, this is all entirely done in the pursuit of the best possible gaming advantage. Eye strain with prolonged gaming sessions is also a major consideration on a gaming device, especially one with a smaller display, prone to more eye fatigue. The ROG 5 addresses this through SGS Eye Care 6.5% and SGS Seamless Pro (120Hz) certifications. There is also DC Dimming 2.0 support for low brightness situations. It is an optional toggle in the setting menu which we are sure PWM-sensitive gamers will appreciate.
As another little quality of life extra, the ROG Phone 5 also features AS coating for reduced friction with sweaty fingers on the display.
While color accuracy and multimedia prowess are likely not a primary concern for the target gamer demographic of the ROG Phone 5, Asus did not leave anybody wanting in this department either. Makes sense, since the enthusiast crowd tends to be demanding all-around in the first place. The excellent AMOLED panel in the ROG Phone 5 boasts 111% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, 150.89% of sRGB and an average deltaE 2000 of less than 1. Every single unit is factory calibrated for the best possible results.
Once again, we ran tests of our own to verify these lofty claims, and while we couldn't get a deltaE 2000 of less than 1 in our test conditions, we got a very close result with an average deltaE of just 1.7 and a maximum of 3.7 by using the Standard color mode within the Splendid display menu. That is enough to be considered color accurate, for sure.
Beyond Standard mode, the ROG Phone 5 also has a trio of other color presets - Cinema, which slightly boosts some of the main color channels, but retains a rather subdued look, Default, which is probably the best choice for daily use, since it delivers that familiar OLED "punch" all around. And then there is Natural, which seems to make everything a bit redder and hotter, but also boosts the colder blue and similar channels a bit as well, making for a particular look we don't really appreciate. But, it's there if you want it.
A Custom slider allows you to adjust the color temperature up and down a bit. There is no proper custom white point adjustment, which is a bit disappointing to see on an otherwise so feature and options-heavy device, but it is hardly missed seeing how the Standard profile is excellently calibrated out of the box.
Last, but not least, the ROG Phone 5 is certified for HDR10+ and has Widevine L1, which means you can get the most out of streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. And we do mean the most, since the ROG Phone 5's front-facing, symmetrical stereo speaker system with Dirac audio stage widening is on a whole other level than most other phones out there.
High refresh rate handling
High refresh rate on Android is still a bit of a Wild West in that there really is no universally accepted end-to-end solution to implement it in the most efficient way from hardware, through OS to apps and games themselves. Though there have been notable improvements in the space, manufacturers are still mostly left to their devices and wits in figuring things out. The situation will likely remain the same until Google steps in and implements an all-encompassing solution of its own. We might actually be closer to that point in time than even, seeing how Android 11 now actively monitors refresh rates.
Asus has put a lot of effort into making its 144Hz panel work as fluently as possible, without tanking battery life, but also, without disappointing its gaming audience with a too conservative approach. The refresh rate settings menu on the ROG Phone 5 includes four specific settings - 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz, as well as an intriguing Auto option. Identical to the ROG Phone 3.
Just like with other aspects of its devices, like design and control location, thermal management or display optimization, the Asus' main priority always is delivering the best possible gaming performance, leaving any other consideration, like battery endurance, with lower priority. Hence, it makes sense that all four particular refresh rate settings in the menu act like strict frame rate targets, which the phone enforces almost universally across all apps.
The UI, in particular, gets fixed to the refresh rate you select, and so do most apps, regardless of whether they can even produce the required number of frames. Lots of mobile game engines, for instance, can't go beyond 60fps by design. Some can't even push beyond 30fps. However, there is no software issue forcing any app or game to run at any refresh rate.
Even so, however, Asus still reserves its right to automatically force some common-sense measures behind the scenes, even with strict refresh rate settings in place.
ROG Phone 5 operating at 120Hz
Most-notably, playing a video in the default Video player always drops the refresh rate down to 60Hz to save battery. Some other instances of video playback trigger the same logic, notably, playing a video in Google Photos switches to 60Hz. But the instant you start interacting with the UI, the refresh rate shoots back up to ensure smoother scrolling.
YouTube, on the other hand, was consistently stuck at 120Hz in the menus, as well as while playing back video, which is definitely wasteful in terms of battery life. We also tried Chrome and Firefox, as some of the most popular mobile browsers to see how they behave with the popular UFO test. Both can successfully climb above 60fps and even sync at 120Hz or 144Hz. Chrome seems to be having slightly more issues, though.
ROG Phone 5 120Hz: Chrome • Firefox
Of course, the main reason why you might want to use a high refresh rate is for gaming purposes. High refresh rate adoption is definitely improving rapidly among game developers and engines, though you still need to put in some effort to find titles that work. The good news is that Asus has not one but two dedicated curated sections within Armoury Crate - one with games that go up to 120Hz and another one with those that go up to 144Hz. There is obviously a big overlap. Excluding the occasional mislabeled title, it is a great resource to reference.
Armoury Crate curated high refresh rate game lists
In any case, games seem to have relatively straight-forward behavior in high refresh mode on average. The Asus way of applying what is essentially a frame rate upper cap with the 60, 120, and 144Hz modes agrees well with most engines, and the ROG Phone 5 typically has enough power to just lock the game at the target frame rate, even 144fps.
The only thing to potentially consider is that some games might require a quick visit to the options menu, in case they have their own frame rate setting that might not always sync-up automatically when changing the system refresh rate. Of course, there are plenty of games that do not support anything beyond 60fps or even 30fps and playing those with a high refresh rate set on the display is just wasting battery.
Flipping over to 144Hz results in an experience quite consistent with 120Hz. The UI gets locked to 144Hz, and so do many apps.
ROG Phone 5 operating at 144Hz
Video is still played at 60Hz in the default player, and Google Photos switches seamlessly between 144Hz in the UI and 60Hz when just playing a video.
Native video player and Google Photos at 144Hz
YouTube behaves rather weird in 144Hz mode. The UI works at 144Hz, as expected for extra smoothness, but then the actual video player ends up in 120Hz mode. Almost as if Google deemed that the "safer", "rounder" number. It is still wasteful, though, and a great example of the fact that there are still plenty of behavioral bugs to iron out on a general OS level.
The few games we tried at 144Hz, validated to potentially go that high by the Asus Armoury Crate team, had no issues indeed.
Naturally, the most intriguing mode out of the bunch is Auto mode. Generally, the ROG Phone 5 seems to stick to 120Hz mode white on auto. We didn't see it go up to 144Hz for a single time, which is interesting and likely a battery-saving measure.
ROG Phone 5 operating in Auto mode
Google Photos had exactly the same behavior as in 120Hz mode, sensibly dropping the refresh rate down to 60Hz when only the video is on screen.
Google Photos operating in Auto mode
The default video player dropped to 60Hz while playing as well, and there are certain apps that explicitly declare that they can only operate at 60Hz. Google Maps and many apps using a Google Maps based interface within them are notable examples.
Default video player • Google Maps
Chrome generally had no issues sticking to the 120Hz mode set forth by the Auto setting, while Firefox did experience some oddities here and there, basically working at 120Hz until a new page gets loaded and that suddenly forces a drop to 60Hz. Just another weirdness to add to the list.
Games were not exempt from odd behavior either. From the trio of validated 144Hz titles we tested at Auto mode, two ran at 120Hz, while one dropped down to 60Hz.
Quickfire round: Facebook was fine with 120Hz in Auto mode, but did not do the smart thing to drop down when playing video. Messenger only did 60Hz.
Facebook and Messenger in Auto mode
Instagram was locked at 120Hz, regardless of whether a video was on screen or not, same as Facebook. TikTok was 60Hz all the way.
Instagram and TikTok in Auto mode
Bottom line then? Well, high refresh rate handling is still a mess on Android as a whole. Things are improving, and we have to hand it to Asus for doing its fair part. The Auto mode, as implemented in the ROG Phone 5, is perfectly good enough for daily use and strikes a nice and sensible balance between fluidity and battery endurance.
If you plan on making the most out of the high refresh rate capabilities of the phone, though, we would suggest leveraging the excellent per-app settings capabilities in Armoury Crate to run all of your video playback and similar apps, as well as games that don't have high refresh rate support at a forced 60Hz to save battery and conversely - all of the games that support high refresh rate at 120Hz or 144Hz.
Armoury Crate per-app refresh rate settings
It's a bit of extra work to set up, for sure, but that's just the current state of affairs, and overall, Asus has its high refresh rate handling set up in a way that's about as good as it gets right now.
Battery life
A 6,000 mAh battery is sort of becoming the expected standard with ROG Phone users. Asus actually set the bar pretty high in yet another area with its ongoing attention to battery endurance and longevity combined. Circling back to some of last year's marketing points for the ROG Phone 3, there is plenty of justification for having a large 6,000 mAh battery, charging at a reasonable 30W rate. In no particular order - a bigger battery means ultimately better longevity since you are using up fewer cycle count than you would on a smaller cell. This is partially where the sensible 30W of charging comes into play, as well, since it does not generate overly huge amounts of heat, which also degrades cells.
A slower charger on a larger battery can also actually maintain higher voltages for longer, before it reaches a trickle charge (constant voltage) phase, which, if you do the math, can net you a better mAh/minute charge rate than say pumping 65W peaks into a 4,000 mAh cell. As another added bonus, slower charging can be done with thinner separators between the cathode and Anode, improving battery density.
Asus brings up all of these points within the ROG Phone 5 presentation, as well. Though, unlike its predecessor, it has a totally different battery design. One that Asus still feels is just as good and to quote them:
The new dual-cell design has made it possible to keep out 6,000 mAh capacity while increasing charging from 30W to 65W with a lower charging temperature and without sacrificing battery lifespan
The total 6,000 mAh capacity is actually split between two symmetrical 3,000 mAh cells, which sit on both sides of the CPU PCB.
These feature MMT battery technology and a double-wired split design. MMT stands for Middle Middle Tab and increases the energy density in a battery by charging it from the middle outwards instead of from the ends, which lowers impedance and temperature.
Lower temperatures allow higher wattage charging to be sustained for longer periods before entering trickle charge (constant voltage). So, technically, what Asus has done here is approaching the problem of tapering-off charging wattages in a different way, through MMT tech, in place of simply a larger single battery. Neat!
This has unlocked higher overall charging speeds as well since now we are effectively charging two cells concurrently at the peak of 65W combined. But, before we get into charging, we should talk about endurance.
In keeping with our standing testing methodology, we did our best to run our two on-screen tests - video and browser at both 144Hz and 60Hz refresh rate. Mind you, this was no easy task, and we had to jump through hoops without testing tools, however, this is the only way to provide you with both a best- and worst-case scenario for these two activities.
Starting with 144Hz mode, the ROG Phone 5 clocked-in a respectable Endurance rating of 110h. A bit less than its predecessor, but that was kind of expected, given that fancy technology aside, two smaller batteries are less efficient and can't really be utilized as fully as one big cell. Hence, the ROG Phone 5 did slightly worse in both its standby and call tests.
As for on-screen tests, the ROG Phone 5 managed to go for a really solid 25 hours on offline video looping on a single charge. Again, a bit less than its predecessor, but not too shabby. Interestingly, the ROG Phone 5 managed to improve in terms of web browsing endurance this year, despite generally scoring lower in the other battery categories. Furthermore, it kept the battery variance between browsing at 144Hz and 60Hz a lot tighter than the ROG Phone 3. A lot of the improvement can likely be attributed to better and more efficient Wi-Fi, too.
Lowering the refresh rate manually to 60Hz illustrates the huge unnecessary power waste during video playback. There is also a small endurance boost to be had in web browsing. All things considered, it looks like slowly, but surely, the battery cost associated with running a high refresh rate panel is getting smaller and smaller with advancements in tech.
As things currently stand, we see no reason not to use 144Hz on the ROG Phone 5 anywhere where that would be applicable. You might have to spend some time cherry-picking and setting-up specific refresh rates for some of your apps, but once that is fine-tuned, you should get both an amazingly-smooth visual experience and an impressive endurance. You can also just leave the refresh rate on Auto, which more often than not skips the highest possible 144Hz setting and goes for a more modest 120Hz instead. If you are fine with that, you can skip the extra per-app tuning work that way and still get an amazingly smooth experience.
Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSer App. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Asus ROG Phone 5s for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.
Charging and battery care
Asus has upgraded the maximum charging rate on the ROG Phone 5 to 65W this year, up from the conservative 30W on the ROG Phone 3. Like we mentioned, this is in part enabled through the split battery design. Charging is done natively using ASUS HyperCharge technology (PD 3.0 + PPS, 3.3V - 21V and 3.0A). A pretty elegant system that is not only USB PD compliant but also only needs a standard 3A Type-C to Type-C cable instead of a beefier 5A one.
Asus advertises a charging rate of 70% or (4200 mAh) in just 30 minutes on the ROG Phone 5, which we basically matched to the dot in our testing. A full charge should take 52 minutes, but our tests (at room temperature and with the phone ON but screen OFF) put it at a little over an hour. Even so, these are massively impressive numbers!
30min charging test (from 0%)
- Xiaomi Mi 11
83% - Asus ROG Phone 5
70% - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (01/2021 retest)
57% - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
54% - Sony Xperia 1 II
46% - Asus ROG Phone 3
43% - Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max (MagSafe)
28% - Poco M3
25% - Samsung Galaxy M30s
21%
Time to full charge (from 0%)
- Xiaomi Mi 11
0:50h - Asus ROG Phone 5
1:05h - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
1:11h - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (01/2021 retest)
1:13h - Asus ROG Phone 3
1:50h - Sony Xperia 1 II
1:51h - Poco M3
2:30h
Asus also takes battery care pretty seriously. This is not a newfound priority either, as previous ROG Phones have also enjoyed more than a few extensive options and features in this regard. Now with the ROG Phone 5, everything related to PowerMaster is merged and organized within the battery settings menu, for added convenience.
Starting with the basics, there are quite a few System modes. A few pre-defined, as well as an Advanced one you can get really in-depth with. These modes are also accessible through the Armoury Crate app, since they do a lot more than just weak your battery profile and behavior, but basically, with X Mode, you get the fewest restrictions on battery usage, followed by Dynamic, which is the sort-of default one you are meant to use on a daily basis and then Ultra durable is your battery saver.
The Ultra Durable mode can also be activated on a schedule, which is kind of neat for off-hours. Beyond this there is also a dedicated Battery care menu. Custom charging limit is a pretty common and well-known feature in the laptop realm. Basically, it allows you to limit the time your battery spends at 100% charge, which is a detrimental state for in long-term and have the phone stop charging automatically at say 90% or 80%. Asus' own testing found that after 500 charge cycles at 100%, a test battery lost 15% capacity, while the same number of charges to 80% only cost it 7%.
Battery care • Steady charging • Scheduled charging
While keeping a battery pinned at full charge for prolonged periods is definitely bad, the biggest battery killer is likely heat. Faster charging rate usually means more heat. Hence the inclusion of the Steady charging option. It allows you to effectively cap charging rate to lower wattage and choose longevity over a faster top-off. There are three levels of Steady Charging to choose from, and these actually behave differently depending on what charger you plug into the ROG Phone 5.
Charging Options | |||
Charger (Maximum Power) | Steady | Moderately Steady | Extremely Steady |
65W | 45W | 30W | 18W |
30W | 18W | 15W | 10W |
18W | (On) 10W | ||
10W | (On) 10W |
You can also combine Steady Charging and the Custom Charging limit with Scheduled charging. Like the name suggests, it is a system that charges your battery intelligently on a curve so that it does not stay pinned at 100%, constantly trickle charging for hours. Especially convenient for overnight charging and includes options such as end time by alarm, do not disturb, airplane mode and turning off the battery led indicator.
Speaker test
Asus' work in mobile audio has been nothing short of industry-leading. We're quite confident in stating this since the ROG Phone II remains one of the benchmark devices in our relatively new loudspeaker test. Last year, the ROG Phone 3 followed that up with its own set of hardware upgrades, as well as a newfound partnership with Swedish audio experts Dirac. The ROG Phone 5 does its fair share to push the envelope further still this year.
Just like its predecessor, the ROG Phone 5 has a pair of front-facing stereos speakers, with a 7-magnet design. One of the important new upgrades being that the two speakers is now symmetrical, meaning that they are identical on a hardware level, which was not the case with the ROG Phone 3. The units in question are 12x16 Super Linear Speakers with 35% larger combined speaker volume. Each speaker has a dedicated Cirrius Logic CS35L45 mono amp that delivers 21% more power than the amplifier in the previous model. It can even output its peak voltage at up to 15v, which is a 36% increase.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
The ROG Phone 5 delivers an amazingly-rich and dynamic sound stage. Among the best we have heard coming out of a mobile phone.
Addressing the elephant in the room, yes, the ROG Phone 5 is slightly quieter, or rather less "chart-breakingly" loud than its predecessor. Just like the ROG Phone 3 was a bit quieter in our tests than its predecessor. What you should really be focusing on, however, is the impressive nature of its frequency response. If you want to just get more dB out of it, disregarding any quality degradation, you could achieve that. For instance, there the ROG Phone 5 specifically includes an option to boost volume for incoming calls, when it could, in fact, matter, to screeching high levels.
The audio prowess of the ROG Phone 5 goes way beyond hardware, too. Last year, Asus partnered with Dirac in order to leverage the unique customizability of their audio platform. This has been carried forward to the ROG Phone 5, as well. You still get all of the systems and behind-the-scenes algorithms as last year, only this time the measurement and calculation methods involved have been completely re-engineered to even better capture the acoustic characteristics of the particular speaker setup and improve efficiency, focus and performance.
Plenty of PR talk there, but credit where credit is due, the end results are quite impressive. Starting with AudioWizard, which is the centralized audio hub on the ROG Phone 5.
It offers access to a 10-band equalizer, as well a total of four pre-made modes: Dynamic, Music, Cinema and Game. Music is meant for general use, Cinema has a slightly wider sound stage and enhances bass and vocals. Game mode has the widest sound stage of the bunch and also enhances small sounds like footsteps, as well as high frequencies for a better special location.
Speaking of gaming sound, the ROG 5 now also has an intriguing haptic sound/vibration system that can automatically identify certain sounds, like a gun firing or even different guns firing and translate those to satisfying haptic feedback in supported games such as PUBG.
Finally, there is Dynamic mode, which intelligently switches between Music and Game modes depending on whether Game genie - the Asus in-game overlay is active or not. Our audio tests were done using the default Dynamic mode.
Owners of supported ROG headsets can also download and make use of specific impulse and frequency correction response profiles from within the AudioWizard app.
But the audio profiles and equalizer are just the tip of the iceberg. Asus and Dirac have crafted quite a few powerful background enhancement systems, all housed under the GameFX branding umbrella. Many of them might already be familiar to you from the ROG Phone 3. But there are also new additions, like MIMO, which stands for Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output. In short, it is a system traditionally found in luxury automobiles that treats a stereo speaker system as one unified system and co-optimizes its summed impulse and frequency response instead of dealing with each speaker in isolation.
This approach has allowed for MIMO Crosstalk cancellation - an upgraded system from what was present in the ROG Phone 3 that adjusts the perceived spacing between the left and right speakers and tries to achieve better stereo separation, despite the physical proximity of the drivers. This is done by dynamically creating an inverted signal from each speaker and feeding it through the other with the right delay and phase.
We were particularly impressed by the Bass enhancement technology. By definition, true bass relies on large speaker volume and moving a large quantity of air. These things are outside the reach of a mobile speaker system, even one as beefy as the ROG Phone 3's. The proposed solution here relies on psychoacoustics. It's a fairly complex process of adding specific over-tones to the output of the speaker that extend the perceived bass tone by two octaves. In simpler terms, your brain is tricked into perceiving a 33% wider frequency range than what the physical speakers can output (16,000 - 234 Hz, enhanced to 16,000 - 58Hz), with only a small drop-off in volume as a tradeoff.
The key thing to note here is that the increase is just in perceived bass. That means that the tech works better in certain situations than others and is more convincing to some people than others. It is something hard to put into words, but when it works, you can swear that that kind of low-frequency, deep bass sound cannot, possibly be coming from a smartphone speaker.
Bass enhancement technology can be experienced on a system-wide level. The same goes for Impulse response correction, which tries its best to clean-up impulse frequency response and limit sound tapering-off effects, so they don't interfere with other sounds. Same goes for Frequency response correction, which tries to balance and smooth-out frequency responses across the board.
3.5mm audio output
Fans rejoice, after a hiatus on the ROG Phone 3, the on-board 3.5mm jack has made a triumphant return to the ROG Phone 5! And what a return indeed - it is hooked up to an ESS SABRE ES9280AC Pro DAC with HyperStream II QUAD DAC™ technology and a built-in Class G ESS Sabre Headphone amplifier.
The Class G Headphone amplifier automatically detects load impedance between 8 to 1000 Ohms. Enabling lower THD and 2Vrms in output for headphones with higher impedance than 50 Ohm. You can refer to the table for a breakdown.
Headphone Impedance | SNR | THD+N | Power |
32 ohm | 121dB | -101dB | 1Vrms / 31mW |
100 ohm | 127dB | -101dB | 2Vrms / 40mW |
300 ohm | 127dB | -101dB | 2Vrms / 13.3mW |
600 ohm | 127dB | -101dB | 2Vrms / 6.7mW |
The Class G ESS Sabre Headphone amplifier promises best-in-class signal-to-noise performance of 130db. And is backed-up by a patented Time Domain Jitter Eliminator that can reach a dynamic range of 122dB.
The ROG Phone 5 is also Hi-Res Audio (HRA) certified and when paired with a High-Res Audio certified output device can play back audio files rated at 24-bit/96kHz or 24-bit/192kH.
Snapdragon 888 synthetic benchmarks
Asus has pulled-off some pretty impressive binning and overclocking stunts for ROG Phone models in the past. It has always been the company's primary goal to get the best possible chips and even individual units for its gaming phones. The modern mobile silicon scene is quite a bit different, though. Qualcomm has been doing its own in-house binning and optimizing for some time now, mostly eliminating the capabilities or viability for an enthusiastic third-party like Asus to do its own cherry-picking.
As a result, the ROG Phone 5 essentially has the exact same Snapdragon 888 chipset that you can find in competing flagships. This time around, there is no mention of CPU or GPU overclocking and small performance bumps on a hardware level, which used to be the same with some of the older ROG Phone models. Don't get us wrong, though, the Snapdragon 888 chip you are getting is still the cream of the crop in terms of performance currently out there. Plus, there are still plenty of software-level tweaks and optimizations that can be done to squeeze more performance out of it. That hasn't changed and is, in fact, more in-depth than ever.
Asus has implemented the Snapdragon 888 in a pretty unique "unlocked" manner, quite unlike anything else available from competitors. So, on the one hand, the engineering team has expanded huge efforts towards internal and thermal design for the ROG Phone 5 in every way imaginable and on top of that, you are permitted to tweak the behavior of the internals on a low level for yourself even further through advanced tweaks in Armoury Crate.
Just to be perfectly clear, you can't really "overclock" anything in the traditional way. The CPU you are getting is still capped at 2.84 GHz on its primary Kryo 680 core, 2.42 GHz on its three other "big" Kryo 680 ones and 1.8 GHz on the four "small" Kryo 680 ones. To the best of our knowledge, the Adreno 660 GPU is also operating at its regular stock clock. What you can definitely tweak, however, is the thermal behavior of various components of the system. In other words, how far you would like to push your maximum and sustained internal temps. Which, depending on how well you do it, can ultimately get you better peak and/or sustained performance, since thermal constraints are the main limiting factor within a closed passive, or semi-passive with the AeroActive Cooler 5 system, such as the ROG Phone 5.
You can really dig deep and drown yourself in multipliers, limiters curves, governors and all of that geeky goodness that is going on under the hood of the ROG Phone 5 and is generally tucked away in every other consumer smartphone. And tweaking can be done both ways as well. If you know what you are doing, you can tactically limit your system performance in a controlled manner, even on a per-app basis, to squeeze the most battery life out of the ROG Phone 5. And Asus has you equally well-covered even if you don't want to get your hands dirty and mess with any of that by offering pre-made performance modes and even a default Dynamic mode, which will automatically kick in and do the basic tuning on its own. It's all about options, and nobody does it quite like Asus ROG.
Transitioning into some actual synthetic benchmarks, we made sure to run all of our tests at the default Dynamic mode, X Mode, as well as X Mode+, which only gets unlocked and substitutes the regular X Mode when you attach the AeroActive Cooler 5 to the ROG Phone 5. We left all of the other in-depth tuning sliders on default, cooled the phone between runs and had the AeroActive Cooler 5 manually set to max for those tests. With the methodology out of the way, we can kick things off with GeekBench and a pure CPU test.
GeekBench 5 (single-core)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
1127 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
1121 - Asus ROG Phone 5
1110 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
1109 - Xiaomi Mi 11
1085 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
1020 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
988 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
975 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
920 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
901 - Sony Xperia 1 II
897 - OnePlus 8T
893
GeekBench 5 (multi-core)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
3745 - Asus ROG Phone 5
3710 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
3709 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
3704 - Xiaomi Mi 11
3489 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
3357 - Sony Xperia 1 II
3318 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
3294 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
3275 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
3248 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
3244 - OnePlus 8T
3126
The ROG Phone 5 is making the best out of its Snapdragon 888 and as such, is scoring as good or slightly better than other flagships with the same Qualcomm flagship chip.
Since most benchmarks are basically measuring peak bursty performance, there isn't enough time for thermal constraints and throttling to properly kick in, running the tests at X Mode and X Mote+ with the AeroActive Cooler 5 doesn't really make that much of a difference. It's a perfectly expected outcome.
Proving our point about the importance of thermal-throttling and endurance over time, we have AnTuTu, which is not only a more-compound benchmark, but also a significantly lengthier one. Hence, we can see the effects of either allowing more lapse thermal constraints on the hardware in X Mode and then also adding an active cooler on top of that. The differences are small, but over a longer period, like a lengthy gaming session, they do compound and can start to make a tangible difference.
AnTuTu 8
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
718864 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
708531 - Asus ROG Phone 5
708216 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
686835 - Xiaomi Mi 11
668722 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
657273 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
638497 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
601858 - OnePlus 8T
576625 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
571312 - Sony Xperia 1 II
534701 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
531270 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
483239
For the sake of thoroughness, we will mention once again that this review and all of the benchmarks in it were done with a regular ROG Phone 5 unit (not Pro or Ultimate), with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. It is safe to assume that AnTuTu, in particular, will award extra points to the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate edition with its ludicrous 18GB of RAM.
Moving on to graphics tests, we can see the Adreno 660 provides a nice generational boost up in scores, especially if you compare it to the vanilla Snapdragon 865 (up to 35% faster) instead of the boosted Snapdragon 865+, as found in the ROG Phone 3. Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite Gaming suite of technologies now also includes Variable Rate Shading (VRS) technology, which could provide an additional up to 30% theoretical performance improvements in certain scenarios.
GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
123 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
123 - Asus ROG Phone 5
122 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
117 - Xiaomi Mi 11
111 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
109 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
97 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
94 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
92 - OnePlus 8T
88 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
86 - Sony Xperia 1 II
84 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
78
GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
104 - Asus ROG Phone 5
103 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
103 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
86 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
82 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
78 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
78 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
68 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
64 - OnePlus 8T
60 - Sony Xperia 1 II
59 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
58 - Xiaomi Mi 11
57
GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
72 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
72 - Asus ROG Phone 5
71 - Xiaomi Mi 11
67 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
66 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
64 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
57 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
56 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
56 - OnePlus 8T
53 - Sony Xperia 1 II
51 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
51 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
47
GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5
59 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
59 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
58 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
51 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
48 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
46 - OnePlus 8T
46 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
43 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
40 - Sony Xperia 1 II
39 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
33 - Xiaomi Mi 11
33 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
25
Overclocked or not, we can clearly see that the ROG Phone 5 is squeezing a few frames more, on average, out of the Adreno 660, compared to competitors like the Xiaomi Mi 11 and Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The lead here is definitely more pronounced than in the CPU section. Again, this boost is likely due to a combination of factors, like excellent thermal design, a higher thermal ceiling and a slew of other performance tuning and tweaks.
Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5
43 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
43 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
43 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
34 - OnePlus 8T
31 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
30 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
27 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
27 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
25 - Xiaomi Mi 11
24 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
21 - Sony Xperia 1 II
20 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
17
GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5
40 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
40 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
40 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
34 - Asus ROG Phone 3 (144Hz)
32 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
32 - Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra
30 - OnePlus 8T
29 - Sony Xperia 1 II
27 - Asus ROG Phone II (120Hz)
26 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
26 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
23 - Xiaomi Mi 11
22
A few things worth noting here - these numbers only represent peak performance in short loads. The margins will inevitably shrink with longer workloads, like real-life gaming. Also, comparisons on a device-to-device basis are only fair for off-screen tests since the on-screen rendering is dependent on the panel resolution. In the case of the ROG Phone 5, 1080p+ provides a clear benefit to on-screen fps, compared to the QHD+ displays on the Xiaomi Mi 11 and Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5
32 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
32 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
32 - Xiaomi Mi 11
28 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
25 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
23
GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)
Higher is better
- Asus ROG Phone 5
28 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
28 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
28 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
25 - Xiaomi Mi 11
25 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
22
All of these tests were also done at a forced 144Hz refresh rate on the ROG Phone 5, so as to allow the on-screen portions to push and score higher. In fact, the ROG Phone 5 almost managed to reach its 144fps cap while running the older and no longer particularly useful Manhattan 3.0 run in GFXBench. We are dealing with some truly powerful hardware here.
3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)
Higher is better
- Huawei Mate 40 Pro (perf. mode)
6679 - Huawei Mate 40 Pro
6170 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode+FAN)
5763 - Asus ROG Phone 5
5744 - Asus ROG Phone 5(X Mode)
5740 - Xiaomi Mi 11
5673 - Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (SD)
5547 - Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra (SD)
4194
As yet another example, we did put the ROG Phone 5 through the usual SlingShot runs in 3DMark, but you might notice that they are not listed here. That's simply because we literally got the maximum possible score and the 3DMark refused to give us a number.
Before we move on to thermal-throttling behavior, it is important to note that the ROG Phone 5 gets noticeably hot while doing intensive work, like gaming and the heat compounds over time. It never actually gets uncomfortable to hold unless you run deliberate stress tests, but you should still be aware that this is intentional behavior. Asus has one primary goal - keep the internals as cool as possible, so they can perform better and has deliberately designed the entire chassis, including the thick metal frame, to act as a heatsink.
If you are not a particular fan of that and would rather prioritize hand comfort, though, you can definitely do that by either limiting performance on the phone in one of the many available ways or alternatively by getting the AeroActive 5 cooler to have the, in a sense - "have your cake and eat it too". It provides a nice and cooling stream of air to your palms, perfect for mitigating sweat.
AeroActive 5 cooler
The AeroActive line of cooler attachments has been one of the staples of the ROG Phone family since the very start. Kind of a spotlight feature, in fact, since it essentially kickstarted the admittedly still niche but growing endeavor of trying to introduce active cooling to mobile phones. While v1, v2 and v3 of the accessories certainly had their share of differences and innovations from one to the other, the AeroActive Cooler 5 represents the biggest change to the accessory in more ways than on. Unfortunately, not all positive.
Let's start with something positive - the AeroActive Cooler 5 now has two physical AirTrigger buttons of its own. This is a new development that adds yet another layer of controls that can be mapped using the industry-leading Asus solution. The buttons themselves are just hairpin triggers, with little travel, despite their appearance mimicking an analog appearance. They have a decent click to them and are shaped in a way that is convenient to hit with a ring finger. So, overall, perfectly decent, if not mind-blowing in terms of quality, feel and tactile feedback.
Another positive we can instantly point to with the new AeroActive Cooler 5 design is its streamlined profile and relative lightness compared to most previous iterations. All the while, both the convenient kickstand and the "full-featured" dual-LED ROG RGB logo are present. Perhaps the lack of any moving attachment mechanism helps in regards to keeping the construction light.
However, with no moving parts, you are forced to kind of "snap" it into place on the phone with a fair bit of force. This is one of our first gripes with the design. And things go from bad to worse quickly when you consider the new pogo pin design of the Asus Side Connector. Where the ROG Phone 3 had a Type-C port, flanked by a slightly narrower custom port, with essentially the same protruding plug design, the ROG Phone 5 simply has a set of contact plates flanking its Type-C port. It definitely looks slicker, but it makes the spring-loaded contact pins on the AeroActive Cooler hard to align and very vulnerable to damage.
The previous AeroActive design had a bit plug enter the Side Connector of the ROG Phone 3 in a reassuring manner, with a passthrough Type-C plug then included on the accessory.
Now, the AeroActive Cooler 5 expects you to line-up the pogo-pins without much of a guide to go by and then apply quite a bit of force to the other end of the accessory to clip it on. A simple cutout allows you to still access the now recessed Type-C port. A seemingly more-elegant, slicker and definitely cheaper solution, but a far less convenient one. In fact, our AeroActive Cooler 5 managed to get badly damaged during this review (thankfully after the performance testing), snapping off one of the pins. We are counting this particular design as a clear downgrade from previous iterations.
We also have mixed feelings about the actual fan inside the AeroActive Cooler 5. It works just fine but is definitely noisier than the one on the AeroActive Cooler for the ROG Phone 3. We measured it at all of the available speed settings and compared that against the official data, provided by Asus.
Fan Noise | 24 dBA | 26 dBA | 30 dBA | 32 dBA |
Fan Speed | 3850 rpm | 4170 rpm | 4980 rpm | 5220 rpm |
Our conclusion - we most-likely got unlucky with an early unit since the extra noise is almost certainly due to some form of scraping. Perhaps a blade is getting stuck on something. Knowing Asus' high standards of manufacturing quality, we are fairly confident that this is a one-off thing and won't be holding it against the ROG Phone 5.
In more practical terms, once we were past the struggle of actually getting the AeroActive Cooler 5 on the phone, we found using it quite pleasant. It doesn't add too much extra weight nor does it get in the way. And while we can't exactly validate the official claims of 15-degree surface and 10-degree CPU temperature drop, there was definitely a tangible difference to both in-hand feel, as well as thermal behavior of the internals with the AeroActive Cooler blasting air onto the back panel.
Thermal-throttling test
Now that we introduced the AeroActive 5 cooler, as sort of our "secret weapon" in battling thermal-throttling, it's time to see how the ROG Phone 5 handles prolonged loads and heat generation. Arguably a much more valuable and relevant metric when it comes to those real-world gaming sessions. For that, we turned to CPU Throttling Test - an excellent app that we've used in the past to see how ramping-down performance is handled. This is actually a process manufacturers have some degree of control over through hardware and software solutions.
ROG Phone 5 thermal throttling: Dynamic Mode
While losing some performance over time is inevitable, the way that happens is important. What you ideally want to see is a gradual, controlled ramp-down, with the worst-case scenario being jarring, sudden dips, indicating that the phone pushed too hard, reached a hard limit and was forced to rapidly dial-back, potentially causing a stutter in-game.
In its default Dynamic mode, the ROG Phone 5 is very well-behaved, gradually dropping its performance over time with no jarring stutters. Exactly the desired behavior. It managed to retain 89% of its original performance after a full hour of torture, which is a great achievement. Mind you, this is an entirely synthetic scenario that keeps the CPU pinned at 100% all of the time and is absolutely not representative of real-world conditions. Purely done as an example of the absolute-worst potential situation to put the ROG Phone 5 in. A fact further backed up by the scorching temperature of its frame mid-testing.
ROG Phone 5 thermal throttling: X Mode
Running the exact same stress test in X Mode, without the AeroActive Cooler 5 on leads to an interesting but expected behavior. Initially, the phone tries to push itself harder, as signified by the higher maximum performance number attained. It even manages to score a higher average number in X Mode. However, this also means that even with the phone's best efforts to stick to a gradual decline in performance, eventually, a couple of dips appear. Mind you, these were not severe enough to cause stutters, as evidenced by the yellow color on the graph. So, bottom line, X Mode will give you more performance, but over time may lead to less stable performance. There's just no avoiding heat build-up in a closed system.
ROG Phone 5 thermal throttling: X Mode+ with AeroActive Cooler 5
Unless you introduce the AeroActive Cooler 5 to the mix, that is. The results are stunning. We don't believe we've ever seen no CPU throttling occur after a full hour of testing on a phone before. Granted, Asus seems to have tuned the performance curve of X Mode+ a bit differently than the regular X Mode, with a tamer initial push. It clearly works out great, however, and achieves truly smooth sustained performance.
This is no small achievement and one that the ROG Phone 5 should rightfully wear as a batch of honor, proving its status as the ultimate gaming top-dog.
ROG UI
The Republic of Gamers brand has always logically had a certain "gamery" aesthetic attached to it. Buyers seem to appreciate and even expect a certain amount of aggressive lines, every conceivable shade of red, lots of mechanical, geometric and alien visuals. Even though there is a clear trend of toning-down the really "out-there" aspects of the ROG Phone line, especially with the new ROG Phone 5, it still delivers plenty of gamer "chic" out of the box. Massive-looking motion animations, glowing effects, flames, reactors. You get the gist.
Not that much has changed visually since the ROG Phone 3 and, in fact, the ROG Phone II, as well. There are still plenty of upgrades under the hood, though, with the ROG Phone 5 rocking Google's current Android 11 out of the box. So, it's not a case of Asus just being lazy and rehashing old software. On the contrary, it's another example of clear priorities and deliberate actions.
The ROG Phone 5 is chock-full of all sorts of advanced options, toggles and menus all over the place. One swipe down for the quick toggles with the default ROG theme, and you might just feel like you are operating a nuclear reactor. The number of options you are expected to want to "quick access" is a bit staggering.
The first thing you absolutely need to try out is pressing the X Mode toggle. That kick-starts an impressive sequence that would fit right in a Transformers movie. An animation on the default wallpapers gets initiated, symbols start shifting, glowing borders start shining around icons. If set up accordingly, the RGB logo on the backfires up, as well as any compatible Aura Sync logo on attached ROG accessories.
Just in case this all gets a bit too much for you or simply isn't your cup of tea, Asus still includes a clean, almost AOSP-like theme as an option.
Now that the ROG Phone 5 has toned-down the actual physical gamer aesthetics even further than the ROG Phone 3, rocking the vanilla look on it sounds even more justifiable.
What you get is an Android AOSP experience. It's frankly a bit eerie. We imagine it almost feels like what a Boss key should open when you catch your kid playing games instead of studying on the computer. It's almost too clean, is what we're getting at.
In fact, the phone even complained when we initially enabled the basic ZenUI theme, adamantly warning us that we would be missing out on animated wallpapers that respond to X Mode. Joking aside, the theme engine in ROG UI is potent and includes a vibrant online repository with plenty of full theme and wallpaper options to explore. Both with and without a gamer spin to their look.
Speaking of options, the ROG Phone 5 has quite a few. To be fair, though, none that we would actually consider bloat. Every advanced feature included makes sense and is typically slotted and well-organized within a sub-menu or an app. Options are abundant but not chaotic.
The battery menu, for instance, has a few interesting gems hidden away. The PowerMaster menu from the ROG Phone 3 seems to be missing, but it's more of an organizational change than a loss of options. You can still adjust battery modes and their behavior, only now these are more closely tied to general phone modes and the X Mode interface.
The Battery care menu is also available, and so is the per-app autostart manager. Since the ROG Phone 5 is tuned for optimal performance, it makes sense
We already discussed just how far Asus has come in terms of battery savings, controlled charging, and longevity options. Battery modes are now merged with the overall System modes. You can tweak the behavior and options of the three default modes and go more in-depth with the Advanced mode. There is no longer an option to create more modes beyond these, but we were never left actually missing that feature.
Asus has a solid set of Battery care features. They are easily on par with what Qnovo offers. Slow charging, max charging limits, and scheduled charging, now complete with intelligent auto-scheduling, make for a powerful set of tools. The platform even tracks your past charging cycles and warns you of sub-optimal behavior. Such care for battery longevity is a rare sight on the current smartphone scene and nothing short of a commendable effort.
Even though the ROG Phone 5 has plenty of subtleties in its display behavior, the corresponding settings menu remains clean and well-organized. Even without fully grasping what each option does, most users will likely find their way around it just fine.
If you missed our deep-dive into how the ROG Phone 5 handles a high refresh rate and the color reproduction options it offers, you can jump back to the display section for the detailed info.
The Advanced settings menu houses pretty much all the other system-wide additional goodies ROG, and Asus added on top of the Android 11 core.
Mobile manager is a unified interface for handling phone maintenance tasks beyond battery ones. Things like memory and storage cleanup, permission and security as well as data caps and usage.
Mobile Manager • Twin Apps • Safeguard • OptiFlex
Thin Apps is fairly self-explanatory. It does require support from the app itself to work through. For convenience, there is a nifty list of apps you can download in alphabetical order. Neat! Safeguard offers SOS emergency contact options. And OptiFlex is a proprietary app launch optimizer that works in the usual way - caching certain resources, oftentimes in RAM, so that they can remain easily accessible to the most-used apps.
Gestures are aplenty on the ROG Phone 3. Quite in-depth, as well, including options for writing out virtual letters on the display and actions based on double-taps and motion.
Gestures • Gestures • Screen recorder • Screenshot
There are in-depth controls dealing with both Screen recording and Screen capture in the advanced menu as well. Things like resolution, orientation, whether or not to record sound and touch inputs are all configurable. A small touch, but one that shows Asus is really keen on catering to their streamer and content-creator audience.
System-wide optimizations and tools are good and all, but Asus has made sure to invest the bulk of its effort into software laser-focused on improving the gaming experience in particular. Most of it was present on the ROG Phone 3 and the ROG Phone II, before that and is inherited from them, but also incrementally enhanced.
We'll start with Game Genie first, before going in-depth with Armoury Crate, since the two are technically separate entities. Even though they are very tightly-knit.
Game genie is essentially an in-game overlay that gets automatically enabled for games but is supported for any other app, as per your desired settings. A swipe from the left side of the screen brings it up, and its main goal is to offer convenient access to gaming-relevant features.
Most of the options are easily self-explanatory, like the toggles to disable calls and notifications, lock the brightness or cycle between the current display refresh rate. There are a few less obvious or alternatively, more-involved features here as well. Floating window is a nifty one. Once you set up your preferred apps in the settings menu, they appear as little icons on the right side of the Game Genie interface. Beyond that, the feature is pretty straight-forward.
The ability to get a real-time performance overlay is a nifty, albeit not entirely new ROG trick. CPU and GPU load, temperature, battery level and fps count are all available in the Game toolbar, which can be freely dragged and positioned over the game. There is even an experimental feature that tries its best to estimate how much game time you have based on your current load with the battery charge remaining in the phone. A new addition to the mix is also a simpler timer interface.
Some of the more-powerful goodies are those arranged vertically on the right end of the Game Genie interface. Speed up simply triggers a background app cleaner task. Nothing too special, but still convenient to have in reach.
The Air Triggers menu holds a lot of potential. This is where you go to set-up basic mapping for on-screen controls to the AirTrigger 5 ultrasonic buttons, as well as the newly-expanded motion control gesture on the ROG Phone 5. If you have the Pro or Ultimate version or you have the AeroActive Cooler 5 attached, the respective additional controls will be available for mapping here as well. There are more extensive menus to dig through for these features within Armoury Crate, but this menu has the benefit of being simple and intuitive to use.
Macros are equally easy to record via the Game Genie option. You just play out the actions once and then review and correct as needed. You can have multiple macros for a single game, and those can even be mapped to controls, like AirTrigger 5 or other third-party accessories.
If that sounds a bit like cheating to you, wait until you hear about Key Mapping. In our books, it is probably the single greatest gaming-geared software tool Asus has brought to the table with the ROG Phone family. It's an incredibly in-depth interface for mapping on-screen controls to physical ones. Directional pads, buttons, sliders all work and do so really well.
So, the real fun begins when you connect the ROG Phone 5 to a compatible accessory, like the ROG Kunai 3 Gamepad. Every button on that controller can then be mapped to an on-screen control, effectively giving you console-grade physical controls inside a game meant to be played on touch screens.
This is a good place to note that the Kunai 3 Gamepad, introduced with the ROG Phone 3 does, indeed work with the ROG Phone 5.
However, with an important caveat - in order to use it in wired mode, you need to either get the new release, now sold alongside the ROG Phone 5, or if you have one of the original models, you need to reach out to Asus support to get a replacement middle frame. A slightly larger one to accommodate the extra length of the ROG Phone 5.
You can read more about the ROG Kunai 3 Gamepad in our dedicated Asus ROG accessory review.
Back to control mapping on the ROG Phone 5, things get even better when you connect it to a mouse and keyboard combo and map those to on-screen controls. While other similar solutions to achieve this level of frankly cheating in mobile games do exist (most notable Octopus), Asus' offer is unique in its depth and low-level method of operation.
Unfortunately, Asus did break compatibility with the ROG Mobile Desktop Dock with the ROG Phone 5. To get a keyboard and mouse working, you can still rely on the lass-fancy and KVM-less ASUS Professional Dock. You can read more about both in our ROG Phone 3 review.
Marked clip. It is a configurable quick-capture feature that is meant to instantly save a short gameplay moment while in action.
Marked clip • Macro recording and management
Most of the features within the Game Genie interface and their order can be adjusted. The same goes for the Game toolbar. This can be done from a few menus, including one inside Armoury Crate and another in the general Settings menu of the ROG Phone 5.
Asus Armoury Crate - Gaming portal
Armoury Crate has become a staple of the ROG Phone experience. Not changed in any major way, but with plenty of visual tweaks and small, yet often crucial improvements in behavior and organization.
Armoury Crate UI has been refreshed quite a bit this year and in many ways features a more "toned-down" gamer aesthetic, to go along nicely with the cleaner exterior of the ROG phone 5 itself.
We'll start the tour from the first tab - Game Library and by first noting that crucially, unlike with previous version of Armoury Crate, you are no longer locked to landscape mode within the app! This was a major annoyance, and we are glad to see it go.
From the main ASUS Armoury Crate interface, you get a few options. The most obvious one being your game card interface (or benchmark and any app you would like to run with a custom performance profile). Each entry gets its own "crate", as the Asus terminology goes. And each crate has its own Game Profile. Custom covers are now supported, and you get a few sorting and display options.
Profiles, now dubbed Scenario Profiles 4.0, are a set of settings for different aspects of the ROG Phone 5 that get automatically applied when the game/app is launched. You don't even have to launch said apps through Armoury Crate to have the settings apply.
This set of menus has gotten a bit of a redesign this year and is now arguably simpler to navigate. The first screen houses tweaks to the Touch behavior, like sensitivity for tapping and sliding as well as precision. Then there is the Display tab, which allows for per-app refresh rate settings, as well as actual graphics quality manipulation.
Touch settings • Display settings
You could simply go for one of the two graphics quality presets - Balanced and High Quality. Alternatively, you can go for an advanced approach and customize Anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, texture filtering and texture detail on individual sliders.
This is the kind of PC-like, driver-level tweaking that Asus excels at, and that's very rare to find as an out-of-the-box experience with any of its competitors.
Things get even more-impressively in-depth in the next Performance tab. In a bit of an odd choice, this interface still uses the older-style ROG Phone performance level notation, as opposed to the new and simpler X mode system. To be fair, the two are closely connected, and you can just choose to follow the current system setting, but beyond that, you still get a choice between L1, L2 and L3 performance levels.
You can then go down another level of granularity by choosing Customize, which unlocks individual Temperature control, CPU performance, GPU performance and RAM performance sliders. Like we already mentioned in the performance section of the review, these are not truly "overclocking" options in the traditional sense, but rather offer an ability to adjust limiters.
Beyond that still, there is an Advanced Hardcore Tuning menu underneath. This is what really separates the ROG Phone line and Asus from the rest. You get a very, very lengthy menu of actual system-level values and offsets for various modules and parts of the phone's internals. Values lifted straight from the /sys/ folder, which you normally can't even get to without rooting your device.
Messing with these can, naturally, be detrimental to your experience. You are unlikely to damage the phone's hardware in the process, and there is a button to restore the default values, but you should still only tamper here if you know what you are doing. If that is the case, some amazing things can actually be pulled off.
For instance, if you are familiar with the performance characteristics of a given game you play and just happen to know that it does not rely heavily on the clock rate of the biggest and most powerful core, but rather tends to spread-out its load among smaller cores, you can tune-down the primary core on the Snapdragon 888 and save on battery, produce less heat and get a smoother experience, delaying thermal-throttling for longer.
The Network tab has only a couple of toggles, but both potentially vital. One limits all background sync activity while playing a given game, which can be the difference between a smooth experience and a sudden ping-spike. The same goes for automatically switching between Wi-Fi and a network data connection. While in most cases, the ROG Phone 5 is smart enough only to do this when it would be beneficial, there are special cases. Some particular games might even drop your connection if you just suddenly change your IP address.
Air Triggers, Key Mapping and Macros all get their own separate tabs in the Scenario Profiles interface. These actually show a list of all your various mapping profiles and macros, as set up for the given game, complete with convenient screenshots for the mapping overlay. These menus are mostly meant to be a convenient central location for managing your collection. Also, Armoury Crate includes a nifty feature to fetch mappings, triggers, and macros for popular games from an online repository.
You can also neatly package all of your Scenario Profiles settings, or a subset via the share interface and upload them online. That can also include any Advanced Hardcore performance tuning tweaks you might have painstakingly discovered and now want to contribute. The makings of a great community.
AirTriggers • Key Mapping • Macros • Profile importing and exporting
Moving on to the Console tab. Unlike profiles, the options here apply on a system-wide level. This is also where you can find nifty charts and graphs, representing your current profile choices and some readouts for hardware load and temperatures.
The current System mode is of course center stage in this interface. Asus decided to simplify the options here a bit, shying away from the older-style L1, L2 and L3 performance levels and instead going for a selection of Dynamic and X Mode, as the default and "performance" profile, also mixing in Ultra-durable, as the battery-saving mode. It makes a bit more sense this way.
You can tweak individual settings within every one of these System modes to make them your own. Alternatively, there is an Advanced mode, which offers a wider selection of tweaks still.
In another great bid for extra simplicity, X Mode+ is an additional special System mode that shows up automatically and replaces the regular X Mode when the AeroActive Cooler 5 is attached to the ROG Phone 5. Turning On the accessory also unlocks the Fan speed settings section. You get to either manually choose between four speed levels for the fan or an automatic option.
The System lighting menu and its options are mostly unchanged and familiar from the ROG Phone 5, with just one major new addition - a second color slider, since the ROG phone 5 now has two RGB LED lights within its ROG logo for even more impressive effects and strobes.
In terms of other options, you can pretty much tweak the ROG logo's behavior to your heart's content. Not only for simply animations and effects purely for the sake of looks, but also for much more functional means, like indication notifications and charging.
If you get either the ROG Phone 5 Pro or Ultimate versions, you get the ROG Vision display on the back of the phone instead of the ROG logo and, with that - a corresponding management interface.
The display can handle anything from simple text and static images to fancy animations. There is a built-in editor, as well as an online repository for designs.
The Game Genie section houses a per-app list that determines which games and apps Game Genie will be active for. Also, a menu for editing the order of some of the features within the UI overlay.
Then there is the Air Trigger setup screen. This is where you can adjust sensitivity, trigger speed and distance, multi-button separation, and other behavioral aspects. Actual mapping is elsewhere within the Game Genie interface. On the ROG Phone 5, in particular, there are more behavioral tweaks to potentially do than even, with the introduction of its extended set or recognized motions.
Air Trigger and motion gesture tweaking
Finding games that can make proper use of certain aspects of the ROG Phone 5 experience, like the high refresh rate or those that lend themselves well to mapping to Air Triggers or have native gamepad support can be a daunting task. Asus has its Featured tab, with corresponding curated lists of games. There can be the occasional mislabeled title in there, but overall, the Asus team is putting a good bit of effort into cherry-picking titles.
The Connect tab offers quick access to Asus ROG phone forums and the corresponding community. This is a great place for obtaining control maps and Scenario Profiles for particular games, among other things.
Finally, closing the software section off, we have to mention the new addition of a specific Esports Mode on the ROG Phone 5. It is a single, easy-to-enable option that puts the phone and all of its subtle aspects in a predefined state, approved for use in esports events.
A great little quality of life extra for both players and event organizers, which more than anything else lets the actual target demographic Asus has and has always had with the ROG Phone lineup shine through. The ROG Phone 5 is a pro-grade tool first and a general, end-user product second.
64MP Quad-Bayer main camera and 13MP ultrawide
An amazing camera experience was never going to be high on the propriety list of a gaming smartphone. Even so, Asus has been consistently delivering perfectly adequate camera setups on the ROG Phone line. The ROG Phone 5 is no exception. Its camera setup is very similar to the one on the ROG Phone 3. The main snapper is the popular 64MP, Quad-Bayer Sony IMX686 sensor. It's a 1/1.7" unit, with 0.8 µm individual pixels and 2x1 OCL PDAF, sitting behind an f/1.8 lens. Nothing too glamorous or spectacular. There is no OIS, Laser AF and just a simple one-LED flash setup. Even so, the Sony IMX686 has proven its salt as a capable shooter.
Asus also has a nifty habit of making the most out of the hardware at its disposal. In this case, the excellent Spectra 580 ISP has allowed an impressive feature set out of an otherwise modest camera. Especially in the video capture department, where the ROG Phone 5 has impressive 3-axis EIS, all the way up to 8K resolution, 120fps slow-motion at 4K, as well as HDR video capture and even a full-featured Pro video capture mode. Mind you, this is not exactly new coming from the ROG Phone 3. Still, even though the feature set is more or less carried forward, Asus has made continued improvements to quality behind the scenes.
Complementing the main 64MP camera, the ROG Phone 5 has a rather unremarkable 13MP ultrawide (OmniVision OV13B, as reported by the OS). It has a 125-degree field of view and a rather dim f/2.4 lens. Last and probably least - a 5MP, f/2.0 camera. As per our hardware-digging efforts, it actually uses an OmniVision OV8856 sensor, which has a native resolution of 8MP. It acts as a dedicated macro shooter, which is arguably, a bit better than simply having a depth sensor. Once again, quite similar to the ROG Phone 3. Not that we are opposed to carrying forward the setup in question.
Around the front of the ROG Phone 3, we find another Quad-Bayer snapper. This one is a 24MP, OmniVision OV24B1Q, with an individual pixel size of 0.9 µm, behind an f/2.0 lens. No autofocus, or anything too fancy, but still, plenty of potential, thanks to the 4-cell Bayer imaging setup. Also, a module seemingly lifted straight from the ROG Phone 3.
The ROG camera app UI is a fairly custom affair. We would say it is surprisingly feature-rich without being chaotic. It does still have certain idiosyncrasies to it, though, that might need addressing.
One particular issue we had with the ROG Phone 3 was our ability to only reach the 4K HDR video capture from a prompt that shows up occasionally when flipping into 8K mode. We dug around quite a bit on the ROG Phone 5 for the feature and did not find it. Worse still, when we tried the same "flip to 8K" trick, we didn't get an HDR prompt either. So, unless we are missing something, there is no easy way for us to capture in and test the advertised 4K HDR mode. Weird. Perhaps we never got conditions that the algorithm deemed HDR would be beneficial in, which we are willing to accept. Even so, having a manual toggle for the feature would be great.
The options on the main camera UI are all self-explanatory. Perhaps with the exception of achieving separate spots metering for exposure and autofocus. This is done by long-pressing on a spot to fix both and then sliding the AF circle to a different location.
There is just a single beauty slider to the right, with no additional options. If you want more control over that, you have to switch over to the dedicated Portrait mode. Besides a slider for the intensity of the blur effect, it also features in-depth controls to thin cheeks, enhance eyes, brighten skin, soften skin and change its tone.
Portrait mode, complete with beauty filters
Most of the same options for stills in both the default and Portrait mode are carried over to the selfie camera UI as well.
The camera app does a fair bit of automatic scene detection. This is indicated by a small scene icon in the top left corner, as well as a Night Mode UI, which automatically pops-up in the bottom right corner, when the camera decides it is dark enough. You can toggle the automatic night mode off in the settings, if you want more control. Also, clicking on the Night mode icon itself presents two options for exposure duration. The numbers themselves are dynamic and also dependent on ambient light conditions. One denotes a shorter exposure, while the other - a longer one.
Automatic Night mode detection
If, for instance, the light is almost enough to pull off a good shot without night mode, but the ROG Phone 5 still automatically decides to turn it on, you usually get an exposure time of around 3 seconds. If you then enter the quick selection menu, the 3 second mode should be set as the "longer exposure" value, with the lower one simply turning Night Mode off.
Alternatively, if it's really dark, you might find that the lower exposure time is in the 5 to 8-second range, with the longer option potentially going all the way up to 25 seconds. This dynamically populated selector is definitely a custom Asus control and one that is surprisingly convenient.
On top of that, there is also a dedicated Night mode in the camera app, which always applies at least some minimal value to the shorter exposure option.
Pro mode is surprisingly versatile. You get a level meter in the middle of the frame, as well as a histogram in the bottom left corner. WB adjustment goes from 4500K to 7500K. Exposure compensation can be set between -2 and +2. ISO goes from 25 to 3200. You can do shutter speeds between 1/60 and 32 seconds and the is a manual focus slider.
A nifty new addition to Pro mode, debuting on the ROG Phone 5 is a quick saving mechanic for up to two additional sets of settings. These are denoted as C1 and C2 and can be flipped on the fly. Neat! Auto Exposure Bracketing is also quite convenient. In Pro mode you can set up a range of up to plus and minus two stops for exposure. The camera will then capture successive shots with different shutter speed and aperture values and combine those into a single one with greater dynamic range. Perfect for scenes with lots of backlight.
There is a Pro video capture mode, as well. It offers the same set of controls on the right-hand side as Pro photo mode, as well as a nifty smooth zoom feature. You can just click on an area in the frame and then have the phone gradually zoom to it. The ROG camera app also allows smooth switching between the main and ultrawide cameras while filming.
Video options on the left side of the frame are the same for regular Video recording mode and Pro mode. Interesting among these is the stabilization toggle. It enabled and disables HyperSteady, which goes one step beyond the regular EIS video stabilization, controlled via a central toggle in the Video setting screen. HyperSteady is only limited to FullHD resolution and only works on the ultrawide camera. You can't use it together with the smooth zoom feature either.
The ROG phone 5 also has what it calls Audio effects. Once enabled via the settings menu, these are controlled from a small menu shortcut, denoted by a microphone icon, in the top right corner of the UI. In default video capture mode, you get two features - automatic mic zoom and wind suppression. Both work surprisingly well. Or rather unsurprisingly so, considering the powerful four-microphone array on the ROG Phone 5.
In Pro video mode, the zoom mic option gets replaced with a more in-depth Recording direction selector. It allows the four-microphone setup on the phone to be used even more effectively in interesting use cases, like wanting to only capture frontal or back-facing audio.
There are plenty of settings to play around with in the camera app, both for stills and video capture.
We appreciate the addition of a h.264 and h.265 (HEVC) codec selection in the video capture settings. Among other options, we already mentioned in some detail.
Still image quality
Like we said, the Sony IMX686 is a tried-and-true camera sensor that, while not truly flagship-grade by today's standards, has proven its salt time and time again and is capable of producing perfectly decent stills. Due to its Quad-Bayer design, the 64MP unit actually captures photos at right around 16MP. Detail in these is plenty and we continue to enjoy Asus' ongoing choice of a more-natural color reproduction overall.
ROG Phone 5 16MP main camera samples
Admittedly, there is a bit more noise than we would like. Noise-suppression is clearly kicking-in and doing the best it can, but that often leaves behind minute trails that almost look like banding in uniform areas, like the sky. Dynamic range is far from perfect either. To be clear, though, these are by no means major issues.
This first batch of shots was taken in "full-Auto" mode, with HDR set to auto and AI scene recognition doing its thing. We had no issues with either detecting what is going on and acting accordingly. HDR in particular is pulling its weight nicely, as you can clearly see from this same set of still taken with HDR forced Off.
ROG Phone 5 16MP main camera samples: HDR OFF
You can capture photos at the full 64MP resolution of the Sony IMX686, though that hardly offers benefits in terms of detail and tends to introduce a bit more noise in the frame. This isn't how Quad-Bayer sensors are meant to be used, and you can also see chromatic aberrations and some wrong and algorithmically made-up lines and shapes, especially in fine patterns. To Asus' credit, though, we these particular issues were quite a bit worse on the ROG Phone 3.
ROG Phone 5 64MP main camera samples
Speaking of weird software camera bugs, autofocus on the main camera of the ROG Phone 5 has some weird edge-case that causes it to constantly focus-hunt. We are not sure exactly how to reproduce it, but we managed enough times to actually capture it in a screen recording. It has something to do with turning off HDR and then shooting with the ultrawide and flipping to the main cam. We are confident this is a fixable software bug, though, since in every other circumstance, the ROG Phone 5 managed to find and retain focus just fine.
Portrait shots come out looking clean with nice subject detection and separation. Background blur also looks neat and convincing. Well, most of the time, that is, since certain finer patterns can trip it up.
ROG Phone 5 portrait mode samples
It works just fine on non-human subjects too.
ROG Phone 5 portrait mode samples
Zooming is available on the ROG Phone 5, just as it was with the 64MP camera on the ROG Phone 3. This time around, however, Asus confidently markets "2x lossless magnification". And, technically, that gets a pass for being factual. Though, zooming on a Quad-Bayer camera in such a "lossless" manner has its well-documented shortcomings. Plus, Asus is absolutely forthcoming about the fact that in low-light conditions, the ROG Phone 5 automatically switches to zooming-in the 16MP binned shots from the camera, in order to get more light.
ROG Phone 5 16MP 2x zoom samples
Asus has thankfully addressed one of the big issues we had with zooming on the ROG Phone 3 and now has a convenient way to quickly toggle between 0.6x , 1x and 2x, instead of relying of an imprecise pinch gesture. You can still use the latter to go all the way up to 8x zoom.
ROG Phone 5 16MP zoom samples: 1x • 2x • 8x • 1x • 2x • 8x
Zoomed shots look decent-enough at 2x, though a bit too soft to be labeled "lossless" in our mind. 8x is clearly heavily-digitally enhanced. Many of the lines are painted-over and restored. Even so, there is still a surprising amount of usable detail.
Shots from the 13MP ultrawide camera on the ROG Phone 5 are also best described as "perfectly decent", but not particularly impressive. There is a general softness visible the further you extend into the edges of the frame also noise and dynamic range issues are par for the course.
ROG Phone 5 13MP ultrawide camera samples
Still, overall, about what is to be expected from the OmniVision OV13B. Perhaps Asus can do well with a bit more aggressive sharpening and distortion correction in these.
HDR Auto mode worked out just fine on the ultrawide, as well, kicking-in as needed. In most cases, the algorithm managed to do its job properly, with recovered details in otherwise crushed shadows being the most obvious benefit. Here are the same scenes from the ultrawide with HDR forced Off for reference.
ROG Phone 5 13MP ultrawide camera samples: HDR OFF
There is no autofocus on the ultrawide camera, which means it can't pull double-duty for some fancy macro shots. The ROG Phone 5 has a dedicated 5MP macro camera to handle that. Or rather an 8MP unit, set-up to capture at 5MP. It is fixed-focus and not particularly special in any way.
ROG Phone 5 5MP macro camera samples
Detail is about what you would expect from a sensor of this size. That is to say, adequate, until you start pixel-peeping. The focus plane, while not super wide is comfortable enough to not worry too much about the distance from the subject. We also like that the camera UI prompts you to switch over to the macro if you try to get to close to a subject with any of the other cameras. Overall - pretty good use of an unremarkable third camera.
Low-light still image quality
Low-light performance on the 64MP Sony IMX686 is a well-explored topic by now. Overall, we are mostly pleased with how the ROG Phone 5 held-up. Detail is about what you would expect from a modern Quad-Bayer camera and noise is surprisingly subdued, with little left behind in most shots. Even fairly complicated combinations of light sources weren't enough to properly trip-up the phone.
ROG Phone 5 16MP low-light camera samples without Night mode
ROG Phone 5 16MP low-light 2x zoom camera samples without Night mode
Asus has a rather interesting take of its own on Night mode implementation. We found that simply leaving the automatic detection on in the settings (which it is, by default), the camera generally does a fine job of determining just when to enable Night mode and with how long of an exposure, without having to ever leave the default photo mode.
If the phone detects a particularly dark scene, it doesn't shy away from bumping the exposure time even if you are not in the dedicated Night mode. And if tripod-detection kicks in, it will happily do a 25-second or even 32-second shot completely of its own accord.
ROG Phone 5 16MP low-light camera samples with Auto Night mode
Depending on the particular scene, Night mode can have effects ranging from almost unnoticeable to surprisingly effective, often managing to bring-back entire section of otherwise dark frame. Night mode didn't do that much for clipped detail around bright sources, though.
You can try to mitigate that to some degree in a few ways. For one, there is the nifty ability to separate the autofocus and exposure points within the camera app, which we already mentioned. Then there is also going for the higher suggested exposure time within the dedicated Night mode. In general, even the lower suggested value of the two tends to be higher than what the ROG Phone 3 will algorithmically decide to use on its own in regular camera mode.
ROG Phone 5 16MP low-light camera samples with Night mode on the maximum suggested exposure time
Beyond that, there is always Pro mode, which hands over control entirely.
All things considered, we would say that the main 64MP camera on the ROG Phone 5 can often get away without Night mode enabled. The same, unfortunately can't be said for the 13MP ultrawide.
ROG Phone 5 13MP ultrawide low-light samples without Night mode
It just has such a dim f/2.4 lens that for it Night mode often ends up being the difference between a usable and a throw-away shot.
ROG Phone 5 13MP ultrawide low-light samples with Auto Night mode
The algorithm knows that all too well and tends to suggest longer exposure periods for the ultrawide, regardless of which mode it is operating in.
ROG Phone 5 13MP ultrawide low-light samples with Night mode on the maximum suggested exposure time
Rounding-off the main camera photo section, we have the ROG Phone 5 in our extensive photo compare database, both in its intended 16MP resolution and at 64MP. Feel free to pixel-peep.
Asus ROG Phone 5 against the Asus ROG Phone 3 and the ZTE nubia Red Magic 5S in our Photo compare tool
64MP: Asus ROG Phone 5 against the Asus ROG Phone 3 and the Samsung Galaxy S21 in our Photo compare tool
Selfie photo quality
The 24MP selfie camera on the ROG Phone 5 is also a nifty Quad-Bayer unit. Which is why the resulting stills are right around 6MP big. The OmniVision OV24B1Q, in particular, with an individual pixel size of 0.9 µm, behind an f/2.0 lens. Pretty solid hardware, but unfortunately missing autofocus. Even so, the focus plane is fairly liberal and well-adjusted to a standard arm's length or so.
ROG Phone 5 6MP selfie camera samples
Detail is good, so are colors and sharpness. The way the ROG Phone 5 handles bright lights in combination with thick shadows in the same frame is impressive.
ROG Phone 5 6MP selfie camera samples
You can do Portrait mode shots on the selfie camera, as well. Without any additional camera for depth detection, the subject separation on this one is not nearly as impressive as on the main camera. Even so, results look surprisingly good. Small hairs and glasses still manage to trip the algorithm up, but the blur effect looks impressive overall.
ROG Phone 5 6MP portrait samples at different blur intensities
We kind of glanced-over the Beauty mode options in the main camera section. Luckily, the entire impressive set is carried over to the selfie camera. In particular - selfie portrait mode. The regular mode just gets a basic beauty slider. You get skin smoothing, skin soften, skin brighten, eye correction and cheek correction all on individual intensity sliders. Honestly, it almost looks like a SIM Creator style tool and there are plenty of options to go around, if you are into that. Important things to note include that there is some mild skin smoothing applied by default, unless you turn it off and that the higher values of most sliders can net some ridiculous results.
ROG Phone 5 6MP selfies with beauty mode
ROG Phone 5 selfies with beauty mode: Min • Medium • Max
A dimly-lit room is not particularly challenging for the ROG Phone 5's selfie camera. Quality remains high, and noise - surprisingly low. Even Portrait mode remains usable.
ROG Phone 5 6MP selfie samples
One it gets properly dark, the phone's selfie game takes a hit, especially if you torture the limited dynamic range with odd light sources. Even in these conditions, though, photos still remain usable. There is no Night mode for the selfie camera, automatic or manual.
ROG Phone 5 6MP low-light selfie camera samples
We have to say that, overall, we are quite pleased with the selfie experience. Especially considering this is not a camera-centric phone, let alone a selfie-centric one. Though, a certain niche of mobile game-streamers might still appreciate the extra attention this particular camera has received.
Video capture quality
The ROG Phone 5 can go all the way up to 8K resolution, at 30fps on its main 64MP camera. Better still, even at this high resolution, the camera app still lefts you use the advanced audio features - Mic focus and Wind noise reduction. You are free to choose an encoder of your choice, as well - h.264 for the best possible quality or the dynamic h.265 (HEVC) to save some space at a small expense to quality.
Even with the Snapdragon 888 and its impressive Spectra 580 ISP 8K video capture remains a somewhat janky experience. And we're not just talking about the ROG Phone 5 in particular, but as a more general statement about smartphone video. To Qualcomm's and Asus' credit, compared to last year's ROG Phone 3, the ROG Phone 5 has a way more-stable bitrate on its 8K footage. Not to mention notably higher at around 130 Mbps. Just like with all other video resolutions and modes, you get a standard AVC stream, plus a stereo 48 kHz AAC audio one.
Details look amazing at 8K. We also continue to enjoy Asus' color science - not too oversaturated and not too plain. The 64MP IMX686 does still show some of its slight shortcomings, compared to other modern flagships. Mostly, a slightly limited dynamic range. Nothing deal-breaking by any means, though, especially not with good lighting.
Honestly, though, looking at how well all the ROG Phone 5 carries all of its strong suits over to the much-more-sensible and easy to work with 4K mode, with just a minor hit to detail makes us think that it should still be your go-to default. You even get more frame rate options, namely 60fps, in case you are the kind of person to enjoy the particular look and feel of that footage.
At 30fps, clips come out with a very stable bitrate right around the 50 Mbps mark, plus 48 kHz AAC stereo audio.
Even at FullHD, clips from the ROG Phone 5 remain competitive. Just the dynamic range issue persists across the board, resulting in it some clipped shadows and overexposed bright areas.
The ultrawide camera on the ROG Phone 5 does up to 4K@30fps. With a dimmer lens and less-impressive sensor, it suffers from even narrower dynamic range. On the plus side, Asus did the best it could to keep other aspects of the video consistent and competitive, like color rendition. The detail is decent for the sensor at hand. Here is a playlist of ultrawide camera footage at 4K and 1080p.
Asus does a stellar job with video stabilization overall. The ROG Phone 5 does not get a dedicated OIS system, but more than makes up for it with an excellent 3-axis EIS setup. The most impressive part has to be the fact that EIS can be used at the full 8K resolution and with surprisingly good results.
Naturally, since the stabilization is electronic, you will be giving up a portion of the frame. But, we find the tradeoff perfectly reasonable. EIS arguably works even better on the ultrawide camera. Once again, it can go up to the maximum 4K resolution of the respective module and you get it enabled by default, so no accidental shaky footage.
Beyond the regular stabilization toggle in the settings menu, the ROG Phone 5 also has advanced stabilization, called HyperSteady. It can be turned on from the hand icon on the main video UI of the camera app. Once on, it limits the capture resolution to 1080p, which is necessary, since it crops quite a large section of the sensor to do its job. Oh, and crucially, it only works with the ultrawide camera, since it needs all of the extra field of view it can get.
Here you can see HyperSteady compared against regular stabilization. Results are impressive. HyperSteady managed to produce a perfectly-pleasant to watch, "floaty" video even during sprints with lots of tossing-about - all without destroying the overall quality of the clip too severely. Seeing how impressively-smooth the regular stabilization already is, we would say that HyperSteady mostly just gets rid of nay last remaining "jarring" pans in the footage.
Low-light videos on the ROG Phone 5 are decent, but nothing to phone home about. The dynamic range issues become even more apparent in challenging lighting conditions and you can really see the noise-suppression algorithm working overtime in more uniform areas of the frame.
The ultrawide suffers particularly bad in these conditions, mostly due to its dim aperture. Low-light videos from it are too dark and borderline unusable. If you stick to the main camera, though, you can get some decent results. EIS remains just as excellent, regardless of lighting, and so do the advanced audio features. You can, once again, go up to a full 8K resolution. We have compiled a playlist of all of the low-light samples we took for your convenience.
Finally, we have videos from the 24MP selfie camera. Seeing how we were already quite impressed by its video capture qualities on the ROG Phone 3, it shouldn't come as a major surprise that it remains excellent on the ROG Phone 5.
We just can't help ourself and gush over just how surprisingly-good it looks. Despite the lack of autofocus of the selfie cam, there always seemed to be liberal depth to make use of. Detail is great and the picture is very sharp. EIS continues to shine here, as well, though it does take away a noticeable chunk of the frame. On a device as heavy as the ROG Phone 5 you should probably use a monopod or some similar rig to make it easier to carry anyway.
You can still make use of wind noise cancellation and audio focus for selfie video too. We only wished that there was a Pro selfie video mode or other way to get access to the directional audio capture settings. Even so, if you can deal with the weight, the ROG Phone 5 can be a shockingly-good vlogging camera. Or, alternatively and more-realistically, anyone looking to use it for streaming a facecam while gaming won't be disappointed either.
Rounding-off the video quality section, we didn't forget to include samples from the main camera of the ROG Phone 5 in both 8K and 4K resolution in our video compare database.
Asus ROG Phone 5 against the Asus ROG Phone 3 and the ZTE nubia Red Magic 5S in our Video compare tool
8K: Asus ROG Phone 5 against the Asus ROG Phone 3 and the Samsung Galaxy S21 in our Video compare tool
Alternatives
Even if you don't appreciate certain aspects of devices Asus brings into the smartphone realm, there is no denying that the Taiwanese giant basically spearheaded the modern gaming smartphone niche with the ROG Phone line. It was a major gamble, a bold move and the space is still marked by plenty of uncertainty and soul-searching. That's the beauty of big bold steps, though, that they spark innovation, and, today, four years later, Asus is not alone in the gaming smartphone space.
Sure, releases are still sporadic and experimental, more than anything else, but there is competition to point out. ZTE-owned Nubia instantly comes to mind, especially with the very recent announcement of the nubia Red Magic 6 and 6 Pro. Just like the ROG Phone 5, these are based on the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset and even feature active fan cooling. Only theirs is an actual part of the internal design of the phones, as opposed to a snap-on accessory. Another spotlight feature of the Red Magic 6 pair, in particular, is the 165Hz refresh rate and 400Hz touch sampling rate on their 6.8-inch AMOLED displays. Both industry-leading figures, though we are not exactly sure how actual input chain latency sizes-up against Asus' bold claims of delivering the lowest input times in the industry with the ROG Phone 5.
ZTE nubia Red Magic 6 Pro • Xiaomi Black Shark 3S • Lenovo Legion Duel
Xiaomi has its Black Shark line, which unfortunately hasn't been updated since the Black Shark 3S, back in August last year. With a regular Snapdragon 865 (non-plus) under the hood, it's no longer going to be a benchmark chart-topper. Still, a potent device styled in proper gaming attire. You might want to wait a bit for the upcoming Black Shark 4 family, though.
No gaming smartphone list would be complete without Lenovo's relatively recent entry into the scene with the Legion line. The last refresh there is the Legion Duel - a solid hardware proposition all-around, with its 144Hz AMOLED display and Snapdragon 865+ chipset. Not unlike Xiaomi, though, a new Legion, allegedly called the Legion 2 Pro is right around the corner and if rumors are to be believed, will have some sort of dual turbo cooling system to boot.
If you are not particularly partial to the gamer aesthetic or don't really think your gaming performance would benefit all that much from any specific game optimizations, features and tweaks on a hardware or software level, there are plenty of excellent "ordinary" flagship devices to consider and still get excellent flagship performance. Vivo, for one, has you covered with the iQOO 7, which still holds the AnTuTu score record. And just a few points behind - the vivo X60 Pro+. Both are based on the Snapdragon 888 and with fast 120Hz OLED displays. The latter shining a bit brighter in the camera department.
vivo iQOO 7 • vivo X60 Pro+ • Xiaomi Redmi K40 Pro • Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
Coincidentally, or rather not so much, we also find the excellent and very popular Xiaomi Redmi K40 Pro also on the same AnTuTu list. To be clear, we are not advising anyone to choose a device simply based on one peak performance score number. However, it is a convenient data point to consider when looking for the best performance around. Plus, with its 120Hz AMOLED panel, the K40 Pro is more than just raw muscle and has the requirements to deliver an excellent gaming experience, as well.
Speaking of an excellent gaming experience, as part of an equally-good overall phone one, why not consider one of Samsung's Galaxy S21 phones? Ideally, one with the Snapdragon 888, instead of the Exynos 2100, in the particular context of sustained performance and thermal-throttling, which you can read more about in our in-depth comparative exploration of the two chips. Beyond that, it is worth noting that Samsung has a surprisingly competent and in-depth Game Launcher, complete with graphics and resolution tweaks, among other things.
The verdict
Nobody does smartphone gaming quite like Asus. Four iterations into the ROG Phone line, that remains a fact. The ROG Phone 5 is a true powerhouse in every sense of the word - a phone that is specifically crafted to deliver the best possible gaming experience, with any other concern or consideration taking a back seat. It just so happens that when you make an excellent gaming flagship, you usually end up with an excellent all-around device in general that has plenty of appeal outside gaming.
That has generally been our conclusion for every ROG Phone in the past, and we stand by it for the ROG Phone 5, as well. However, the ROG Phone 5 is probably the least impressive new generation we've seen in the ROG family.
On a hardware level, it constitutes a small upgrade over the ROG Phone 3. There are no new major spotlight features, no pushing the envelope in terms of display tech or additional controls and inputs. It's more a case of Asus refining most aspects of the ROG Phone 3 further, but also, unfortunately, changing some odd things around. We can't say we particularly like the new design for the side connector. It is hard to operate and fragile. Plus, it breaks compatibility with the excellent Mobile Desktop Dock. The simpler design for the AeroActive Cooler 5 also has its issues, and for the first time ever, it is not included with every unit.
Then there is the slightly taller body, likely related to the return of the 3.5mm audio jack and the newly-symmetrical exquisite speaker system, which we very-much appreciate, as well as the new split battery design, which is more of a polarizing topic, looking at the battery numbers. We don't really mind the growth spurt, as such, but wish that it didn't come at the expense of even more lost compatibility with the excellent ROG Phone accessory ecosystem, like the TwinView Dock.
Perhaps Asus is amidst some business "reorientation" here. Shifting focus away from end users and extravagant accessories to capture headlines and laser-focusing on delivering pro tools for the e-sports contestants and organizers exclusively. It seems to be too early to tell. Overall, we feel like the ROG Phone 5 is a truly excellent phone, still on a level of its own when it comes to mobile gaming profess, but one unfortunately experiencing some "changes" this year that managed to rub us the wrong way.
Pros
- Even more toned-down, but still ROG-inspired gamer's design with great build quality.
- AirTigger 5 ultrasonic touch sensors are very precise and versatile. Motion controls are extended and greatly improved from last gen
- Industry-leading stereo speaker performance, complete with gaming-specific sound tweaks
- Superb AMOLED screen, 144Hz refresh rate.
- Great battery life, even at full 144Hz. Rich battery health prolonging options. Very fast charging (65W charger bundled).
- Fastest-available Snapdragon 888 chipset with an amazing thermal management.
- Great Android implementation, an unparalleled number of game tweaks, control-mapping and performance options
- Solid daylight photos, as well as low-light images. Impressive selfie quality
- Very good video quality, impressive EIS
Cons
- No longer backwards compatible with most ROG Phone II or 3 accessories. Available accessory ecosystem is significantly smaller than on previous models
- AeroActive Cooler 5 not included with the vanilla model. The new design for both the cooler and its connector are hard to align and prone to damage
- No water or dust resistance
- No microSD
- Rather basic camera setup, compared to typical 2021 flagships
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