Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro Review: A Unique Turn Of Events

Asus has entered its 4th-Generations of smartphones with its Zenfone 4 lineup. The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro has made its way to our tables for testing. The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is one of Asus’s entries into the Selfie enthusiast space, an area where Asian brands like Asus and Oppo are willing to specifically cater. In Malaysia, the Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro costs a hefty RM1799. To make it clear, this pricing is valid for their model number ZD552KL and is the model we will be reviewing today. For RM1799, is Asus’s offer even compelling? Let’s find out.

Here’s some unboxing pictures.

ModelAsus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro ZD552KL
CPUQualcomm® Snapdragon™ 625
GPUQualcomm® Adreno™ 506
RAMLPDDR3 3GB / 4GB
SIMSlot 1: 4G SIM | Slot 2:4G SIM / MicroSD upto 2TB
OSAndroid 7.1 Nougat
Battery3000mAh

01| Design & Build Quality

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro Back / Rear GeeksULTD
The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but its one of the best designs I’ve seen so far from Asus. The phone really picks up on the premium trend giving me the excitement of a premium phone. The phone measures, 154.02 x 74.83 x 6.85 mm. For those wondering, yes, the phone is actually 6.85mm thin.

Regarding color options available for the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro, the phone comes in three colors, Rogue Red, Sunlight Gold and Deepsea Black.

Taking a tour around the device shows off the button placement on the phone.

On the right-side of the device, you’ll find the volume and power buttons that lack a tactile click and are rather mushy. Meanwhile, the left edge of the device allows you to add your SIM card.

Taking a look at the bottom of the device reveals the Micro-USB port for charging, the speaker grilles and a headphone jack.

Taking a look at the front of the device, we could find the dual front camera setup, a notification LED, an earpiece, the 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 display and a capacitive home button that also houses the fingerprint scanner on the bottom of the device.

 

At the rear of the device, you will find the camera sensor hump, a dual-ton LED flash along with Asus branding.

Regarding the build quality of the device, the internals are enclosed into this sleek metal shell and has also assigned Corning Gorilla Glass 5 to take care of the 5.5-inch display on the front of the phone. Drops from waist height definitely do some damage. While head level drops should be able to damage some internals. Please do note that, we weren’t able to conduct drop tests on the device as the phone has been provided to us by Asus themselves. Therefore, take the drop estimations with a grain of salt.

02 | Display and Sound Quality

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro comes with a 5.5-inch 500-nits 1920 x 1080 AMOLED display along with Asus’s Sonic Master 4.0 that supports DTS Headphone:X and 7.1 virtual surround sound if your headphones support it. That’s an excellent start for the media consumption side of things on paper, but how well does it fare in real life? Well, here we go.

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro’s 5.5-inch display is simply excellent. I was impressed by the 5.5-inch display that was able to produce excellent colors, contrast and hues. Without a doubt, this is something we already knew and expect from an AMOLED display. The display can rev upto a max brightness of 500 nits which is decent in itself. However, it isn’t as pleasant to use under bright sunlight. Under bright sunlight, the display is barely readable as we expected and is not able to cope under harsh sunlight. Other than that, its an excellent panel to enjoy your media consumption on.

Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro ZD552KL Bottom
Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro ZD552KL Bottom revealing the single speaker, MicroUSB Port and the headphone jack port.

Regarding the sound quality of the device, the sound coming out of the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro’s Smart AMP port is hands-down, excellent! It runs your high-end headphones pretty well as expected. However, if you opt to use the internal speakers inside of the phone,  the phone sometimes does require you to cup your hand. On top of that, if you do hold it normally, often you may find yourself covering the single speaker due to its position.

03 | UI & Performance

CPUQualcomm® Snapdragon™ 625
GPUQualcomm® Adreno™ 506
RAMLPDDR3 3GB / 4GB
SIMSlot 1: 4G SIM / Slot 2:4G SIM/MicroSD
OSAndroid 7.1 Nougat
Battery3000mAh

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro comes with a decent pack of hardware. While this may not be the ultimate price-performance king, the Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro right here does want to cater a another category that many are fond of. Navigating around the phone during our testing yielded smooth glides across the OS. Now while Asus isn’t on top of the pack anymore with Android 7.1 Nougat, they should be preparing Android 8 Oreo updates soon. That’s something we’re going to have to confirm.

When it comes to benchmarks, the phone scores 65,027 points in Antutu which keeps it in-line with the competition’s SD 625 scores. However, being a budget device and considering the hardware, this should not be your ultimate choice for performance-hungry users. And Asus isn’t targeting that market either. If you really want a high-end phone from Asus, keep your eyes peeled for the Zenfone 4 Pro, that’s going to launch soon.

Playing casual titles won’t be an issue at all for Candy-Crush players. However, if you’re willing to play some more intensive titles on the device, we’d recommend you to look elsewhere as the phone does lack the extra horsepower to run demanding Android titles on the phone. Playing games like Asphalt 8 may be fine if you’re willing to dial in the settings to Medium or Low. However, you may still notice a number of frame drops from time to time.

Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro ZenUI Customization Options - Manage Home
Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro ZenUI Customization Options – Manage Home

When it comes to customization, Asus has been doing pretty well in the customization department. With their ZenUI theme store packing a number of excellent themes, Asus’s ZenUI 4.0 does look nice. As expected, Asus’s ZenUI 4.0 takes the minimal color scheme approach as we’ve seen on their previous devices. Basically everywhere you go on the phone would feel consistent with their material scheme. Some more customization options include font customization, animations and an excellent selection of wallpapers.

04 | Camera

The camera on the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is just decent. Despite crowning itself as the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro, the phone produces decent pictures. During challenging conditions, the phone’s rear and front camera struggle to set the exposure in correctly that leads to blown out highlights and shadows. This is prominent when using tap-to-focus. Shooting indoors results into an image where details are simply painted off. Part of this has to be blamed to Asus’s camera optimization despite using Sony’s Here’s a few camera shots taken from the rear and front camera.

That isn’t to say that these cameras are bad. However, these aren’t the greatest cameras either. They shoot decent selfies, and that’s it. Regarding the rear camera, the camera is fine. The sensor that is being used on the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is the same sensor found on last year’s Zenfone 3 Zoom and HTC U11. Above are the camera samples taken from the camera. If they look fine to you. Try giving the phone a shot.

05 | Networks, Fingerprint & Battery Life

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro 4 has one the fastest GPS locks we’ve seen till date. The lock on was almost in an instant under Navigation apps. This was quite a please to see after finding my Xiaomi Mi5 suffer to lock onto a GPS satellite for 15 seconds or so. The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro does not support 802.11ac though. So keep in mind that if you have a high-end internet connection with a router that supports 802.11ac, then keep in mind that the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro comes with 802.11b/g/n support only.

Regarding the fingerprint sensor available on the phone. Its pretty decent and fast. I personally do not want to rank the timings between phones as phones often have fast sensors. What we do consideration is the consistency of these fingerprint sensors. The phone did unlock 90% of the time perfectly which seems perfectly fine.

Lastly, regarding the battery life on the phone, the phone did last us 3/4th of our day which is pretty usual with most smartphones under moderate use. The phone did have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS on for most of the time. Regarding the screen brightness, the phone’s brightness was usually at 25-30% most of the day.

06 | Pricing & Conclusion

The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is a decent phone in our opinion. However, for the price tag, it does seem to be bit overpriced considering what its offering. The phone comes with a decent, “not-good” set of cameras, along with an great media consumption experience thanks to its rich audio and excellent display. For those willing to gang up on the selfie game with this phone, the selfie cam performs decent, so just be aware of the “Pro” after the Selfie which seems to get the “Pro” after its name thanks to the dual front camera setup. Well-played this time around Asus.

We would like to award this product our Bronze Award!

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