ASUS Zenfone 9 Review: A Small Device With Big Performance
ASUS Zenfone 9 Review: Battery Life And Our Verdict
Though it has a relatively small form factor, ASUS was still able to pack a decent sized 4,300mAh battery into the Zenfone 9. To evaluate battery life, we employed the PCMark for Android Work 3.0 test, with screen brightness calibrated and wireless connectivity enabled to keep the playing field level and represent a mostly real-world scenario. PCMark for Android keeps the devices lit-up and running constantly for the duration, while it cycles through its workloads, so consider this somewhat of a worst case scenario.
The Zenfone 9 finished among the top third of devices. Battery life wasn't quite as high as the lower-performing Pixel devices or larger Android devices with higher-capacity batteries, but that's what you'd expect. Considering the Zenfone 9's strong performance, this kind of battery life result, with the display running at its highest refresh rate, is quite good. Manually dropping the refresh rate of the display would likely have pushed the Zenfone 9 near the top of the chart.
During the test, the Zenfone 9's battery drained consistently through about 70 passes and the device maintained its peak performance throughout. Though the Wildlife stress test showed the Zenfone 9 bleeding off some performance under a sustained graphics workload, with PCMark's mixed workloads, the device has no trouble maintaining consistent performance.
As for charging the battery, the ASUS Zenfone 9 includes a 30 watt charger that is PD 3.0 compliant. It can charge the phone to about 60% in a half-hour and a full charge takes about an hour and twenty minutes.
ASUS Zenfone 9 Verdict: A Great, Compact Smartphone
Although it’s not the perfect “small” device, and there is a lot of stiff competition at its price points, we really like the ASUS Zenfone 9 and also like the direction ASUS took with this phone.
The Zenfone 9’s performance is stellar, it takes very good photos, battery life is good, the textured back provides excellent grip, and the small form factor and gesture controls make it ideally suited for one-handed use. ASUS obviously put a lot of thought into the design and features of the Zenfone 9. For users in the market for a smaller phone, the only real caveats to consider are the lack of a true telephoto camera and wireless charging. We suspect, however, those two things aren’t going to be deal breakers for many folks.
The Zenfone 9’s performance is stellar, it takes very good photos, battery life is good, the textured back provides excellent grip, and the small form factor and gesture controls make it ideally suited for one-handed use. ASUS obviously put a lot of thought into the design and features of the Zenfone 9. For users in the market for a smaller phone, the only real caveats to consider are the lack of a true telephoto camera and wireless charging. We suspect, however, those two things aren’t going to be deal breakers for many folks.
The ASUS Zenfone 9 has a starting MSRP of $699 for the 8GB/128GB model, while the 16GB/256GB model we tested here is priced at $799. Order one between today and October 15th as part of ASUS’s pre-order promotion and the company will throw in a set of ROG Cetra True wireless headphones (a $99 value). There are some excellent devices, like the Galaxy S22 and OnePlus 10T available in the Zenfone 9’s price range that offer some additional features, not to mention devices like the Pixel 6, though the Pixel doesn’t perform nearly as well. Still, all of those devices are either bigger or have some caveats of their own. The bottom line is that the ASUS Zenfone 9 is an excellent smartphone with excellent performance and a small form factor that’s sure to appeal to its target audience.
