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ASUS Zenfone 12 Ultra (Quick Look) - Grand Size and Ground-breaking Innovations
We've got our hands on the latest ASUS Zenfone model, which is looking to build on the strengths of the 11 Ultra by offering a more powerful processor, a more vibrant display, and a more detailed camera module.
Audio transcription
"Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Gamereactor Quick Look.
It's time for an ultrafone.
It seems that every manufacturer is trying their hand at an ultrafone."
"And this is Asus' Zenfone 12 Ultra.
By the time you're listening to this, we will have had it for some days.
And this is embargo time, which is very exciting.
And this is a pretty sort of make it or break it, I think, moment for Asus that have seen a lot of success with their ROG phones, but much less so with their mainline Zenfones."
"And I have said for a couple of times that that was actually really uncalled for because the Zenfones, particularly when they were sort of smaller, more budget friendly, but offered a scaled back version of Android without so much of the bloat and the flim flam, but just, you know, hard specs for hard users."
"But this is very different.
This is attempting to directly compete against the premium phones.
This is going to be like, I think, 1159 euros if you get the like the highest spec version, meaning that it'll be more expensive than the newly released one plus 13 if you go for the same spec."
"That's a lot.
So what does Asus do to counteract that price increase or at the very least this ultra moniker?
Well, there are a bunch of good news here."
"This is all premium materials.
All of the buttons feel great.
The volume rocker is solid.
So is the lock button.
The design is nice and subdued, particularly for those of us that don't want our phones to say something meaningful about us necessarily."
"It's all the best materials.
It weighs 220 grams.
Therefore, it has a good sort of hand feel, which is great.
Inside, you get the best of the best."
"So that's Snapdragon 8 Elite up to 16 gigs of LPDDR5X RAM up to 512 gigs of UFS 4.0 storage.
It's all good, basically.
You also get a headphone jack down the bottom, which is a rarer and rarer thing these days."
"Sometimes they are brought back for, let's say, some thrills from some audience members and consumers.
And it's always, I think, nice to see that, you know, you can walk back to sign changes and bring back something as, you know, normal as a port, which you do have here. And that's great."
"This screen right here is perhaps a different story.
It is a 6.78 inch 1080p flexible AMOLED.
It runs at 144 hertz.
It's an LTPO panel, meaning that it can throttle between one and 120 hertz."
"And it's all bright and beautiful color calibrated.
All of that stuff that you would come to expect out of a phone of this class.
The higher frame rate, hertz frame rate is great.
The 1080p, not sure, but it does seem like we've kind of come to a point where we don't perhaps need 4K panels like Sony, Xperia's of old or even 1440p."
"1080p is fine, but this is also charging a lot for that particular privilege.
It has multi-magnet dual stereo speakers, which is great.
There's a 5,500 milliamp hour battery in here.
And from this USB type C port down at the bottom, you can charge it at 65 watts wired or wireless using T wireless, which is great. So no cost cutting or saving there."
"Behind here, we have a pretty small, like it's really thick, like it sticks out, protrudes quite a lot, but it is smaller than a lot of other camera craters that we've seen over the past couple of years."
"And that houses a 50 megapixel Sony Alicia 700 sensor with a gimbal stabilizer.
That's the main lens alongside a 13 megapixel ultra wide with 120 degrees FOV and a 32 megapixel telephoto with 3x optical zoom and built in OIS."
"So those were all the important specs.
So how is it?
Well, I haven't tried it as much as I'd like, and we're early in the progress here."
"By the time you're watching this, we'll be done.
But I feel like it's very expensive, and it was perhaps the wrong move for Asus to go with a big slab phone that is around the same size as your Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, your OnePlus 13 and your bunch of other phones on the market."
"The smaller Asus Zenfones did have one particular, like it was smaller, so people that like small phones could gravitate towards that.
But also it was just a bit more competitively priced."
"And with that price of 1149 euros, that's for 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage.
There's just a lot of other choices on the market.
Now, Asus still do the same things that they do very well."
"Screen is great, lovely calibrated.
The performance is fantastic, and it is also a really subdued, nice version of Android.
If you like your Android versions pretty close to stock, this will give you that."
"But I'm still unsure whether or not this package is worth that like hefty ultra pricing.
So you're going to have to follow for our full review.
See you on the next one."
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