In a world of iPhones, Samsung Galaxies, and Pixels, the rest of the smartphone market can often fall under the radar, especially when every manufacturer is trying to lock you into their respective ecosystems. ASUS’ Zenfone line has been around for quite some time and recently has captured attention for its highly competitive and capable Zenfone 10 and Zenfone 9 before it. So what happens when it goes all out on one ultra-flagship phone?
Enter the newASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra, a massive departure from the compact-sized Zenfone 10 from last year, coming in with a new design, dramatically larger display and battery, and a supped-up camera system, but frankly loses the touch of the ASUS' smaller phones.
Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra
The Sleeper Gaming Phone
The ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is a significant departure from its predecessors, with its new bigger body and expansive 6.78-inch OLED display. The phone has a substantially large 5500mAh battery, with its standout features including powerful performance powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset. However, the phone’s camera system, despite delivering generally decent color accuracy and consistency across the entire camera array, suffers from over-processing, detracting from the overall experience.
Zenfone Goes Big
As alluded to before, the Zenfone 11 Ultra ditches the compact design of its predecessors, and while it’s sad to see the small form factor go, this larger Zenfone is very nice. The phone’s back is a matte metallic glass finish, which has ASUS’ monogram subtly etched onto it, and the way it refracts light looks excellent. Despite its size, the Zenfone 11 Ultra’s mix of a curved back panel and flat aluminum sides provides a firm and comfortable grip.
I think there’s one main design aspect that sticks out (literally) with the Zenfone 11 Ultra, and that is its camera bump, which is this massive protruding rectangle that awkwardly sits asymmetrically towards the top of the phone. This camera bump reminds me of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra’s camera bump, just by the way it’s so visible, but what accentuates the awkwardness of it on the Zenfone is just how disproportionate it looks compared to the slender, curvier back panel—it looks very out of place.
A Decent Snappy Display
The 11 Ultra’s larger footprint accommodates a 6.78-inch OLED display that has vibrant colors and deep contrasts. The Zenfone offers up to a 144Hz refresh rate when you enter the device’s gaming modes, but in typical usage, it’ll dynamically adjust to about 120Hz.
Compared to other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, I would say the Zenfone’s display is almost on par, but not quite at the flagship level. The screen-to-body ratio is about 88%, and the bezels are almost uniform all the way around, but with the bottom bezel being slightly bigger.
That said, the screen is only a 1080p panel, which, when compared to similarly priced flagships like the OnePlus 12, which has a dramatically brighter panel at 2,500 nits and can go up to 1440p in resolution, really doesn’t make the Zenfone’s panel look all that impressive.
Flagship Camera Woes
Onto the camera system, the Zenfone 11 Ultra is equipped with a main 50MP sensor that has a 6-axis hybrid gimbal stabilizer, a 32MP telephoto lens that offers 3x optical zoom and up to a 30x digital zoom, and a new 13MP ultra-wide camera that reduces lens distortion.
In real-world practice, I think the cameras are decent, offering great dynamic range and mostly accurate color and consistency across the three sensors, but this camera system seems to have a watercolor effect on photos, where it tries to over-sharpen and reduce grain simultaneously and yields something that looks very over-processed in its final result.
These pitfalls can most likely be addressed with light editing and software updates to the camera, but I think the broader issue with how the phone handles photos is the fact that it tries to keep everything—even things that shouldn’t be sharp and in focus—sharp and detailed, and it reduces the overall versatility of this otherwise great hardware setup.
Performance of A Gaming Phone
When it comes to performance and battery life, this is where the Zenfone 11 Ultra truly shines, and where its larger footprint pays off. The device is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
I had already tested the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra earlier this year, and the performance is on par, with the Zenfone scoring 2,242 on single core and 6,920 on multicore for Geekbench 6, but what makes the Zenfone 11 Ultra feel arguably special is just how fluid the OS feels on this chip.
The Galaxy S24 Ultra is no slouch by any means, but ASUS’ skin on top of Android 14 feels very lightweight, and only addresses areas where ASUS sees fit, and that makes this phone feel excellent to use.
There are no fancy designs or flashy new software features that are asking for your attention— the Zenfone 11 Ultra essentially runs like a pure stock Android phone that only adds in a light sprinkling of ASUS’ software features, most of which are opt-in during the setup process. Things like high-performance mode, which kicks in when you open a game (or hilariously, benchmark apps) are excellent and lets you use the 144Hz refresh rate, though the phone does get uncomfortably hot to the touch under intense performance loads of games like Genshin Impact.
Battery for Days
The battery life on the Zenfone 11 Ultra is excellent, though unsurprising. The phone sports a massive 5500mAh battery, which ASUS touts lasts for over 26 hours on a single charge, but in real-world usage, this translates to a phone that can comfortably be used the next day without needing to charge.
The phone also charges very fast as well, with a peak charging speed of 65W that can get to 100% in 39 minutes and offers up to 15W of wireless charging. Overall, if you’re coming from a smaller device, I think there’s a notable change in how you will live with it and charge it, and it feels very liberating to have a reliable charge at all times.
Should You Buy the Zenfone 11 Ultra?
Overall, theASUS Zenfone 11 Ultrais a decent choice for anyone looking for a capable phone in 2024, but I can’t conclude this review without addressing the big elephant in the room, which is the question: Isn’t this just a rebranded ROG Phone 8 Pro? And the answer is yes, this phone is essentially the same phone with a slightly tweaked design that drops all the gamer-esque polishes, and that just means that everything we discussed was, in part, just highlighting the typical benefits and pitfalls of owning a gaming phone.
The Zenfone 11 Ultra offers excellent performance and battery life, above all else, has an expansive high-refresh-rate display, and provides software features that specifically gear it towards gamers, despite not explicitly saying so.
This also means certain general-use fundamentals of the phone experience like the camera suffer in a way that other devices within the Zenfone’s flagship category may not. It depends on what aspects of the big phone experience you deem to be important to you.
I recommend the Zenfone 11 Ultra to people who want a gaming phone without the gamer aesthetic, but in the grand scheme of things, the 11 Ultra feels like just another big phone entering a market that has assimilated itself to more-or-less the same big phone formula in different bodies.
