Asus Zenfone 6 review

The Zenfone 6 is surprisingly quick for a £240 handset. While its dual-core 2.0GHz Atom Z2580 processor lags behind Intel’s newer Baytrail Atom chips, it still produced a respectable 851ms in our SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks using its proprietary internet browser. This isn’t far behind the Nexus 6, which scored 792ms, and is easily on par with other flagship phones such as the Sony Xperia Z3 and Motorola’s 2nd Gen Moto X.

In practice, web browsing was wonderfully smooth and desktop pages looked stunning on the large 6in screen. Smaller text was a slight strain on the eyes at full resolution, but panning round the page was virtually judder-free once all the images had loaded.

Gaming performance was also impressive, managing an average of 52.8fps in Epic Citadel on Ultra High quality settings. We were a little worried when it only scored a slightly jerky 4,700 or 23.2fps in our 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme test, but our fears were soon quelled when we loaded up games such as Real Racing 3 and saw a high level of detail present with no judder whatsoever.

It’s not such good news for the Zenfone 6’s battery life, however. While its respectable score of 10 hours and 53 minutes in our continuous video playback test with the brightness set to 170cd/m2 is nothing to be sniffed at, this is still on the low side for a 3,300mAh battery. The Note 4, for instance, has smaller 3,220mAh battery yet lasted a massive 18 hours and 55 minutes under the same conditions. You’ll still be able to get through the day on the Zenfone 6, but we were nevertheless hoping for a little more from this huge handset.

We were surprised by how fake and artificial our test shots from the 13-megapixel camera looked. On Auto mode, the central part of the frame looked overly saturated while lighter areas to the sides looked hazy and washed out. If it wasn’t for the large patches of over-exposed sky, it was almost as though we’d forgotten to turn HDR off. Strangely, enabling HDR mode actually toned down the level of colour saturation and images actually looked pretty good. The sky also looked much more natural, but we did notice large patches of noise begin to crop up in the dark clouds. 

The screen and camera are a little below average, but the ZenFone 6 still has a decent battery life, excellent performance and a useful, intuitive UI. With no other 6in phablet quite this cheap, it’s a great choice if you’re after a large phone without paying extra for either the Note 4 or Nexus 6.

However, it faces strong competition from the 5.5in HTC Desire 816, which is just £50 more SIM-free at time of writing, and has a better screen, longer battery life and is easier to hold. If you’re set on having the biggest screen possible, the Zenfone 6 is a good choice, but if your budget can stretch a bit further, the Desire 816 is the better buy.