ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser Review: Good scope, bad shot

In the world of television, spin-offs are a common sight as many networks try their hardest to keep that rare gem of a tv show alive. I completely understand this desire to milk every last drop out of your prized cow simply because money is hard to make in this world where piracy is rampant.

Generally, many of these spin-offs tend to fall flat and the way I see it, there are two big reasons why this happens. The first is that the show doesn’t live up to the hype. It’s hard to follow in the footsteps of something as big as, say, Friends for example (we’re looking at you Joey). Secondly, it doesn’t eventually break off from the original and find and identity of its own, or that special niche that makes a show special.

In the world of smartphones, it seems, that there exists this same desire to spin off into various other versions of an OEM’s flagship or popular device.

Some spin-offs are designed to make their flagship devices more accessible with lower price points by omitting one or two key features but keeping the feel the same. Others try to incorporate one new key feature that’s absent from the main device.

The latter is where ASUS’s Zenfone 2 Laser comes in. In case you haven’t realised it yet, the keyword here is “laser”, which means that this spin-off device’s camera comes with a laser autofocus. And as with spin-offs, the question remains, does it float or does it fall?

[nextpage title=”Build”]At RM799, the Zenfone 2 Laser is no premium device and that shows. The device we were given to review has a 5.5-inch display, tucked away under the protective arm of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4, which sounds good, but the device is decidedly midrange as the rest of the phone is fantastic in plastic.

Since it is without a metal unibody, the rear cover is removable, but do so with caution as the panel is rather flimsy and flexes a lot. Once you remove the cover, the phone will bare its internals to you like an animal asking for a belly rub. You may not see everything, but all of what you need can be easily accessed. It is worth noting that the Zenfone 2 Laser has a removable battery, which is a big plus especially if you compare it to the original Zenfone 2 which doesn’t.

You will not find any buttons around the side of the device as ASUS has decided to place the volume rockers at the back and the power button at the top centre of the phone. The lack of buttons around the side does make gaming, reading, and watching videos a little better as there is no way for you to accidentally turn off the screen.

However, while that top power button might have worked in a smaller device, putting it right smack in the centre at the top of a smartphone with a 5.5” screen still seems more like an oversight than a design choice. Flicking on the screen with one hand was a stretch even for me and my average sized hands, what more someone with a smaller handprint. Thankfully, the Zenfone 2 Laser comes with double-tap to wake and sleep, which is definitely a welcomed feature.

The volume rockers took me a while to get used to, but once I did, I found it very useful especially during a call because your fingers were right where the volume rockers were.

When it comes to actual switch quality though, that’s a different story. I love a well-made button, but the Zenfone 2 Laser’s didn’t fit the bill. Although they were clicky and tactile, they didn’t make the usual satisfying thump, rather they had a more hollow pop that felt incredibly cheap.

[nextpage title=”Hardware”]

For the hardware, we begin at the most glaring part of the smartphone, its display (for obvious reasons). Out of the box, the 720p HD display (720×1280 pixels, 267 ppi) was a little warm, and switching from my own device to this review unit was quite jarring. The good thing is that the device allows you to adjust the colour temperature of the screen yourself, so you can usually get it exactly the way you want it.

The panel itself is far from impressive. It doesn’t get very bright (or dim for that matter) so sunlight visibility was not very good. If you use a pair of polarised sunglasses while driving, be prepared for some heavy squinting because no matter how bright you set the screen, all you will see is a dark, muddied silhouette of what should be your navigation app.

On the inside, there is yet more evidence that this is no premium device. The Zenfone 2 Laser is running a quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor, clocked at 1.2GHz, paired with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The smartphone also supports dual-SIM 4G LTE with a microSD card slot for expandable storage (none of that hybrid nonsense). Here, the Zenfone 2 Laser has the edge over the original Zenfone 2 where only one of the dual-SIM slots supports 4G LTE. Out of the box, the Zenfone 2 Laser will come with Android 5.0 Lollipop with ASUS’s ZenUI skin running over it.

As a whole, the device’s performance was alright, but it’s nothing to shout about. Daily usage was serviceable, with it only choking when switching between applications and multitasking. Keep it to 2-3 applications though and you should be just dandy.

With these specs under the hood, don’t expect to do too much heavy gaming on this device. It ran Asphalt Nitro at a decent framerate, but there was a noticeable lag, especially if you’re coming from a higher end device. If you are more of a numbers kind of person, here are the device’s benchmark scores on Geekbench 3 and AnTuTu:

The place where this device does put on a good show is the battery life from that 3,000 mAh unit. I was very impressed with how easily it lasted me an entire day (about 8 am to 10 pm) of moderate to heavy usage. When I really tried to drain the battery, it still gave me a solid 5 hours and 25 minutes of screen on time, and that’s with a whole lot of navigation, social media browsing and some gaming. Yet again, an improvement over the original Zenfone 2’s frankly abysmal battery life.

While everything was average and rather expected of a device at this price point, if I had to pick a feature to despise about this phone, it would be that awful speaker. From the rear, it would appear as if the device’s speaker stretches all the way across its back. The truth is uncovered when you actually remove the back cover and find that the speaker is nothing more than a tiny square at the bottom left of the phone.

As a result, speaker quality is abysmal. When I tested its loudspeaker capabilities, I could barely hear the person on the other end of the line. Sound quality during gaming and media consumption was horrible too as the audio sounded like it was being wheezed at you through a straw.

[nextpage title=”Camera”]

Now, we arrive at the meat and potatoes of the device, the biggest reason ASUS thinks you will buy this phone: its camera. While the front facing 5-megapixel camera can carry out its function as a selfie camera properly, it’s the 13-megapixel f/2.0 rear shooter with laser autofocus and what ASUS calls a “PixelMaster” camera that we’re interested in. On paper, the camera looks promising, but somehow in practical situations it just couldn’t live up to the hype.

In well-lit conditions, the camera could pull off some pretty decent shots with lots of detail. However, if you do take wide, establishing shots of, say a city skyline during the day, prepare for some of the highlights to be completely blown out.

Without HDR

With HDR

Of course, this can be quickly fixed by turning on the camera’s HDR mode. Okay, maybe quickly wasn’t the right word to use, since it takes an eternity to process the photos in HDR. This isn’t practical in daily situations when you want to quickly take a snapshot of that beautiful sprawling city skyline from the Pasar Seni LRT station, before hopping into your train. If you had to resort to HDR in that scenario, the train would be three stations away by the time it was done processing.

I exaggerate, but I’m sure you can tell how frustrated I am with the speed, or rather a lack thereof. Naturally, if you have the time to do so, HDR is definitely recommended for those sunset shots.

Without HDR

With HDR

Something I did really liked was the device’s close up macro shots, where the laser autofocus really works its magic. Focusing was fast, intuitive and responsive. It knew to refocus when I shifted the camera and the shots came out great. That large aperture gave a lot of separation between the foreground and background, even giving the photos a pretty creamy bokeh.

Not Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup creamy, but close enough.

Problems crop up during low light though, as the lack of optical image stabilisation (OIS) really hurts the camera’s low light photography. Unless you have a sniper’s ability to keep a steady aim, low light photography will likely be a multiple shot affair. Try as I could, night photographs in the camera’s auto mode were nigh impossible.

Without HDR

With HDR

Again, this problem can be somewhat mitigated by HDR, but ain’t nobody got time for that!

In short, the laser autofocus works brilliantly. Focusing was an absolute breeze and a whole lot of fun. Everything else about the camera though, not so brilliant. Maybe don’t skim on the OIS for a device that emphasises its camera even in its name.

[nextpage title=”Verdict”]

I’d like to say that there is a lot to like about the ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser, but I’d be lying. As a midrange phone, it performs decidedly midrange-y which is not unexpected, but certainly not memorable. There was nothing particularly special about the device, nothing that really lingered with me and made me think “wow, they really did try to make this work at the low end of the spectrum!”.

Then there are other annoyances, like the keyboard and how when you went into a browser the space bar would move from where it usually is. Or the ridiculous amount of bloatware ASUS decided to bundle into its 16GB device. And then there’s the fact that to the untrained eye, it looks exactly like the Zenfone 2. The minor adjustments to make it a little better, usability wise, than it’s original felt more like ASUS were fixing the mistakes they made with the Zenfone 2, rather than deliberate improvements to impart identity to the Zenfone 2 Laser.

I can’t shake the feeling that this device was born because the boffins at ASUS were strapped for cash and decided to strap the latest smartphone trend into a watered down version of their flagship device and sell it as a “new device”. They didn’t even bother to give it a noteworthy visual upgrade that would set it apart from the device it spun off from.

The worst part? It isn’t even that affordable. At RM799, I would think long and hard about buying this device, then go out and buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 (saving RM150 for a better display and processor) or the Lenovo A7000 Plus (which also has a Full HD display).

Let me put it this way, if the ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser was a TV series on NBC, it would probably have been cancelled by now. No, this is not the NCIS of smartphone spin-offs because in my books, it just spun off into a ditch.