An iPhone price but mid-range specs: our Asus Zenfone 9 review
Two-minute review It took a week of testing for this Asus Zenfone 9 review before we realized that our struggles to ‘get’ this phone stemmed from the device’s own identity issues. The Zenfone 9 is a cheap phone playing dress-up as a premium one; it’s two middling phones standing on each others’ shoulders in a trench coat and pretending that they’re comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S22 or iPhone 13 . The phone simply shouldn’t cost as much as it does. Asus has given it a similar price to flagships from Samsung and Apple as well as the Xiaomi 12 and OnePlus 10 Pro , but the user experience just doesn’t justify this cost. That’s most evident in the camera - there’s a 50MP main and 12MP ultra-wide, but no third lens like Samsung’s telephoto or Xiaomi’s telemacro in their respective flagships. This means the photography experience is more limited than it is in other phones at this price. The chip is also an issue. Asus packs in the top-end Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, which is great for...