Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe review: Not 'deluxe' enough

The Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe could have been one of the greats. Instead, its poor performance makes it downright forgettable, and easily overshadowed by the ZenFone AR announced in January at CES. For the price, you'd be better off with the cheaper ZenFone 3 , or even the OnePlus 3T , with its cheaper price and similar specs.

7.4

Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe

The Good

All-metal body looks premium; sleek design feels great. Has a whopping 6GB of RAM. Battery life is fantastic.

The Bad

Rear camera can be sluggish in low light. Performance can be laggy. The cluttered user interface and bloatware make it a pain to use.

The Bottom Line

The Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe has a luxurious build that's overshadowed by bloatware and poor performance -- you're better off with the OnePlus 3T or a cheaper ZenFone 3.

On the plus side, it costs $500 or AU$735 unlocked, which works out to be around £450 (it's not yet available in the UK). Part of that reasonable pricing has to do with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor. If you opt for the version with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821 chipset, the cost zooms to $800, which is about £660 or AU$1,085 (this version is not yet available in either the UK or Australia).

Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe sports a premium finish

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First, some positives. I love the design of this all-metal, 5.7-inch phone. Asus has done some clever engineering to hide the antenna lines and the result is a clean-looking metal device. The phone's display is bright and vibrant. As for the Deluxe's charging lifespan, I'm pleased to report the embedded 3,000mAh battery is more than sufficient to last you a full day's use and then some. In our video looping tests, the phone lasted 13 hours 55 minutes.

Now for the negatives. While the diagnostic benchmark scores were pretty good -- thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor -- actual day-to-day performance can be laggy. My best guess is that bloatware (a lot of preloaded apps) uses up precious memory and slows everything down, especially keeping all those apps updated in the background. In addition, I find the keyboard unwieldy. It keeps the settings button where the number switch key is usually located, and also has the worst autocorrect feature I've come across. You're better off downloading and installing Google's keyboard (which I did, after struggling for 2 hours with the Asus keyboard).

The rear 23-megapixel camera does a wonderful job snapping pictures when there's enough light, but low-light situations are a bit hit and miss. The default auto mode keeps the shutter open longer for a brighter image, but if your subjects are constantly moving (like my cat), then all you get is a bright but blurry shot. Check out the test shots gallery below for a more in-depth look at the camera.

Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe camera test shots

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The Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe is a great piece of hardware from Asus, but the Taiwanese company needs to figure out how to do software better. The company also needs to figure out how to deliver phones earlier -- it announced the ZenFone 3 in June, and review units trickled out 6 months later. Because of the delay, there are already phones out that are just as good and even better. For our money, we'd go with the OnePlus 3T or even the regular ZenFone 3.