Asus Zenfone Live Review! Yet another Zenfone or something special ?

Asus

launched the Zenfone Live in the midrange budget line-up of their phones for ₹9999/- With increasing competition in the budget of 10,000 to 15,000 INR Let’s see how the Zenfone Live holds up. Presenting the Asus Zenfone Live Review!

The Asus Zenfone Live is targeted at the budget segment. It has a sleek design, a very light form factor and weighs around just 120 grams which feels very special and good to hold. The build quality is totally out of plastic, but it’s not bad. It surely gives a premium feel when you hold it in your hand.

> About the phone

The device has a 5 inch HD display with a resolution​ of 1280×720. It also has 2.5D curved glass which gives a premium feel to the phone, but there’s no mention of Gorilla glass. The phone runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Asus’s own Zen UI on top of it. Zen UI is fast and fluid, gives a smooth experience to the user. It’s 4G and VoLTE enabled by default, and Jio Networks work fine on this device. There’s no fingerprint scanner though, that’s disappointing!

The Zenfone Live is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset, which is not the latest offering from Qualcomm, but we have more on the performance down below. It’s coupled with 2GB of RAM and comes with 16GB of Internal Storage out of which around 12GB is free to use. A really good offer you get with this phone is that you get Free 100GB of Google Drive space for 2 years.

Sounds sweet! It also has a micro-sd card slot through which you can expand your memory using a Micro SD card upto 128GB, but it’s a hybrid slot. Pretty common in the market for now. All this is powered with a 2650 mAh battery, and the supplied charger is a 5V-1A charger which takes 3 hours to go from 1% to 100% Not fast charging. The battery is enough for you to last a whole day on normal usage, but when you start pushing the device with video playback and gaming, you might need to connect your charger in the evening itself.

Camera

The camera duties are handled by a 13 MP rear camera with an aperture of f/2.0 and a 5 MP front camera & front flash. Comparing the camera, performance with other phones in the price segment, it’s decent. The rear camera captures good photos in bright and outdoor lights, but struggles a lot in indoor and artificial lighting. The front facing camera captures decent selfies, but the dynamic range and detail levels did not impress us. The device can capture 1080p videos at 30fps. There is no support for Slow motion and 60fps videos. The camera on this one is surely not the best, but not a bad one too. It gets the job done. Quite good.

The Special!

As the name itself suggests, the Zenfone Live. Asus in their Zen UI have included a feature called live beautification, using which you can use beautification modes while you live-stream on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter (Periscope), Instagram etc. It works quite good. Here’s our demonstration & experience of the same.

You can choose between 10 different levels of beautification.

For all the gamers!

Sorry folks, the Asus Zenfone Live is not a phone on which you could rely on gaming. On testing, we played Asphalt 8, Asphalt Xtreme, Frontline Commando 2, N.O.V.A 3 the device started heating after just 5-7 minutes of gaming. The processor starts throttling after 10-15 minutes and the game is almost unplayable. However, lighter games like Leo’s Fortune & Temple Run 2 ran fine for 20 minutes, but the device started heating after 20 minutes.

We also tested GPS maping on this device, and it works just fine. There’s no compass sensor, but maps work good.

So should you consider buying the Zenfone Live ? It’s both a Yes and a No. If you want a device with sleek design and looks, decent camera, then you should go with it. If you are a heavy gamer and intensive user, the dated processor on this one is going to disappoint you, so consider looking for other options like Redmi 4, Lenovo K6 power and Honor 6X.

Our Rating – 6/10.

Pros
•Sleek Design
•Live Beautification

Cons –
•Outdated Processor
•No fingerprint scanner
•Poor gaming performance
•Plastic build

One comment

  1. Zenfone Live is not a good option because I don’t need that much beautification. I always prefer natural things.
    I am using Asus Zenfone Max. The key feature of this device is 5000 mAh battery. The rear camera is good. But It’s too old now. And Asus is just doing a very poor job in terms of software updates. My device got the last update in March 2017. I complained about that and they said that there is no more update available for Zenfone Max. They stopped giving updates.
    Now, I am using the Xiaomi Mi A1 and I am really happy with this device because I love stock android. But in terms of Video recording, Mi A1 is not that much great. I still shoot videos from my Zenfone Max and it gives me a better quality as compared to Mi A1.
    Asus devices have great cameras.

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