Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra review: Asus games the system | Expert Reviews

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra review: Performance and battery life

Given that the Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra is essentially a rebadged and repurposed ROG Phone 8, you’d expect performance to be on point. It doesn’t disappoint. Running the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, together with either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, it’s just about as capable as modern phones get.

Benchmark results bear that out, with CPU scores that match the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and the OnePlus 12 Ultra, and GPU results that either match or exceed them. It also tops the iPhone 15 Plus, the Galaxy S24 Plus and the Google Pixel 8 Pro in most of these tests.

The Zenfone’s lower resolution display helps it top some of those rivals, of course, but you can’t help suspect that a little of Asus’s gaming knowhow is at play here. The company claims that the Zenfone 11 Ultra isn’t tuned for gaming performance like the ROG Phone 8, and doesn’t have quite the same cooling system, but a high-performance mode still kicks in when running benchmarks and other advanced applications.

On the cooling front, the Zenfone 11 Ultra undoubtedly runs hot under extreme load, such as when running the 20-minute 3DMark Solar Bay Stress Test. However, it still maintains its stability in said test, with performance only dropping off slightly from the first loop to the last. Indeed, it scored very similarly to the ROG Phone 8 here.

Battery life is strong here, as you’d hope given the provision of a 5,500mAh battery and a display that isn’t the most pixel-packed in its class. I was routinely able to get through a full 16-hour day with four hours of screen-on time and be left with a little over 50% charge.

In our standard looping video test, the Zenfone 11 Ultra lasted 24hrs 30mins. That’s just over an hour longer than the Zenfone 10, and just under an hour more than the iPhone 15 Plus. However, it falls more than five hours short of the OnePlus 12 and several hours behind the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus.

The phone supports up to 65W fast charging. However, Asus doesn’t supply a charger in the box and that seemed to pose a bit of a problem in testing. Using three different fast chargers from Samsung, Xiaomi and Nubia, I was unable to get anything close to the 39-minute 0-100% time that Asus claimed. I have no doubt that Asus’s claim is accurate, but it’s worth being aware that your existing third-party fast charger might not help you hit that mark.

You also get 15W wireless charging support here, which is something I’d expect at this sort of price.

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