ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra smartphone review

This year, ASUS decided to abandon the compact flagship that Zenfone has been for the past few years. And they were very popular with a certain part of the audience because they were somewhat unique. No other flagship Android smartphone in recent years has been able to offer such a compact body and a screen of less than 6 inches. The ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra turned out to be a more typical flagship with a large screen. Today we will tell you what makes it interesting.

Specifications of the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra

Scope of delivery

Unlike its very close relative ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro, the package of ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is a bit simpler. The smartphone comes in a small gray box with the ASUS logo and model name.

There is no power supply included, only a Type-C cable for charging and a tool for removing the tray. But there is a small bonus in the form of a protective plastic bumper. It is black in all color variants of the smartphone. The bumper protects the back cover, corners of the smartphone and the rear camera module.

ASUS also brought additional accessories from third-party manufacturers. These include a durable Rhinoshield SolidSuit protective bumper, a magnetic DEVILCASE Guardian, and an antibacterial-coated glass screen protector.

Design and ergonomics

Externally, the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is a typical modern flagship smartphone with a large screen. Compared to the Zenfone 10, the difference is really very significant: the screen has increased from 5.9 to 6.78 inches. It is claimed that the ratio of the screen to the entire front panel is 94% instead of 90% for its predecessor. And the bezels have decreased from 2.05 to 1.67 mm. The back cover is now made of glass instead of polycarbonate.

If you look closely, it becomes clear that the Zenfone 11 Ultra is structurally very close to the ROG Phone 8 Pro. A similar chassis is used: the dimensions are identical, almost all functional elements are in the same places. The additional side Type-C, touch triggers, and backlighting on the back cover have been removed.

Its design is similar to the current ASUS Zenbook ultrabooks. It has decorative lines that form the ASUS anniversary monogram. The lid is made of glass with a matte finish. In addition to blue, there are also black, gray, and beige options. It looks stylish, but the lid is quite slippery.

The rear camera unit is massive and protrudes significantly above the surface of the back cover. Therefore, the smartphone wobbles on the table. And the unit itself can be easily scratched around the perimeter. The unit itself is black, rectangular in shape with rounded corners. The rear camera is triple.

The metal frame has a black matte finish and many plastic inserts around the perimeter. The power button and dual volume buttons are located in the standard place. Considering the dimensions of the smartphone, their height is quite convenient, you don’t have to intercept the smartphone to get to them.

There is an additional microphone on top. And the bottom edge has everything else. Namely, a microphone, a Type-C connector shifted to the edge, a tray, the main speaker, and a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack. It has been very rare in flagships lately and is disappearing from mid-range smartphones.

The tray is unremarkable. You can install two physical SIM cards in nano format.

ASUS claims that the Zenfone 11 Ultra’s body is made of 100% recycled aluminum, and its screen uses 22% recycled glass. The smartphone is IP68-rated for protection against dirt and water, so it can withstand rain or short-term immersion in water.

Display

The ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra has a 6.78-inch LTPO OLED display with a resolution of 2400×1080 (20:9), with a pixel density of about 388 ppi. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Victus 2 glass.

The 10-bit E8 matrix manufactured by Samsung is used. It is capable of displaying more than 1.07 billion color shades. It promises a color coverage of 107% of the DCI-P3 space and a local peak brightness of 2500 cd/m² in automatic mode.

The display supports all modern standards of extended dynamic range: HDR10 and HLG. The refresh rate is 1-120 Hz, 144 Hz is available only in game mode.

There are many settings available to the user: dark and light themes, night mode, eye protection, low-brightness flicker elimination (DC Dimming), refresh rate, interface scale, animation speed, Always on Display, and Splendid color schemes. There are four of them. There is a color temperature setting and a custom mode.

The screen is very bright, the picture does not fade in the bright sun. Colors are very saturated, viewing angles are maximized. The screen almost does not have the typical AMOLED feature when white color has a greenish or bluish tint at a certain angle.

The maximum brightness in the “Optimal” mode was 776.19 cd/m². The color gamut is significantly higher than sRGB, but the color temperature is noticeably overestimated, the picture leans toward cold shades. Although this is not a significant problem, it is possible to adjust the color temperature for each mode.

In the “Natural” mode, the maximum brightness is 783,889 cd/m², and all indicators are very close to the “Optimal” mode:

In Cinematic mode, the color reproduction is closer to the reference values, and the maximum brightness is 773,417 cd/m².

In the Standard mode, the color gamut is closer to sRGB, the color temperature is 7500K (with a reference of 6500K), and the brightness is 775.22 cd/m².

Security

The biometric identification functions of the owner in ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra are quite standard. There is an optical fingerprint scanner under the screen. It works quickly and accurately. Although the speed is slightly inferior to the top Samsung with an ultrasonic scanner. Its location is not very convenient, it is quite high. And from time to time you have to reach for it or intercept the smartphone.

Face recognition by the front camera works as standard. You can expect high accuracy and speed in good light. In the dark, the fingerprint scanner is a much faster and more reliable option.

Performance and software

ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra has similar hardware to the ROG Phone 8 Pro. The already familiar flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor is installed. Recall that this is a 4 nm SoC with one powerful ARM Cortex-X4 core with a frequency of up to 3.3 GHz, three Cortex-A720s at 3.2 GHz, two Cortex-A720s at 3.0 GHz and two energy-efficient Cortex-A520s at 2.3 GHz. The graphics accelerator is Adreno 750 with a frequency of 1 GHz.

The smartphone has 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB of internal UFS 4.0 storage. There is a function to expand the RAM by 4/6/8 GB. ROG Phone 8 Pro has 16/512 GB in the base version. The top-of-the-line version has 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

In benchmarks, ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra demonstrates very high performance, not much lower than ROG Phone 8 Pro. So the smartphone does not have any performance problems and will not have any in the coming years.

You can safely install heavy modern games and play with maximum settings and a comfortable stable 60 FPS. At the same time, the smartphone hardly ever gets hot during a long game.

The same cannot be said about the artificial maximum load. CPU Throttling Test showed that the processor can drop performance by up to 82%. At the same time, the case becomes hot, especially the metal frame. Although so far, only tests have been able to load the smartphone in this way, not real tasks.

ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is equipped with almost all modern wireless interfaces: tri-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e/7, Bluetooth 5.4 with support for AAC, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, LDAC, and NFC codecs.

Global positioning systems such as GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, QZSS, and NavIC are supported. But, surprisingly, there is no support for eSIM. And this is not a regional feature.

ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra runs on almost pure Android 14. The differences from the stock OS are minimal. There is a choice of quick settings panel. Standard for Android with large switches, a variation with small switches, or a separate panel: separate notifications and switches.

There is also a customized version of the volume settings with the ability to set limits. But ASUS makes it possible to use the classic Android version. 

Of course, there are ample opportunities to customize the appearance. Themes, wallpapers (including AI-generated ones), shape, type, size of icons, grid, fonts, animations, and color themes are available.

Additional features include a set of gestures for quickly launching various functions and gestures on the deactivated screen. As well as the OptiFlex function, which should help you launch more frequently used applications faster.

There is a Game Genie overlay. It allows you to choose a performance profile, fix the brightness, block notifications, show current information about the system load, temperature, and FPS, take screenshots, videos, and more.

ASUS is starting to integrate AI tools into smartphones as well. Some of them are still in beta testing. The Zenfone 11 Ultra features an emotional search for information about events, time, places, and objects in photos, as well as AI noise reduction for calls. AI Call Translator (real-time call translation), AI Transcript (audio-to-text conversion), and AI Wallpaper (the aforementioned wallpaper generation) are still in beta.

Sound

ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra reproduces stereo sound using the main and earpiece speakers. As a direct comparison with the ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro has shown, the speakers and overall sound quality of the smartphones are absolutely the same. The smartphone has a high volume level and sounds good. Even at maximum volume, there is a little bass.

To customize the sound, there is an Audio Wizard application with ready-made profiles for different usage scenarios and an equalizer. The smartphone supports Dirac Virtual surround sound. A standard 3.5 mm jack is a nice bonus for owners of good wired headphones.

Most modern smartphones already use various AI features. The smartphone has a noise cancellation function for conversations called AI Noise Cancellation. Unfortunately, it does not work very well so far. The connection is interrupted from time to time. With the feature turned off, this problem does not exist.

Cameras

The cameras of the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra are completely the same as the ROG Phone 8 Pro. So at the back we have a unit that includes three modules. The main one is 50 megapixels Sony IMX 890. It has a physical size of 1/1.59″, a pixel size of 1.0µm, f/1.9 aperture, 24 mm EFE, PDAF phase detection autofocus and Hybrid Gimbal Stabilization 3.0 optical stabilization, which is capable of correcting movement in the range of +/-3°. The main camera is capable of shooting video at up to 8K 24 FPS. Adaptive stabilization is available for 4K. HyperSteady is only available for FullHD.

The telephoto camera has a resolution of 32 megapixels, 1/3.2″, and a pixel size of 0.7 µm. The optics are f/2.4, the zoom factor is 3x, and there is optical stabilization. The ultra-wide-angle camera uses a 13-megapixel module, f/2.2, 120° viewing angle, without autofocus. The front camera is 32 MP, f/2.2.

The camera application interface is virtually identical to other modern smartphones. The viewfinder screen has the main controls: zoom, flash, aspect ratio, etc. Additional settings are available in the pull-down menu.

In the daytime, the main camera reproduces colors quite naturally, HDR mostly works well with shadows, and the detail is good.

The night mode doesn’t lose much detail and pulls out the picture quite well. But there are not very natural shades, as well as slightly overexposed areas and the sky. In general, this applies to night photos with all cameras. And for some reason, the night mode is slow.

ASUS promises 2x zoom from the main camera without loss of quality. But in low light, there is already noise and reduced detail:

The telephoto camera takes mostly clear and detailed pictures. In night mode, the detail is slightly reduced, but not critically:

The ultra-wide-angle camera in the vast majority of modern smartphones takes slightly worse photos than the main camera and telephoto. ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is no exception: the photos are slightly darker and have worse detail. Especially in low light. But this does not mean that you can’t take a good photo with it./span>

4K 60 FPS video on the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is of nice quality. Adaptive stabilization does not spoil the detail too much and the jello effect is almost invisible:

Battery life

ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is equipped with a 5500 mAh battery. The smartphone supports 65W fast charging, Power Delivery 3.0, Quick Charge 3.0, 5.0 standards, and 15W wireless charging. There is also support for 10W reverse charging. Unfortunately, there’s no power supply included, but I had a 65W one from ROG Phone 8 Pro at hand. It charges the smartphone in 40 minutes.

The smartphone is quite durable. And in everyday use, it will last for a day. This means 20 minutes of talk time, 1.5 hours of music via Bluetooth, a lot of messenger communication, mail, a browser, and a little camera. If you add games to this, you will have to charge it in the evening. In the battery test, the smartphone lasted more than 12 hours in maximum performance mode.