Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition Review

Asus has launched the latest version of its famous ROG phone, and it is quite impressive. The Asus ROG Phone 8 has received a complete redesign and now looks sleek and polished, making it comparable to the iPhone 15 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S24. However, it comes with a high price tag to match.

This year, there are three versions of the ROG Phone 8: the ROG Phone 8 ($1,799), ROG Phone 8 Pro ($1,999), and ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition ($2,499). All three models feature the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with Adreno 750 graphics, but they differ in RAM, storage capacity, and display features.

With an all new design, improved software features and cameras, the ROG Phone 8 is easier to carry as an everyday phone. But at this price, why wouldn’t you just buy one of Samsung or Apple flagship phones, which are arguably better everyday phones but also great gaming devices?

And then there’s also the new ROG Ally gaming handheld to figure into the equation. It costs almost half as much as the ROG Phone 8 and offers far more mobile gaming prowess. So does the new phone from Asus make sense?

Asus ROG phone 8 Pro

For this review, I’ll be focusing on the ROG Phone 8 Pro, which is what I received from Asus. Most aspects of these devices are fundamentally the same. Unboxing the ROG Phone 8 Pro is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced with a tech product. 

Staying true to the gaming theme, unboxing the phone and initial setup is part of a interactive game that guides you through the phone’s basic functions. In the large, octagonal box, you’ll find the phone, a plastic exoskeletal case, a 100W fast charger, USB-C cable, and the AeroActive cooler. That’s similar to last years phone. 

However, this year, the phone has been completely redesigned; Asus has trimmed the fat, flattened the edges, and made the device slimmer, and sleeker than ever before. The large 6.78-inch display with a hole-punch selfie camera remains, but the overall phone is 17% smaller, 15% thinner, and 9% lighter than the ROG Phone 7. It’s truly remarkable how much smaller this new phone is.

Much of this size difference comes from massively reducing the top and bottom bezels where the stereo speakers of the older phones used to be. Surprisingly, the speakers on the ROG Phone 8 are still exceptional, with remarkable stereo separation that genuinely shocked me.

Aesthetically, Asus has abandoned the loud, gamer vibes and gone with a much more subtle, if not elegant design. The new phone has a slate black finish that looks very posh, with minimalist branding etched on the back plus the signature Asus diagonal slash. The Phone 8 still looks like a specialist device, but it’s easier to walk around with it and not look like a total nerd. 

The back texture looks stunning, like a piece of premium marble that almost sparkles depending on the light. Then there’s the AniMe Vision display which is made of 341 micro LED’s that can be programmed to display several animations. This can be notifications, alerts, timers as well as custom animations.

While the back plate looks and feels great, the smooth finish makes the phone quite slippery. I was forced to use the plastic exoskeletal case that came with the phone just to improve the holdability and provide some drop protection. The case design doesn’t cover up the back display so you can still see the AniMe Vision display. And even though it doesn’t provide the best drop protection, it will keep you secure in most situations and protect your camera glass from getting scratched. 

Speaking of, that camera hump is one of the standout design changes on the new phone. It’s a squarish glass block located in the left corner that is quite tall meaning the phone cannot lay flat without a case. However, the unique shape, with all-black glass contrasting with the slate backplate, gives the phone an imposing appearance. The 8K label on the camera foretells what you can expect, but more on that later.

On the right side rail, you will find all the controls for power, volume, and the AirTriggers on each end. These touch-sensitive buttons sit flush with the rail but are surprisingly responsive. On the left rail, there is a secondary USB-C port primarily dedicated to charging while gaming, so the cable won’t block your right hand. Additionally, this is the port that the AeroActive cooler plugs into the phone for power.

On the bottom, you will find the USB-C port, SIM tray, speaker grill, and, surprisingly, a 3.5mm headphone jack. Audiophiles will appreciate this inclusion as they can use their high-end headphones with the ROG Phone 8’s built-in Hi-Res and DIRAC audio capability.

The AeroActive Cooler X has also been improved for 2024, being somewhat smaller and lighter though Asus claims it’s more effective at cooling; offering up to 1.3x better cooling performance. I don’t have test results from the previous cooler to prove that but in my testing, the AeroActive Cooler X still has a dramatic effect on temperatures.

The cooler has some other benefits besides cooling, such as the two physical trigger buttons, which feel great but are positioned too far for comfortable use when gaming. The new cooler is quiet and won’t be a distraction or annoyance to people around you; well besides looking terribly dorky.

Performance 

As is custom, the ROG Phone 8 comes packing the latest and very best hardware and software features to enhance the gaming experience. The CPU is the latest Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 3, an octa-core chipset that runs at 3.3 GHz and is 30% faster than last year’s model. 

Additionally, the updated Adreno 750 GPU graphics processor is 25% faster and now supports ray tracing. The phone comes with 16GB of LPPDDR5X RAM on the 8 Pro and a massive 24GB on the 8 Pro Edition which is kinda silly when you think about it. That’s not even considering the 1TB UFS 4.0 storage. 

As expected, the ROG Phone 8 outperformed all other phones in standard benchmarks, including the iPhone 15 Pro Max with its universally acclaimed A17 Pro chipset. The only area where the iPhone outperformed the ROG Phone 8 was in Geekbench single-core performance. In all gaming tests, the Asus phone was far ahead — as it should be.  

The phone’s thermal performance is impressive given how skinny it now is. The cooling system sits between the processor and the metal backplate which helps distribute heat evenly. Unfortunately, as a result of sealing the phone for better water resistance, the ROG Phone 8 can get very hot. When I put it through a 20-min 3DMark Solar Bay Ray Tracing stress test, it got unbearably hot with temps over 55C. 

The back plate was too hot to touch and the side rails were also very hot. Using the AeroActive Cooler X drops that by an additional 5C or so but still quite hot. Even the side rails get quite hot making use of the AirTriggers challenging. Thankfully, no game pushed the phone to work this hard.

During extended sessions of Warzone Mobile and Genshin Impact at the highest settings, the phone was much cooler at about 35-40°C. Using the AeroActive Cooler X drops the temperature by another 5°C and also cools your hands with the exhaust. Nevertheless, most people would benefit from using the ROG phone with a USB or Bluetooth controller for much better ergonomics and comfort, despite the AirTriggers.

Gaming features

The ROG Phone 8’s display is a slight improvement over last year’s already excellent panel. It has the same 6.78-inch dimensions, but the reduced bezels give the phone an impressive 94% screen-to-body ratio. The display is powered by a new Samsung E6 AMOLED LTPO panel with a peak brightness of 2500 nits. It also has a refresh rate of 165Hz, which is adaptive and can go as low as 10Hz to save power when not gaming. The touch response rate is 720Hz, ensuring a lag-free experience.

The phone’s display boasts a Delta E<1, which is ideal for color-accurate image editing. This feature is particularly useful if you use the camera’s RAW shooting capability. The display is vibrant, and the infinite contrast of AMOLED makes colours pop. Every piece of content from Instagram reels to photos to Netflix HDR looks stunning. This is a true media consumer display and it’s boosted by the excellent sound. But it’s really in games that things all come together. 

Genshin Impact, a console-quality AAA mobile game with spectacular graphics, easily ran on the ROG Phone 8 with ultra settings at 60fps. There wasn’t any hint of stutter or slowdown even in the midst of intense battles with plenty of particle effects and action on screen. The delightful soundtrack and vocals come through with great body and staging. 

Diablo Immortal, also ran smoothly on the phone, showing off high-res graphics and instantaneous response to my inputs. The dark and foreboding world looked stunning on the ROG Phone 8’s display, and the excellent sound from the speakers brought the game to life.

Call of Duty Warzone Mobile, which almost perfectly mirrors the game on PC and console, was also fast-paced and smooth on the ROG Phone 8, even with the highest settings. The AirTriggers really aided in aiming and firing, which was done via the Game Genie dashboard that you can pull up over games at any time with a simple diagonal swipe from the screen edge.

The Game Genie dashboard lets you remap any of the on-screen controls to the AirTriggers or AeroCooler buttons for some quality-of-life improvements. It also allows you to pull up your performance stats, manage performance, and even use new AI tools that will help you in certain games. 

The AI can identify items in the game and bring up relevant helpful information to assist you. At present, only Genshin Impact seems to be supported, and even then, the auto-pickup function didn’t work for me, though the auto-skip conversations did. It’s still in Beta and should get better with updates, but the premise is pretty cool.

The ROG Phone 8 boasts the latest WiFi 7 and some clever data management to ensure your games are getting the best throughput for performance. This feature is especially handy for games like Warzone but more so for Cloud Streaming gaming. I tested a few games on Xbox Cloud, and they loaded and ran fairly well, given my not-so-WiFi7 home network. However, with the right setup, the ROG Phone 8 handles cloud gaming very well, though you cannot use some of the Game Genie features and AI.

The phone also has a version of Asus Armoury Crate, which acts as a central performance and gaming hub. You can manage all your installed games, find specific ROG-approved games for high refresh, and even set individual performance settings for each game. You’ll also find settings for the AnimeMatrix back display and AeroActive cooler here. The interface is simple, and you can easily navigate around.

Everyday Use

While Asus has put in a lot of work to make sure that this phone is great for gaming, they have also ensured that it performs well for non-gaming activities. It is a phone after all. I’ve been using this phone as my daily driver for the past three weeks, making audio and video calls, taking photos, using it for navigation in my car, and doing all my messaging, emails, and social media scrolling. I am happy to report that the ROG Phone 8 handles all of these tasks very well.

Apps are snappy and responsive, and multi-tasking is a breeze with apps quickly reloading from where you left off. Having split-screen apps, and even a third app in a floating window, is a fantastic feature for multi-taskers to make use of the massive screen. The Asus pullout drawer also provides extra app shortcuts for easy access at any time.

Asus has it’s own layer sitting on top of Android 14 operating system and it uses light touch, keeping things as close to stock. You do get the choice of themes of which there are plenty in the Armoury Crate software. Like most other phone manufacturers, Asus includes several assistive AI features for everyday use. This includes AI noise-cancelling for phone calls, language translation and some camera AI tools, although they are not nearly as extensive as Google’s or Samsung’s.

With a 5500mAH battery, the phone will easily last the whole day. However, I will note that this year’s phone has been less resilient in terms of battery endurance than last year’s model. I have found myself too many times ending the day with less than 20% after moderate usage, whereas with the old phone, I was accustomed to an average of two days. There were one or two days where I was able to end the day at the 50% mark, but that was with extremely frugal use.

Nonetheless, I am not too concerned because the phone supports rapid charging with its massive 65W charger. You can get from empty to 50% in about 20 minutes and reach 100% in 45 minutes. If that isn’t good enough, you can also use wireless Qi charging, though in my experience, this makes the phone really hot, far hotter than when gaming.

Cameras and Photography

One area that let down previous ROG Phones was the cameras and Asus has made some updates to the camera system and thrown in some AI to improve the shooting experience. Sadly the net result is an average camera compared to similarly priced phones. 

This year, Asus has gone with a triple lens system that has 50MP IMX980 Sony sensor with a 6-axis Hybrid gimbal stabiliser for more steady shots and video. You also get a 32MP 3x optical lens, 13MP 120° ultra-wide lens and a 32MP selfie camera on the front. 

Overall, image quality is best from the main 50MP camera but its still not anywhere near as consistent as the Google Pixel 8 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max. You do get all the versatility you need with an ultra-wide, and telephoto zoom lenses but how often you get a great picture is still hit an miss.

Photos are still prone to grain and digital artifacting that other flagship phones have long since overcome; especially with zoom shots. Asus calls the camera’s here Pro level but aside from the manual controls and ability to capture RAW format, quality is still far behind other premium smartphones.

ROG Phone 8 sample photos

I also didn’t find most of the new AI features to be helpful either and I don’t know why but that Hybrid gimbal always caused a weird drifting effect inside the view finder that was disconcerting when framing shots. It was mostly noticeable while trying to capture close up objects. 

Video has also been improved on the ROG Phone 8, which can capture up to 8K video at 30fps, something nobody will be doing given scarcity of 8K displays. As a result, I can’t really speak to the quality of the video. Most people will be shooting vertical video at 1080p 60fps or 4K 30fps anyway, just because that’s easier to share on socials and that looks just fine for that purpose. As someone who also creates content for YouTube and TikTok, I wouldn’t rely on the ROG Phone 8 to capture consistent video like my iPhone 15 Pro Max.  

Asus has improved video stabilisation, thanks to that built-in gimbal so you can say goodbye to those shaky home videos of your kid’s birthday parties. It does a great job smoothing things out as you move but doesn’t do too much to improve low-light video capture. The ROG Phone 8 lags far behind the iPhone 15 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra when it comes to photos and video which puts it at a distinct disadvantage. 

Verdict

After spending a few weeks with the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, I can confidently say that it is the best ROG phone the company has ever produced. Previous ROG Phones were designed for hardcore gamers, but this new phone has toned down many of the design choices that made its predecessors stand out.

The ROG Phone 8 Pro is the best-looking ROG phone yet, but this has put Asus in questionable competition with mainstream premium phones. These other flagships boast similar specs and offer comparable performance while being much better at everyday phone things like shooting photos and videos.

Making things harder is the existence of the ROG Ally which at the time of this writing can be had for half the price and yes offers a more compelling mobile gaming proposition. You get access to AAA games, games launchers and a Windows system. And more and more handheld PCs are coming with price points around the $1000 mark. 

As a result, while I admire what Asus is doing with ROG Phone, I still don’t fully understand who would buy it in reality. It’s too expensive to appeal to the wider audience but also not as capable as cheaper handhelds. I know if I had $2000 to spend, I would split that between the ROG Ally and a Google Pixel 8 Pro. 

But for what it is, the ROG Phone 8 Pro is an excellent iteration of the line and I really like the direction Asus is going. Perhaps they should just drop the Phone bit and make this a ROG Ally Mini? 

Asus Australia kindly loaned the ROG Phone 8 Pro to PowerUp Gaming for the purpose of this review