Gaming phones have grown in popularity over the last few years, with pretty much all major phone makers launching devices to claim a bigger chunk of the category. However, one name that has arguably stood above all else in this category, has been Asus. Using its expertise in making top-notch gaming hardware, Asus has been launching monster gaming phones under the ROG banner. And at the start of 2022, we have with us the latest in the series, the ROG Phone 5s.
The ROG Phone 5s builds on the stellar work of the ROG Phone 5, adding to its feature set in core areas to promise an improved gaming experience to users. But does it actually live up to its promise? Well, let's find out in this gaming and performance review of the Asus ROG Phone 5s.
Let's quickly take a look at the hardware at hand before dissecting its performance in gaming and real-life scenarios. So, the ROG Phone 5s comes with a 6.78-inch Samsung E4 AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus that can refresh at up to 144Hz refresh rate. The panel also supports a high touch-sampling rate and a peak brightness of 1200 nits. There's also support for HDR and HDR10+ content.
Underneath the hood, we have the biggest upgrade to the phone in the form of the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 Plus SoC paired with up to 18GB of RAM. Compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 888 Plus boasts a slightly higher clocked prime core. There are also significant upgrades to the AI engine on the new chipset. However, for gaming, the Snapdragon 888 Plus relies on the same Adreno 660 GPU that was found on the Snapdragon 888 totting ROG Phone 5.
Keeping the lights on the Asus ROG Phone 5s is a 6000mAh battery, the same as the one on the ROG Phone 5, that supports 65W fast charging through a wired charger and 10W charging wirelessly.
To test the gaming and overall performance of the Asus ROG Phone 5s, we put it through a number of benchmark tests and also spent a decent amount of time playing games on it. And with all the tests done, and their results with us, we can safely say the ROG Phone 5s performs just as well as we had expected it to. It offers powerful performance and overall an enjoyable gaming experience thanks to its rich feature set. But more on this later. Let's first take a look at how the phone performs in benchmarks and also handles heavy-duty games.
All the hardware we've mentioned above comes together to create a powerful device capable of handling apps of daily use such as Twitter and Instagram without breaking a sweat and also capable of multi-tasking and playing resource-intensive games without much trouble. Because of its hardware and good thermals, the ROG Phone 5s provides an almost flawless experience with both apps and games running like a breeze on the device.
The phone feels snappy to use regardless of what you run on it. In our time with it, we tested its performance using a number of benchmark tests and also a few demanding games. For gaming, the ROG Phone 5s handled titles like Call of Duty: Mobile and Asphalt 9 Legends with utmost ease at the highest possible graphics settings.
Our trusted Gamebench service revealed that despite the maxed-out settings, both these games ran at a median FPS of 60 frames and stability of 100 per cent. Suffice to say, we were quite impressed with this level of performance, as only a handful of devices in the past have managed to clock such good numbers in our gaming tests. While there are many factors that contribute to such performance, the most important is possibly the fact that Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888+ SoC provides stable performance on the device for a smooth and stutter-free gaming experience.
To test this theory, we ran a few benchmarks on the ROG Phone 5s, including the CPU Throttling Test to check how well the device performs under load. The results we achieved were quite impressive as the test showed the CPU throttling only 92 per cent of its performance.
Moving on to benchmarks, the performance again was great. In fact, the results showed the ROG Phone 5s clocking numbers that put it among the list of highest performing phones we've tested. For example, in AnTuTu, the ROG Phone 5s threw up a score about a few percent lower than the X70 Pro+ which also comes with the same chipset. And interestingly, this was also the case for both the single-core and multi-core tests of Geekbench. To test the GPU performance we used 3DMark Wild Life where the ROG Phone 5s again threw up very good results.
While the benchmark scores of the ROG Phone 5s are good, what really sets it apart from the crowd and establishes its identity as a gaming phone is the fact that it comes with a number of interesting features. For example, the phone comes with not one, but two USB-C charging ports, one of which is side-mounted. This side-mounted port ensures that the phone could be charged without disrupting your gaming session while the phone is in landscape mode.
The phone also comes with an air trigger which offers high sensitivity and new motion control gestures. The air triggers can also be used outside of games to activate actions or apps with a simple squeeze motion while the phone is in portrait mode.
Then there's the X-Mode and Armoury Crate which offer a lot of scope for performance tuning and customization. With the ROG Phone 5s, the X-Mode now allows the user to set a wider variety of performance parameters, from CPU/GPU performance to touch sensitivity settings and display refresh rate.
And wait, did I forget about the cool matrix PMOLED display at the back of the phone? So instead of using a illuminated ROG Logo, the ROG Phone 5s uses this new display which can show customizable graphics for scenarios like incoming calls, loading a game, charging, entering X mode and more. Let's just say it looks pretty cool!
Now the all-important question, should you buy the Asus ROG Phone 5s?
If you're a gamer and can afford the ROG Phone 5s, then there's really no reason why you shouldn't choose this monster gaming phone over everything else in the market. It is not only among the coolest looking phones in the market, but it is also amongst the most powerful phones money can buy, making the ROG Phone 5s an easy choice.
The only reason why you shouldn't buy this phone from Asus is if you aren't a gamer and don't really care about the phone's gaming first features. But if that's not the case, then go ahead and buy the ROG Phone 5s, because it'll be worth every penny you spend on it.