ASUS ZenFone Live review: an interesting idea which fails to click

Taiwanese giant ASUS has a knack for spotting trends and getting ahead of them before anyone else. It launched the ZenFone Selfie in 2015, before selfie-centric smartphones became cool and the ZenFone Max (review) in early 2016, a phone which offered a monstrous battery. Once again, the brand is trying to tap into untapped potential – livestreaming – with the launch of the ASUS ZenFone Live. The phone has just been launched at an affordable price tag of Rs 9,999. We’ve been using the phone for the past week and we found it to be an interesting device. But can it stand out from the intense competition from the likes of the Xiaomi Redmi 4 (review) and Lenovo K6 Power (first impressions)? Well, let’s find out in this review.

Specs at a glance

What’s good

The cornerstone (and the name) of the ASUS ZenFone Live comes from the ‘Live’ aspect of the phone, which ensures that you can start livestreaming in the easiest and seamless way possible. It also enhances one’s face with the beautification levels, which is an important aspect for today’s selfie-obsessed generation. The phone comes with the BeautyLive application, which makes going live on any platform like Facebook, Instagram or YouTube as easy as 1, 2, 3. All you need to do is to connect your social accounts and choose the beauty level as per your liking, and boom, it takes care of it.

Tipping the scales at just 120g, the ZenFone Live is probably one of the lightest smartphones we’ve used in the recent past. In fact, we thought it doesn’t have the battery inserted when we took it out from the retail box for the first time. But that wasn’t the case, as it sports a unibody construction. Sadly, it’s not made out of metal – which might be the reason for its lightweight build – and primarily uses plastic, that features a metallic finish. The device offers a great in-hand feel, thanks to its compact 5-inch display.

The design is fairly standard, though the use of 2.5D glass at the front does enhance its looks. The placement of ports and controls is also what you’d expect, though we do want to highlight the textured volume rocker and power toggle. The finish makes it easier to use them by feel, and the keys also offering good feedback when pressed. Our review unit came in gold, but the ASUS ZenFone Live can also be purchased in black.

ASUS ZenFone Live design gallery

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To offer a better livestreaming experience, the device also features two MEMS microphones to reduce noise so that your voice can be clearly heard by the audience. The ZenFone Live offers loud sound output with its five-magnet speaker. It also promises superior audio quality via earphones with the support for DTS Headphone: X, which lets you tweak the equaliser settings as per your liking.

What’s not so good

While we mentioned about the livestreaming bit, it’s slightly odd that we had to place the camera in this section. The ASUS ZenFone Live sports a standard combination of 13- and 5-megapixel shooters. The rear camera also gets help from the LED flash for shooting in low light.

In terms of the camera viewfinder, the interface is similar to previous ASUS offerings. You get a lot of options and modes to chose from, and it also prompts relevant modes as per the ambient conditions. Quality-wise, while the pictures capture vibrant colours, the sharpness is average at best. You can easily notice soft edges around the subject. HDR processing, while takes some time to process, is quite effective though. The low-light images are nothing to write home about either, but the dedicated low-light mode does help in providing more light, albeit at a lower 2MP resolution – which also means noticeable grains. Talking about selfies, they show softness on the face and don’t seem impressive, which is strange considering the phone’s USP is livestreaming. Here are a few camera samples taken from the ASUS ZenFone Live.

ASUS ZenFone Live camera samples

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While we liked the compact size of the display panel, the IPS screen isn’t the best out there. Not just because of its HD resolution, which suggests that its pixel density isn’t really a match for the 1080p screens available in its segment, but also because the colours seem to lack punch. The brightness levels are up to the mark, but the same can’t be said about the viewing angles. 

While ASUS has smartphones such as the ZenFone AR (first impressions) running Android 7.0 Nougat, the ZenFone Live ships with the older iteration of Google’s mobile OS, i.e., v6.0 Marshmallow. Not that it matters, since its proprietary ZenUI skin features a custom interface, which is starkly different from stock Android. While we like some of the features of the custom layer, it’s certainly not the most user-friendly UI. Add to it the fact that it comes laden with a lot of bloatware. 

The ZenFone Live also runs on a notably old processor… the Snapdragon 400, which was released back in 2013. The quad-core chipset is mated to 2GB of RAM, which is just about average. The phone underwhelms not just in the spec sheet, but in real-life performance as well. There are notable delays while navigation between screens or opening apps. Switching between different apps also shows a trace of lag, and gaming experience is okayish at best. While casual titles like Temple Run 2 are handled fine by the hardware, it struggles even while opening the 3D-heavy Injustice 2, let alone playing it without frames being dropped.

Out of the 16GB memory onboard, the Live offers roughly 9.6GB to the end user. You can extend it further with a microSD card, although you’d need to forgo the dual-SIM functionality.

The ASUS ZenFone Live sips juice from a 2,650mAh battery. In day-to-day usage, it barely manages to last a full working day. Granted, we might be power users, but even with judicious use – it’s hard to say that it will be able to last through the entire 24 hours. On the plus side though, the device does have numerous battery-saving modes to come to the rescue, whenever needed. In our battery loop test, the mobile fared below average, as it ran an HD video non-stop for just eight hours and 20 minutes. We also missed the quick charge support, considering it takes around three hours to charge the phone fully with the bundled adapter.

Another glaring omission in the ZenFone Live is the fingerprint scanner, which is available on devices half its price nowadays.

Verdict

As we mentioned in our introduction, it’s worth applauding ASUS’ foresight of finding new categories and differentiating itself from the competition. However, what’s important for any of these niche-focussed smartphones is that they should not only focus on their distinct USP, but also offer a package that’s compelling in other departments. But if you have followed our review, then it’s evident that the ASUS ZenFone Live falters on this aspect. Adding to its woes are a slew of others impressive offerings available under Rs 10,000. If you’re looking for a compact option, then you can choose between the Xiaomi Redmi 4 or the Lenovo K6 Power, both of which deliver a wholesome experience. In case you don’t mind phablets, then another device from Xiaomi’s stable makes to our recommendation list – the Redmi Note 4 (review).

In short, the ZenFone Live is surely an interesting idea – one that probably paves the way for the future, where people would like to livestream anything and everything over different platforms for different intents and purposes. But if you go beyond that, the ZenFone Live fails to impress.

Editor’s rating: 3 / 5

Pros

• Lightweight build
• Seamless livestreaming with beautification modes 

Cons

• Poor camera quality
• Average performance
• Sub-par battery life

Photos by Raj Rout