Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe review

The Asus Zenfone 3 release date is imminent after launching in countries like India first on August 17. That technically makes it the first phone with a Snapdragon 821 processor. It's combined with another specs rarity: 6GB of RAM. Here's how it performs so far.

Zenfone 3 Deluxe represents a major upgrade to Asus' spelling-challenged smartphone series with a component design and specs you won't find on any other Android today.

The phone is making a name for itself with 6GB of RAM. All but one (theOnePlus 3) of the best phones in 2016 so far top out at just 4GB of RAM. You should be able to open more apps on its 5.7-inch display without slowdown.

Yes, the ZTE Axon 7 has a 6GB of RAM variant, but it wasn't shown off at its Beijing launch event next to its still-very-promising 4GB version. I could test theAsus Zenfone 3 at Computex 2016.

6GB of RAM and ready to go

It also debuts the Snapdragon 821 processor, starts with 64GB of internal storage (going up to 256GB) and includes a 23MP camera, all of which are impressive numbers on paper. It'll just miss Android Nougat, but does runAndroid 6.0 Marshmallow. Note: the Snapdragon 820 will still be around for a cheaper price.

But do these Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe specs compute into anything meaningful? The Taiwanese release date is set for the end of July, while the US release date isn't for several weeks, according to Asus. So I went hands on with the forthcoming phone while in Taipei, Taiwan to determine more in the meantime.

Design

The Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe is being touted as the world's first full-metal unibody phone with an invisible antenna design, and that's technically true.

It beats Apple's iPhone 7, rumored to be anti-antenna lines too, by three months, and the new LG G5 has a gap meant for modular add-ons; it isn't really unibody. Samsung Galaxy S7 is made of glass.

That leaves the Zenfone 3 Deluxe to steal some thunder with a sleek look of its own. I like the full-metal body and the seamless unibody design, and the invisible antenna lines are a nice perk.

What's more important to me than any of that, though, is the fact that the phone does away with the plastic that made last year's Zenfone 2 design downright unlikable. I dug the specs and the software customization, but it felt cheap. Like, not even good plastic. This new design begins to right that wrong.

It measures 156.4 x 77.4 x 7.5 mm, which doesn't make it as thin as the Nexus 6P (7.3mm thin), but it's close and, when testing it, it felt better than the thicker, non-Deluxe Zenfone 3 (7.7mm thin).

The power button and volume rocker are now on the right side (instead on of the back), but there's an oddly shaped rectangular fingerprint sensor on back. You don't actually press it in. There's still capacitive soft buttons for home, back and recent on the front, going against the trend of using purely on-screen buttons. I tend to like my buttons always being at the ready like this and not sometimes vanishing at the worst possible moments.

A slight camera bump and top-mounted headphone jack

I had a big problem with Zenfone 2's top-mounted power button, which I described as "squishy." I'm happy to report than while the Zenfone 3 Deluxe side-mounted buttons feel a bit shallow, they're at least clicky. This is all the more important now because the Deluxe camera can be launched by hitting the volume down button twice when the phone is asleep.

Like a lot of phones in 2016, it pivots to USB Type-C, sticks with one speaker (but of course promises stellar audio, according to the company's marketing efforts) and comes in three colors: Titanium Gray, Glacier Silver and Sand Gold.

Display

Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe has a spacious 5.7-inch screen that competes with theSamsung Galaxy Note 5 in size. Even more relevant, I fully expect the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 to be the same size, too.

Its large Super AMOLED panel takes on a 79% screen-to-body ratio. That means less bezel on the sides and more screen space to work with. The capacitive buttons on the bottom do eat into significant screen space.

A better screen, but still 1080p

Under the Computex lighting, it also appears to be brighter, fixing be biggest issue I had with the Zenfone 2. Taking last year's phone outside snap photos was a headache due to its dull screen; I couldn't see what I was shooting and just hoping the photos turned out okay (they didn't, last year's camera was also mediocre).

I'll have to test it outdoors in a full Zenfone 3 review soon, but the brightness seems to have been ratchet up thanks to the new AMOLED display.

Clearly still a prototype, as you'll read I was reminded of on the next page

What remains, though, is the same is 1080p resolution. You won't find a pixel-dense quad HD (aka 2K) panel like the Android rivals that Asus is trying its best to mimic. That new Snapdragon 821 processor sports 4K displays, but this one is far from that spec.

I'm okay with Full HD 1080p displays on phones of this size, but the company does appear to be working on an Asus VR headset.

As I experienced with the Huawei VR headset, 1080p can be problematic when the screen is sitting two inches from your face.

The Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe specs, not the screen, are what really pop. On paper, it matches and exceeds almost all of the phones we've tested - again, on paper.

Its 6GB of RAM is supposed to give you more breathing room to open apps and multitask without slowdown. Whether or not that happens is going to depend on how efficient it is at running the Asus-themed Android 6.0 Marshmallowoperating system and the Android Nougat update, whenever that comes about.

The Zenfone 3 is also future-proofed with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor. It's a step up from every major Android phone right now (LG G5, HTC 10 and the US version of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge).

Running a quick GeekBench 3 benchmark test at Computex while it had the older Snapdragon 820 chip *(and before getting shooed away and told this is just a prototype), the phone was able to hit a multi-core score of 5,420. That beats the US Samsung Galaxy S7 (5,398) score I logged when it first came out.

Snuck this one in

That's still slower than the international Galaxy S7 (6,500) that is equipped with Samsung's Exynos processor, but there's a chance Asus can make those final numbers better by the time the Zenfone 3 Deluxe launches, especially with theSnapdragon 821 onboard now.

I should note that the performance of the other new Zenfones won't be better. Both the Zenfone 3 and massively sized Zenfone 3 Ultra have Snapdragon 600 series CPUs.

Camera

Asus is paying more attention to the camera with its two larger Zenfone 3 phones.

It cranks up the megapixels with a 23MP Sony IMX318 sensor for a camera that it dubs "PixelMaster 3.0." Sounds more like a bad 90s screen name for a pompous camera guru.

That translates to a f/2.0 lens that takes 0.03 seconds to autofocus. There's optical image stabilization onboard for shaky hands and a dual tone LED flash for night shots.

Don't let the high megapixel count fool you. The Samsung Galaxy S7 camera is the best in the biz right now and it's only 12MP. It's all about the quality of the sensor and post-processing, especially when it comes to low-light photos.

The Zenfone 3 can surely top the average murky-looking photos out of theZenfone 2, and I can't wait to see if it belongs in the 2016 class of really great Android phone cameras that beat the iPhone. I'll be sure to give it a full photo test outside of Computex soon.

Battery life

It'll be interesting to see how the better specs of the Zenfone 3 affect the battery life when we get this phone in for a full review.

USB Type-C with QuickCharge 3.0

Right now, we know that the battery capacity is 3,000mAh and utilizes Quick Charge 3.0 for faster recharging.

Like megapixels, the battery life number can be deceiving, so it'll take a few days of testing to see whether or not it meets the needs of power users over a full day's time.

It doesn't match the 4,600mAh battery of the 6.8-inch Asus Zenfone 3 Ultra, or have its reverse charging feature to power your other accessories with juice, but that phone is just a ridiculous monster that not everyone can manage. Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe the faster performing, more reasonably sized variant.

Early verdict

The Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe is the grown up version of the cheap Zenfone 2 I reviewed and easily broke a year ago. It's now ready to play with the adults at the best Android phones table occupied by Samsung, LG and HTC.

It feels good in the hand, unlike the Zenfone 2

It's a complete turnaround on the design, with an antenna-less full metal unibody, better feeling buttons and good bezel to screen ratio. The 5.7-inch AMOLED display looks bright, at least at Computex indoors.

There's still a lot to test when it comes to the Zenfone 3. Do the Snapdragon 821 and 6GB of RAm really make a difference? Does this help or hurt its battery life? And how do the display brightness and camera hold up outside?

All of your burning Zenfone 3 questions will be answered closer to the phone launch date, when the hardware is finalized and testing it with Geekbeck 3 benchmarks won't get you shooed away from the Asus booth.

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Voyo VBook V3 review

The laptop market has now settled down with only two main 2-in-1 designs surviving. There's the flip-to-transform model, popularised by Lenovo and its Yoga family, and the more traditional keyboard detachable range with theMicrosoft Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book being probably the two best examples in this arena.

That brings us to the Voyo VBook V3, a convertible that looks a lot like the original Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga with its orange colour scheme. We're fortunate enough to have the Yoga 2 to compare and it's evident that the VBook V3 has borrowed – nah, copied – the best bits from Lenovo's three-year-old stunner (see the pair together in the two images below).

The Voyo VBook V3 was provided to us by Geekbuying where it is on sale for £194 (about $250, AU$325) at the time of writing. This is the Wi-Fi version and a 4G variant is also available for £238 (about $310, AU$400).

(These costs are exclusive of any taxes that may be levied by HMRC or the courier companies on behalf of it. Want to buy tech from online Chinese retailers? Read this first.)

The 4G version covers FDD-LTE800/850/900/1800/2100/2600MHz and other than the orange colour, there is also a grey model.

The VBook V3 comes with a thin manual that you won't use much as well as a rechargeable active stylus pen. Unfortunately, the accompanying leaflet that describes how it works was in Chinese with no English translation.

The power adaptor is a reasonably small 36W (3A, 12V) model for which you will need a converter. There's much to love about the finish of the Voyo V3 – its soft rubbery texture emulates that of the Lenovo Yoga 2 and its heft (the device weighs 1.63kg) adds to its solid feel. You wouldn't guess that it comes from a relatively unknown brand.

On one side of the V3 you've got a USB 3.0 port, HDMI, and a SIM card reader and on the other side there is a volume button, a toggle key that disables the keyboard and trackpad in tablet mode, the power button, a microSD card slot, the audio jack and a USB 2.0 port.

The keyboard and touchpad were superior to anything we have tried at this price point – remember, this is a sub-£200 laptop. The former was springy, with good feedback and the keys didn't act like scrabble tiles. Long typing sessions are perfectly possible on a keyboard of this quality.

The touchpad is a Dr-Jekyll-and-Mr-Hyde peripheral. It's great when it comes to moving the cursor around thanks to a very large surface area. The downside is it lacks a palm detection mechanism – so the cursor moves as soon as your palm brushes the touchpad surface – and since it doesn't have mechanical buttons, registering physical clicks proved to be a tad more problematic than on other laptops.

The screen is a full HD IPS 10-point touchscreen model. As such you can expect it to display the significant glare commonly associated with anything that has a glossy glass layer overlaid on top. Even on maximum brightness, the colours appeared subdued but not washed out.

That said, 13.3-inch is, in our opinion, the best size for using a desktop operating system at full HD. Any bigger and you lose on mobility, and anything smaller requires compromises when it comes to the input peripherals.

As mentioned, our sample came with an active pen, one that is made of metal with a microUSB port at the top for charging, and coloured lights to indicate whether it is low on battery (turns red) or good to go (turns blue). We briefly used it with Microsoft Paint and found it to be fairly accurate. It felt pretty solid and it is a shame that Voyo didn't provide a slot on the laptop – like the Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga X1 – to store the stylus. That would have helped avoid any danger of losing the thing.

Voyo chose to use one of the cheapest laptop processors available from Intel, the ubiquitous Cherry Trail-based x5-Z8300, a quad-core model that offers marginal performance gains over the previous generation (Z3735F) but with significant improvements to the graphics subsystem.

Compared to its predecessor, this model has a lower TDP and yet boasts a higher clock speed with support for 4K and 4GB of RAM, none of which are listed on Intel's website.

Other than 4GB of DDR RAM, there's 64GB of on-board storage – this is eMMC rather than an M2 model, a clear cost-cutting option but a necessary one to keep the bill of materials under control.

There's also a pair of fairly decent speakers (bearing in mind the price), two 2-megapixel cameras, plus Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11n Wi-Fi and a 10,000mAh battery that Voyo claims can power the laptop for up to eight hours. In real life, expect it to be around four hours based on our short hands-on.

Performance was adequate, but limited by the processor used as we expected. The touchscreen display performed admirably, proving responsive during our interactions.

Note that the device is completely silent due to the lack of moving parts. However, it also lacks active cooling, and this means that the Voyo VBook V3 became hot when used over long periods.

Early verdict

Voyo is quietly growing a reputation for building products that are relatively cheap and are different (in a positive way) from the countless competitors on the market. Our encounter with the Voyo V3 Mini left a good impression and the VBook V3 follows that trend.

That said, sadly our verdict for the VBook V3 follows in the footsteps of its tethered brother in one negative respect – Voyo really needs to up the ante when it comes to the software installation. Everyone now expects a classic Windows 10 installation routine, and anything else will be met with suspicion, not only by reviewers like us but also by the general public.

Fortunately, this time around, Voyo has put the necessary OS and driver downloads on its website for anyone looking to refresh the installed operating system (although sadly, the instructions are in Chinese!).

Looking at the rest of the market, there's nothing that comes close at this price. A full HD convertible will cost you at least £500 albeit with a far better processor and far more RAM. What that also buys you, though, is peace of mind, should you opt for a UK-based retailer.

However, there are new products on the horizon (like the HP Stream 14) that promise to introduce similar functionality with a competitive price tag, and most importantly with a recognised badge slapped on them.

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Workstation Specialists WS-M151 review

The mobile workstation market has evolved significantly over the last decade, as computer parts have become more commoditised and consumer components turned out to be as powerful and feature-laden as their professional counterparts.

This explains why the likes of SGI, DEC and Sun Microsystems faltered and eventually disappeared completely. It also explains recent developments in this market: unless you are Lenovo, Dell or HP, there's next to no chance that you can develop a true mobile workstation from scratch.

Instead, what is becoming increasingly common is that one base unit (commonly known as the chassis) is given a dual personality. A gaming laptop can be transformed into a workstation simply by swapping the graphics subsystem and beefing up the support and after-sales.

This is what MSI has successfully done; others, such as Schenker, Overclockers, Novatech, Scan and PC Specialist have used products from a massive Taiwanese laptop vendor called Clevo. In the US, Sager, AVADirect and Cyberpower are some of the better-known companies that use Clevo's kit.

Workstation Specialists, whose WS-M151 workstation we're checking out today, doesn't even try to hide the fact that it doesn't actually build the workstation.

You will even find the Clevo branding on the base of the laptop, together with the model number (P751DM) which corresponds to the XMG U506, a model from one competitor.

Indeed, there is no Workstation Specialists logo on the top of this laptop, only a small sticker on the palm rest.

The model (WS-M151) that was sent to us costs a cool £2,152 including VAT and delivery which is about the same price as the PC Specialist Octane II Pro, a notebook which sports a 17.3-inch display.

This offering is configured with a 15.6-inch full HD screen (a 4K model is available), a Core i7-6700K processor (no Xeon options are offered), 32GB of RAM (maximum is 64GB), a 512GB Samsung SM961 PCIe NVMe SSD, a 1TB HGST hard disk drive (7200RPM, 32MB cache) and an Nvidia Quadro M3000M graphics card with 4GB GDDR5, all handled by Windows 7 Pro (with a free upgrade path to Windows 10 Pro).

The SSD sported impressive numbers with rated read/write speeds of 3.2 and 1.7GBps respectively. Workstation Specialists judiciously bundled a three-year warranty (on parts and labour) with next business day engineer response.

Sadly, it is a return-to-base warranty which is standard with non-tier-1 workstation vendors and requires you to ship back the laptop. Not ideal when you are on a tight deadline and require your work machine ASAP.

This is probably the only weak point, and the obvious penalty for not being a global company with a massive tech support team. But then again, having such a workforce costs money which explains why buying a workstation from a tier-1 vendor costs more for the same configuration.

As with all Clevo models we've reviewed in the past, this one is as underwhelming as it can be. It boasts a bland chassis with a soft rubber finish and a power supply unit that weighs a ton – but that is both expected and preferred.

The massive PSU is justified by the power requirements of the GPU and the CPU, while the rubber finish suits a professional environment: subdued and self-effacing.

The constantly spinning fan underlines the fact that the device is powered by a desktop processor. The K in the 6700K model number means that this is an unlocked CPU that is clocked at 4GHz with a tiny 200MHz turbo boost.

Such high CPU speeds – especially with four cores, even on a 14nm manufacturing process – translate into a rather high TDP (91W). This explains why the fans spin so loudly even when at rest and why the keyboard and the base of the workstation were relatively warm.

The rest of the specification sheet includes: 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, one Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.0 ports, one USB 3.1/Thunderbolt 3 one, a card reader, and at the back, two massive air vents, two full-sized DisplayPort outputs and an HDMI 2.0 port.

It's clear that this laptop was designed first and foremost for the gaming community: the typography on the keys, the glowing lights at the front, the green-coloured strip at the top of the keyboard, plus the fact that it has a backlit keyboard with the WASD keys highlighted (and customisable keys).

Not necessarily a bad thing, more of a heads-up as to why Workstation Specialists opted for that particular design. The keyboard offers nice feedback, perhaps a bit too soft to our tastes but it's very usable.

The touchpad had a bit more friction compared to, say, the XPS 13 from Dell. It has proper large physical buttons with a fingerprint reader stuck in the middle. The matt IPS display is superb with well-rendered, vibrant colours, and it's nice and sharp. Note that there is no optical drive and no option to add one internally.

As for battery life, your mileage will vary but place this machine under a heavy load (a rendering session followed by some gaming) and you will likely drain the laptop's juice in just over an hour, even with a massive 8-cell, 82Whr battery.

There's also a pair of Onkyo-powered speakers and a full HD front-facing camera. The laptop is certified for running Solidworks, Autodesk applications and Siemens' Solid Edge.

As expected, the WS-M151 performed spectacularly well: it scored 7.8 out of 8 on Windows' own System Index, a staggering 4,294 and 13,760 points on Geekbench's single and multicore benchmarks, and 2,005 and 7,217 on CPU-Z's single and multi-thread CPU benchmark.

Benchmarks on Cinebench R15 were even more impressive with an OpenGL score of 141.6 fps and the CPU score hitting 763 cb, the highest we've ever seen.

Early verdict

The Workstation Specialists WS-M151 suffers from the same shortcomings as the PC Specialist Octane II Pro.

The lack of softer features like MIL-STD certification, onsite warranties and colour calibration technology might see bigger corporations balking at the prospect of buying a non-tier-1 workstation.

For others though, this laptop makes a compelling option as long as you can live with the fact that you may be in a bit of a pickle if your laptop gives up the ghost during an urgent assignment.

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