When recommending a gaming smartphone, the ASUS ROG Phone would always be on the top list. I’m sure not everyone would want to spend RM 3.5k just for gaming while the main function still is a smartphone. The ASUS ROG Phone 6 could potentially offer the best of both worlds.

ASUS ROG Phone 6 Specifications

Design

ASUS has made two versions of the ASUS ROG Phone 6, the Pro version and the vanilla which I’ll be reviewing today. Offered in two color options; Phantom Black and Storm White.

To start, you need to be aware that the ROG Phone 6 is one solid-packed design with a huge 6.78-inch display and weighs 239 grams. Implemented serious thermal solutions on the ROG Phone 6 like Boron Nitride thermal compound, Peltier cooling element, and a large vapor chamber with graphite sheet to reduce thermal throttling to sustain higher performance.

It gets the same RGB lighting on its back cover and the “Dare to Play” tagline logo is also RGB-fied but there’s no effect option. The camera bump now is slightly bigger compared to the ROG Phone 5.

There are two USB C charging ports, one at the bottom alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack and the side for the new AeroActive Cooler 6. There are no more pogo pins, so no missing rubber cover.

Display & Speaker

The 6.78-inch AMOLED is custom-made by Samsung that offers a dynamic 165Hz refresh and a responsive 720Hz touch-sampling rate. The 10-bits panel is bright, and punchy in color with great contrast. It’s also HDR10+, Delta-E<1, and protected with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. The ASUS ROG Phone 6 is also Widevine L1 certified with HDR support.

Some obvious top and bottom bezel sizes help palm rejection when gaming in landscape mode while having some space to house a 12MP SONY IMX663 front camera. The display also features an optical in-display fingerprint scanner, it is pretty responsive and accurate.

Paired with dual forward-facing speakers that can blast loud and concentrated stereo sound. It’s not only great for gaming as well for movie bingeing. If you want to hook up to your earphone or True Wireless Stereo earphone, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack and supports high-resolution sound codecs; Snapdragon Sound, aptX Adaptive, and aptX Lossless (aptX LL)

Performance

ASUS ROG Phone 6 is one of the first devices to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. Come with a base configuration of 12GB of LPDDR5 memory and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Great to know that ASUS ditched the 128GB storage option since it doesn’t have any microSD card slot for storage expansion. This makes perfect sense for ASUS to market this device for gaming and everyday use smartphones.

This new chip performs 7% to 10% better in CPU and GPU comparing the already powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 while consuming lesser power, producing lesser heat and less throttling which brings higher sustained performance and better battery life.

I played Genshin Impact and Asphalt 9 for about an hour with an average of 58 to 60 fps, it does get slightly warmer but not to the extent of being uncomfortable to hold. Consider getting the AeroActive Cooler 6 if you are spending more time gaming with the ROG Phone 6.

Here are the synthetic benchmark test result

Gaming Experience

As a gaming phone, of course, it comes with all the gaming features and accessories to enhance the experience. The haptic motor is responsive and solid, plus the AirTrigger adds more control to the gameplay without the need to purchase additional accessories. The ultrasonic pressure-sensitive button can recognize up to 9 different gestures for different game controls.

The AeroActive Cooler 6 features a thermoelectric AI cooling for active temperature control, together with four more physical gaming buttons. According to ASUS, the AAC6 can bring down up to 25-degree Celsius surface temperature.

You can go with extra mile with the ROG Kunai 3 GamePad and turn your ROG Phone 6 into a console-grade device.

Camera

One of the head turners for the ROG Phone 6 would be the improved camera which is something that gaming phones lack focus on. For gaming phones to be versatile like any other everyday smartphone, they need to be good or at least decent in all aspects including in the camera department.

The ASUS ROG Phone 6 is equipped with a more solid camera sensor, the 50-megapixels SONY IMX766. Work along with an 8-megapixels ultrawide camera and a 5-megapixels macro camera.

Photos that are taken from the primary camera are not that heavily sharpened or have too much in-camera processing. This is great for people like myself to have more room to tweak the photo to what I like before sharing it on social media.

The ultrawide can capture a good amount of details with a slightly softer side and it’s more apparent in night mode.

Here are some photos taken with the ASUS ROG Phone 6

It’s not winning any awards but it’s can shoot pretty solid photos and you won’t be disappointed.

More high-resolution photos can be viewed on GoogleDrive.

Battery Life

Battery life is one of the reasons I popped my SIM card into the ASUS ROG Phone 6. The big 6,000 mAh capacity battery can easily last me 2 days of use with around 7 to 8 hours of screen-on-time.

ASUS is one of the companies that took battery health seriously. Long gaming sessions would demand more rounds of charging to keep playing. ASUS introduced a charging limit feature that enables passthrough charging once the battery level reaches a certain limit (80%, 85%, or 90%) Meaning the battery will stop drawing power directly from the charger and instead will be powered by the charger directly. This feature also reduces overall heat generation which in turn extends the mainboard and battery lifespan.

Where to buy

• Amazon
• Lazada Malaysia
• Shopee Malaysia

I swapped my trusty Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G for the ASUS ROG Phone 6 and here’s my experience;