Asus is at it again with their flagship gaming phone, the ROG Phone 6 series. This year, they’ve made some upgrades both in design and hardware, as expected, plus a slew of complementary accessories right off the bat.
Is it time to upgrade to a new gaming phone? Let’s find out in our full review of the new ASUS ROG Phone 6 Pro.
Table of Contents
Design and Construction
If you’re familiar with the ROG phones in the past, you would agree that it’s a massive phone. It’s big and chunky, a bit on the heavier side at 229 grams, and thicker than your usual smartphone at 10.3mm.
This is primarily due to the unique cooling system inside as well as that humungous 6,000mAh battery that it is packing. ASUS does not seem to bother to change that profile since the ROG Phone 3, or thereabouts.
Where Asus made the distinction for the ROG Phone 6 Pro, in terms of design, is at the back. It’s looking better and with the addition of a secondary LED display that adds a bit of flair and wow factor intended to impress onlookers while you’re playing. That 2-inch OLED display can project 6 customizable displays while the other smaller display shows you alerts for SMS or calls when the phone is facing down.
Frankly, we liked the design, especially that white glossy variant with all the lines, cut-outs and etchings as well as the splash of colors from the OLED display. Reminds you of a gaming PC rig with clean lines, polygonal shapes, and sharp corners all adorned with tons of RGB lights inside.
It’s a stark contrast to the flat, boring look up at the front with the thick bezels intentionally done to avoid accidental touches. Then, there’s the symmetrical dual speakers that fire forward for a more balanced stereo sound effects with a 3.5mm port for the audio jack that we rarely see these days.
It still got the two USB Type-C ports (one at the bottom and one at the side), just like the previous generations, to keep the cables tangle-free when you’re charging while using the phone for gaming.
Another fairly unique feature of the phone is the AirTrigger 6 which has been updated. The ultrasonic sensors support several gestures, including new features such as Dual Action, Press and Lift, and Gyroscope Aiming.
The power button is positioned exactly in the middle of the right side so that when you attach the AeroActive Cooler 6, it will fit snugly without touching the button.
Asus also introduced IPX4 rating on the ROG Phone 6 Pro for splash resistance, a slight upgrade from the previous ROG phones that did not have any. Also present is the fingerprint sensor which is placed below the display.
Our review unit has dual-SIM support with 5G connectivity but no microSD card slot for storage expansion. We reckon 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage should be more than enough.
The ROG Phone 6 comes with a slew of accessories and gaming peripherals. We covered that part in our original unboxing video here.
Display
If you’re coming from the ROG Phone 5 Pro, there seems to be nothing new on the ROG Phone 6 Pro in the display department. It’ still has the same 6.78-inch AMOLED screen; the same 1080×2448 pixels screen resolution, HDR10+ support and Corning Gorillas Glass Victus protection.
Where the ROG Phone 6 Pro got an upgrade is the refresh rate which has been amped to 165Hz. It’s not that significant compared to the previous 144Hz refresh rate but still worth noting.
You can set the dynamic refresh rate from 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz and 165Hz depending on the need of the game you’re playing. Some of the games we tried such as Asphalt 9 and Apex Mobile played really well and buttery smooth, thanks to that 165Hz refresh rate and 720Hz touch-sampling rate.
Nevertheless, we liked the huge AMOLED display for its brightness and crisp images (set to peak at 1200 nits). The 2448 x 1080 pixel screen resolution is pretty standard and not as dense as other flagships released this year but it’s just enough even for the most intensive mobile games available.
Remember the display at the back? It’s called the ROG Vision. This second display has full color and sets to 6 standard scenarios but you can also customize it.
It’s a cool addition to that nice design at the back. We even tried to add a customized YugaTech logo in there and works like a charm.
Camera and Multimedia
ROG phones aren’t known for their great cameras and we were hoping the ROG Phone 6 Pro can change all that. First off, they used a 50MP Sony IMX 766 sensor for the primary camera which was also used in the Nothing Phone (1) and the OnePlus Nord 2T.
They added a second 13MP ultra-wide lens and a 3rd 5MP macro lens.
Here are some sample photos taken with the main camera and the ultrawide lens.
When shots are taken in bright well-lit areas, the photos looked really good, sharp and colors are vivid. The 50MP Sony IMX766 does a good job here although we cannot say the same for the secondary camera, especially in high contrast scenarios where it found it hard to handle the bright and dark areas together.
The front camera has 12MP sensor with 27.5mm equivalent focal length in 35mm film camera.
On paper, it feels that the ROG Phone 5 Pro with it’s 64MP/13MP/5MP + 24MP would be better compared to the 50MP/13MP/5MP + 12MP of the ROG Phone 6 Pro but that’s just on paper as megapixels aren’t a true indicator of a better camera.
Video recording capabilities are impressive though — 8K at 24fps, 4K at 30/60fps, 1080p at 30/60/120/240fps, and slow motion capture in 4K at 120 fps; 1080p at 240/120 fps; 720p at 480 fps.
Where the ROG Phone 6 Pro shined the brightest is in the audio department. Those symmetrical dual front-facing speakers come with Dirac HD Sound and Cirrus Logic amplifier. They blast out one of the loudest and most concentrated stereo sound in a smartphone we’ve ever tried.
OS, Apps and UI
Running on the ROG Phone 6 Pro is Android 12 with a hint of Zen UI and ROG UI combined on top. It feels close to Android’s vanilla UI but some sections are heavily customized.
There’s an Edge tool that let’s you access apps you can launch quickly and they will appear in a floating window.
What makes it different is when you switch to the X Mode which is a dedicated space for gaming and where you control all aspects of the phone’s behavior while you’re in the middle of a game.
There’s also the Game Genie that lets you control the performance of the phone — whether you want the highest performance or extend battery life.
This is where the ROG Phone really shines the most. A lot of time and effort have been given to allow a more customized experience to the user and we give props to Asus for doing so.
Benchmark and Performance
Powering the ROG Phone 6 Pro is the latest Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chipset with Adreno 730 GPU. Pretty similar to the previous-gen SD8 Gen 1 but with 2MB more L3 cache, 7% higher CPU clock speed (3200 vs 3000 MHz), and higher GPU frequency (about 10%).
Synthetic benchmarks would show the increase in performance and this unit got over a million points in Antutu.
Geekbench 5.4: 1,318 (Single-core Score), 4,110 (Multi-core Score)
PCMark Work 3.0: 16,555
Antutu Benchmark 9.4: 1,012,102
This is paired with a whopping 18GB of LPDD5 RAM. Like the ROG 5s Pro and ROG 5 Ultimate, that’s one of the biggest RAM allocations we’ve ever seen in any smartphone these days.
The AeroActive Cooler 5 has also been redesigned and now looks more bad-ass. It now has 4 physical buttons, an integrated Thermoelectric AI Cooling System and unbound X Mode+ performance boost.
Connectivity and Battery Life
The device has all the connectivity options we’d expect — NFC, dual-SIM 5G, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, and an integrated WiFi 6e.
The dual-band WiFi feature is really useful for gaming and it’s still present in the new ROG Phone 6 Pro. We’ve seen it in previous models as well. It basically allows you to connect to 2 different WiFi access points at the same time so if one connection drops, the phone automatically switches to the other AP with almost negligible impact to the game you’re playing.
As with the previous ROG phones, the ROG Phone 6 Pro also comes with a 6,000mAh battery with a 65W fast charging capability and support for Quick Charge 5.0 and PD Charging. There’s also reverse charging at 10W power.
Battery life is actually quite impressive on this one. We tried playing a single Rank game of Mobile Legends for about 16 minutes and we only used about 4% of the battery. Our PC Mark Battery test also showed 13 hours, 50 minutes at 50% brightness, zero volume and in airplane mode.
The 65W charger can juice up the phone to full capacity in under 45 minutes.
There’s a nice feature here that’s called Bypass charging where the phone is powered directly by the charger first instead of the battery. This bypass helps reduce heat build-up when playing and charging at the same time.
Conclusion
Time and again, Asus continues to deliver a great gaming phone experience with the ROG Phone series and the ROG 6 is a good testament to that. Top notch performance, maxed out specs and over-the-top attention to detail in terms of gaming. No wonder the ROG Phone attracts a lot of interest and takes the headlines.
But, the million dollar (or, rather the Php65k) question — is the ROG Phone 6 Pro worth the upgrade? If you’re coming from the ROG 5 series, there is very little reason to do so. The upgrades are incremental at best and your year-old ROG phone would still do just as good.
However, as a stand-alone gaming phone, we highly recommend ROG Phone 6 Pro as the best gaming-centric smartphone you can get in the market today. Asus has proven that time and again, it can deliver on its promise of a gaming phone that performs well, is designed intuitively, and can deliver on the wow factor in this category.
The ROG Phone 6 Pro is now available in stores with a suggested retail price of PHP 64,995 for the 18GB RAM and 512GB storage.
The ROG Phone 6 with 12GB + 256GB is priced at PHP 47,995, while the 16GB + 512GB configuration sells for PHP 54,995.
Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro specs:
6.78-inch FHD+ (2448 x 1080 pixels) Samsung E4 AMOLED display
165Hz refresh rate, 720Hz touch sampling rate, 1ms response time
ROG Vision secondary display (ROG Phone 6 Pro)
Corning Gorilla Glass Victus
Qualcomm Snapdragoon 8+ Gen1 5G SoC
Adreno 730 GPU
18GB LPDDR5 RAM
512GB UFS 3.1 internal storage
Triple-rear cameras:
• 50MP Sony IMX766 main
• 13MP ultrawide
• 5MP macro
12MP Sony IMX663 front camera
Dual-SIM
5G, 4G LTE
WiFi 6e
Bluetooth 5.2
NFC
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS
Dual front-facing stereo speakers w/ Cirrus Logic amplifiers
Dual USB-C
3.5mm headphone jack
IPX4 splash resistance
GameCool6 Cooling system w/ AeroActive Cooler 6
Fingerprint scanner (in-display)
Android 12 with ROG UI
6,000mAh Li-Po battery w/ 65W HyperCharge
173 x 77 x 10.3 mm (dimensions)
239 grams (weight)
