ASUS is on a roll with their highly successful ZenFone line of smartphones. They aren’t stopping any time soon, with more ZenFones lined up. At the ZenFestival event last week, ASUS officially announced the availability of the ZenFone Selfie, as well as two new additions to the ZenFone series, the ZenFone 2 Laser and ZenFone Go.
I have previously reviewed the ZenFone Selfie, the current flagship smartphone, which has already been available since 26th September. It’s a really capable Android smartphone, and truly made for selfies with its impressive 13 MP front-facing camera.
The newly announced ZenFones are surely going to confuse many people, and one wonders why ASUS couldn’t name their smartphones better. To give some clarity, the new ZenFone 2 Laser is different, but not necessarily better than the original ZenFone 2. The ZenFone 2 Laser has a new laser auto-focus system, which is certainly very nice, but it has a lower resolution display compared with the original ZenFone 2. The ZenFone 2 Laser also switches to Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, compared with the Intel Atom processor found in the original ZenFone 2.
The ZenFone Go is a more budget friendly smartphone, this time sporting a MediaTek processor.
If you’re looking for an Android phablet, either one of the 6-inch (pictured above) or 5.5-inch (pictured below) ZenFone 2 Laser should appeal to you. These two variants share many similarities, such as 13 MP rear camera, 5 MP front-facing camera, 2 GB of RAM, 1280 x 720 resolution IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4, dual micro-SIM, MicroSD expansion up to 128 GB, and 3000 mAh battery capacity. They differ in processor, the 5.5-inch version packing a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 Processor while the 6-inch version sporting a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 Processor.
If phablets are too big for you, then the 5-inch ZenFone 2 Laser might be your cup of tea. It is mostly the same as the 5.5-inch version in specifications, except for a lower resolution 8 MP rear camera and a smaller 2400 mAh battery.
The budget friendly ZenFone Go has a 1.3 GHz MediaTek Quad-Core Processor (MT6580), 5-inch 1280 x 720 resolution display, 2GB of RAM, a 8 MP rear camera and 2 MP front-facing camera. Like the other ZenFones, the ZenFone Go also offers dual-SIM slots, but only supports 2G and 3G.
At the ZenFestival, ASUS had setup some props to demonstrate the low-light and HDR capabilities of their PixelMaster camera technology in the ZenFones.
In particularly, I came away really impressed with the low-light test. Shooting through a small opening, the ZenFone Selfie in this case was cable to produce a discernible image from a scene that had almost no light.
The ZenFone 2 Laser 5.5-inch (ZE550KL) will be available in Black, Red and White colours at $279 at Best Denki, Challenger, Gain City, Harvey Norman, MC2, Newstead, Singtel, Starhub and M1 shops.
The ZenFone Go (ZC500TG) will be available in Black, Red and White colours from 17 October 2015 onwards at $179 at Challenger, Gain City and Newstead.
The ZenFone 2 Laser 6.0-inch (ZE600KL) as well as ZenFone Laser 5.0-inch (ZE500KL) is priced at $329 and $239 respectively. Availability will be announced at a later date.
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