The Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra 5G is a premium smartphone with the first large display in Asus’s high-end segment. With a size of 6.78 inches, it uses an LTPO AMOLED panel provided by Samsung, capable of achieving a refresh rate of up to 144Hz in special cases.
Design and build
The Zenfone 11 Ultra brings the compact Zenfone lineup in a different direction. It’s much larger, the size of one of Asus’s gaming-oriented ROG phones. At the moment, it’s unclear whether we’d get another compact phone from Asus at all. It’s not just the size that sets the Zenfone 11 Ultra apart from the previous model. Besides the large display and battery, it also brings the latest chipset and an improved camera setup. Unlike the grippy polymer design of last year’s Zen phone, the Zenfone 11 Ultra has a smooth matte glass back.
You also get a subtle geometric pattern to spice things up, and a square black camera island. The flat frame is made of aluminum, and the phone feels solid in hand. The Zenfone 11 Ultra has IP68-rated wrist protection against dust and water.
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Screen specs on Zenfone 11 Ultra
The display of the phone is a 6.78-inch LTPO OLED with a 1080p resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate, and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection. The display looks great. It’s much larger than the 5.9-inch display on the Zenfone 10, and the bezels are thinner as well.On this panel, you get support for HDR video content.
The brightness is impressive. We measured 830 nits maximum with a manual slider, and this could boost to nearly 1,800 nits in auto mode when exposed to bright light. While the 144Hz refresh rate is higher than what you see on most phones, the Zenfone 11 Ultra will only use it for certain games that you set up in the Game Genie app.
Audio and Storage options
For audio, this Zenfone 11 Ultra has a headphone jack as well as a stereo speaker setup tuned by Dra. The speakers score very good loudness and deliver well-developed mids, clear highs, and even some bass.
You can wake up and unlock the phone with an under-display optical fingerprint reader. It’s accurate and snappy.
The Zenfone 11 Ultra can come with 256 or 512 gigs of UFS 4.0 storage onboard. This isn’t expandable through microSD.
Software
The phone runs on Android 14 with Asus’s custom software running on top. It’s overall quite a clean and bloat-free experience. One unique feature is that you have three different styles of notification shades to choose from. There are a few custom apps here, like the gallery, clock, and file manager.
Even though the Zenfone 11 Ultra doesn’t have the full set of gaming features and goodies you’d get on the ROG phones, you do get an in-game overlay called the Game Genie. From here, you have access to performance readouts and various game-related options and toggles.Video Genie is another unique software feature. It allows you to control things like interruptions when you’re watching something and also play any video in the background.
AI semantic search is back. It allows you to search for any option in settings using everyday language. It also works when searching for specific subjects among photos in the gallery. Another returning AI-based feature is noise cancellation for calls.There are some new AI-based features too. These include transcription of audio to text, customized wallpapers generated by AI, and real-time call translation for supported languages.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
The chipset of the phone is the latest and greatest from Qualcomm: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It’s what you’ll find in most current Android flagships. In benchmarks, the Zenfone 11 Ultra does an excellent job, posting respectable flagship-grade scores in its default Dynamic mode.
But with this performance mode toggled on and the hardware pushed a bit harder, the phone was able to achieve some of the best Peak Performance scores we’ve seen yet. In more practical terms, the Zenfone 11 Ultra runs incredibly smoothly with no slowdowns or hiccups. It shows through intensive tasks with ease.
When it comes to sustained performance over time, though, there’s more to be desired here. This is no Rog gaming phone, after all. In the default Dynamic mode, we observed thermal throttling happening very quickly during prolonged stress tests.
In performance mode, the phone maintained a higher performance output without that heavy throttling, but here, the phone became super hot while testing. The Zenfone 11 Ultra has a large 5500mAh battery, and the battery life is excellent.
Battery life
The phone was able to earn an active use score of 16 hours and 28 minutes in our tests, even better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The phone supports 65W charging, but for the first time ever, Asus is not bundling a charger with the phone.
With a proper adapter, we were able to charge the phone from 0 to 80% in half an hour, and a full charge took 41 minutes. There’s also support for wireless charging here. Now onto the cameras, which are similar to what you’d get on the recent Rog phones.
Cameras on Zenfone 11 Ultra
The Zenfone 11 Ultra has a 50MP main cam with gimbal OIS, a 32MP three times telephoto cam, and a 13MP ultra-wide camera. A telephoto cam is an upgrade from previous Zenfones, adding some extra versatility while shooting. But first, the main cam.
It captures stills at 12.5MP due to pixel bending. These photos are solid overall but nothing to phone home about. Colors are nice and natural here, and the detail is good, but it could also be better. There is some aggressive sharpening leading to a slightly overprocessed look when you zoom in closely.
The dynamic range and contrast are alright. The main camera’s performance in low light is solid. There is an automatic night mode applied, and you get plenty of detail in the frame and balanced-looking processing. Colors look great, and the dynamic range is quite wide, with well-developed shadows and contained highlights.
4K videos record
Videos can be captured with the main cam at up to 8K at 24 FPS. When it comes to 4K video quality, you get good-looking contrast and colors, practically no noise, and plenty of detail. The main camera has a 6-axis gimbal setup, and it works together with the electronic stabilization to produce some really smooth footage.
In low light, the main cam can capture decent videos. Noise is a bit of an issue, but other than that, the detail and colors are on point. Now let’s move on to the three times telephoto cam, which produces 8MP images.
These have plenty of detail, and the colors are well-matched to the main camera’s too. The contrast and dynamic range are okay. In low light, the telephoto cam is competent, producing detailed shots with practically no noise and again, good-looking colors.
The 3x zoomed videos are limited to 1080p resolution, but even so, they’re alright, with a decent amount of detail. Now we have the ultra-wide cam. In photos, they’re decent enough with okay detail and contrast.
Conclusion
The Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra is a solid flagship all around with great battery life and no glaring deficiencies across the board.
It does seem strange for Asus to change strategy and leave the future of their compact Zenfone lineup hanging in the air. And this larger Zenfone, in many ways, is similar to an Asus Rog phone but without the advanced gaming features.
