Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate review

Design and accessory compatibility

The ROG Phone 7 is still unmistakably a Republic Of Gamers device. The "gamer" aesthetic of the ROG Phone line has generally been getting more and more toned down from generation to generation. Most gaming elements on the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate are subtle and understated, which we kind of enjoy. We wouldn't say these are the stealthiest of gaming gear, but we also wouldn't have any issues bringing one into a boardroom meeting.

The ROG Phone 7 Ultimate only comes in one color - white. It still features a two-tone design, which is a nice little touch. The back of the phone is made out of one unified piece of glass with a very smooth feel. It does not attract or retain grease and dirt, which is great to see.

Arguably the centerpiece of the back design on the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate is the ROG Vision display. It is a full-color display, just like last year on the ROG Phone 6 Pro and Ultimate. The display can either be manually toggled on or can react to certain events. Six different scenarios are available, like receiving a call, starting a game or charging.

You can use it to display both static images and animations. Those are available via download from Asus repositories (with 60 more entries compared to the ROG Phone 6), or you can make your own using a built-in editor.

Also making a return from the ROG Phone 6 Ultimate is the AeroActive Portal. The AeroActive Portal is a directly exposed part or pathway to the internal cooling components of the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate to the outside, akin to some of the designs of previous generations of ROG Phone. Asus engineers have put thin heat dissipation fins on an ultra-thin vapor chamber and then put the entire thing on a motorized hinge. It raises the assembly and automatically opens up an airway when the AeroActive Cooler 7 is installed on the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.

It is difficult to properly test just how much of a difference to cooling the addition of the AeroActive Portal makes, but we will be conducting some thermal-throttling tests of our own, which you can check out later in the review. ASUS says that it moves a massive liter of cold air through the fins every second.

The Taiwanese giant is very confident on the topic of durability of the hinge, which is important since this is a fairly-complicated crank-slider mechanism with over 50 individual parts. They rate AeroActive Portal for at least 40,000 open and close cycles.

The hinge is made with liquid metal die-casting, and the stepping motor has a three-stage planetary gear to generate very high torque. This ensures proper opening and closing under normal operation and in the case of a drop - there is an anti-drop mechanism that allows it to retract.

The surface of the AeroActive Portal is also made of stainless steel for even better durability. It is also interesting to note that the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate retains its IP54 ingress protection even with the AeroActive Portal open.

It really sounds like the engineering team has done their homework well. In practice, you never actually notice the AeroActive Portal open and close to do its thing. It is entirely automated and obscured by the AeroActive Cooler the entire time it is open. You don't hear the process, either. It's a great example of tech done so well that it simply disappears into the rest of the product and does its job without being noticed.

If you are like us and want to see the smooth opening and closing action for yourself, thankfully, Asus includes a cleaning mode buried deep in Armoury Crate that lets you engage the AeroActive Portal without the cooler.

Just as a final reminder, the AeroActive Portal is not new and is being carried forward from the ROG Phone 6 Ultimate, so this is all familiar to us already.

On the topic of accessory compatibility, the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate continues the long-standing ROG Phone tradition of sticking as close as possible to the same general dimensions of the phone. It measures 173 x 77 x 10.4mm and weighs in at 239 grams - quite similar to the ROG Pone 6 Ultimate. That means that you can expect some level of cross-compatibility for certain accessories.

If you've been a fan or, better still, owner of ROG Phones for some time now, then you definitely know about the extensive and unrivaled accessory ecosystem Asus used to offer alongside these phones. The past tense is unfortunately critical here since Asus essentially broke compatibility with its coolest accessories, like the TwinView dock or the WiGig adapter, with different past iterations of the ROG Phone.

The new AeroActive Cooler 7 is specifically designed for the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate. It also comes with its own bumper case for those phones in the box.

You can also use last year's AeroActive Cooler 6 on the new ROG Phone 7 line, but the new AeroActive Cooler 7 isn't backward compatible with the ROG Phone 6 family.

Interestingly enough, Asus has not yet discussed plans for Kunai 3 Gamepad compatibility. While the accessory works in both wireless Bluetooth mode and wired with a cable on the ROG Phone 7 line, the bumper case it comes in its box is not a perfect fit for the new phones. While it does go on and works, it is just a bit awkward.

We can only imagine that Asus will eventually start selling a Kunai 3 Gamepad version for the ROG Phone 7 family with an updated bumper, just like it did for the ROG Phone 6 line.

The ROG Clip is alive, well, and apparently compatible across the board. It allows you to clip the ROG Phone to your favorite console controller like a PlayStation or Xbox one. Both clips come in the box.

The Asus Professional Dock is not on the official supported list, but expectedly, it still works with the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate. It is just a good Type-C hub, and it makes sense you can carry it forward. Or alternatively, you can also choose a similar third-party hardware solution to get things like HDMI out, power and ethernet in and some USB ports.

Overall, we have to say that Asus has more or less put an end to the unparalleled accessory ecosystem of old, and it's not coming back, losing one of its really impressive industry advantages in the process. We get that it was always excessive, impractical, with very limited appeal and an even smaller user base. Still, it was something that made ROG Phone uniquely ROG Phone and over the top. It will be missed.

Of course, there is still the AeroActive cooler, to which we will devote a separate segment. Head on over to the performance page for that.

Build quality and materials

Also carried forward from last year's ROG Phone 6 models to the ROG Phone 7 is the official ingress protection rating. This time around, it is IP54, which basically means the phones are certified to survive splashes of water and are dust-sealed. It's better than nothing, and we do get it. Ingress protection is hard, especially with extra ports and huge speakers like on the ROG Phone 7.

The ROG Phone 7 Ultimate is basically built like a rock and features an extremely rigid middle frame, with practically no flex, sandwiched between two glass surfaces. The front is covered by Gorilla Glass Victus.

On the back is a nicely-rounded sheet of Gorilla Glass 3. The black finish on our review unit looks great and, thanks to the frosted white finish, doesn't really show fingerprints. It is, however, smooth so it provides little grip, making the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate a very slippery device while being held and while lying on a table. A case is highly recommended.

Thanks to its curved back, the ROG Phone 7/ 7 Ultimate is very comfortable to hold in the hand. As long as you have a fairly big hand, since the phone is very "chunky", no question about that. However, the weight distribution is superb, and the phone is very well-balanced. That's mostly due to the symmetrical internal layout, featuring a central-mounted chipset flanked by two batteries on either side.

Internal design

Effective cooling has always been a top priority on the ROG Phone line. The way it has been achieved has really changed throughout the years. Earlier models had large exposed internal cooling elements to more effectively dissipate heat and transfer it over to the surface and AeroActive cooler.

The ROG Phone 5 did away with all that opting for a solid piece of glass on the back instead and no air ducts. That also included making some major internal changes, primarily designing a central-positioned motherboard sandwiched by cooling elements and flanked by two 3,000 mAh halves of the total 6,000 mAh battery. This is all still present in the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate.

In order to make its GameCool7 cooling system more approachable and understandable, Asus has broken its cooling down into "stages" of sorts - "Short-time" (1-15 min), "Mid-time" (15-30 min) and "Long-time" (over 1 hour).

Let's start with the "Short-time" cooling solution and what Asus calls a 360-degree cooling system. It was first introduced in the ROG Phone 6 line and is making an appearance in the ROG Phone 7 as well.

The central-positioned motherboard and chipset internal design is the first line of heat management. It includes a boron nitride heat transfer compound (200 times the thermal conductivity of air) that sits sandwiched between the main motherboard and the RF board, which holds most of the radio communication hardware and is vertically stacked and connected to the rest of the hardware.

The dual-PCB design with a sandwiched interposer reduces the hardware footprint, among other things. The interposer acts as a bridge and a thermal transfer medium, leaving no air gap and no opportunity for heat to accumulate.

Next comes the "Mid-time gaming" solution, which has been massively improved on the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate. This "solution" includes a massive vapor chamber and two graphite sheets. The ROG Phone 7 family gets a brand new redesigned "rapid-cycle" vapor chamber. Some if its improvements include six liquid return channels, which better guide the liquid to the hot-spot that needs to be cooled.

Also, there is a redesigned wick column structure. The columns are now trident-shaped with Y-shaped pathways inside the columns themselves. Asus says that this improves heat dissipation through the columns by up to 2.1 times.

When put together, this all leads to a whopping 168% improved thermal efficiency on the new vapor chamber inside the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate.

As for the two graphite sheets, these have been re-shaped and promise 10% improved thermal efficiency. Their area is an impressive 16,000 mm squared, and they basically cover the entire back and front of the device, dissipating heat to the back glass panel and the display of the phone.

Finally, there is the AeroActive Cooler 7, which is made to clip and sit right on top of the centrally-positioned motherboard and chipset, hence addressing the main "hotspot" on the phone. Not only does it help dissipate the internal heat outwards, but it also keeps the back surface of the phone where your fingers touch up to 25 degrees cooler. This year, a part of the airflow is also directed forward to the surface of the display, lowering its temperature by up to an advertised 8 degrees.

We have a separate section on the new AeroActive Cooler 7 in the performance section, but needless to say, it is the most impressive piece of it of its kind from Asus thus far. On top of its four omnidirectional trigger keys, it is actually an active cooling element, and we don't just mean the spinning fan. There is a Peltier element inside - a thermal-electric element that uses electricity to make one of its sides very cold and the other very hot.

The AeroActive Cooler 7 can operate in four fan-and-Peltier power combinations, which we will also cover. Spoiler-alert - we found it incredibly effective at its heat management tasks with real, measurable benefits to both performance and surface temperature. Using it with the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate effectively unlocks its full performance potential.

Last but not least, as we transition into the topic of controls, the AeroActive Cooler 7 also has a subwoofer on board this year. This is a 13 x 38mm speaker with a 5-magnet super linear design. It promises to improve bass performance on the phone by a whopping 77% and effectively transforms the ROG Phone 7 into a 2.1-speaker multimedia powerhouse.

We'll definitely test its performance in our loudspeaker section.

Controls

Let's start with the signature Asus Side port. At its core, it is still a convenient way of hooking-up extra accessories to the ROG Phone 6 and is placed in such a way as to be as least intrusive as possible.

Seeing how the ROG Phone 7/7 Ultimate is expected to spend most of its time in a horizontal orientation, doing heavy and battery-intensive gaming tasks, it only makes sense to have a cable or other attachment hanging out of the bottom side where it won't interfere with your hands.

The Side port has undergone several design iterations over the years. We particularly enjoyed seeing the general process of simplification of the port that seemingly culminated with the ROG Phone 6 generation, where the side port was just another standard Type-C port.

Asus is, unfortunately, backtracking on that design decision in this generation and re-introducing a pair of pogo pins besides the port. We aren't sure exactly why this is the case, but the change is generally not appreciated due to the less reliable nature of pogo pins.

The Type-C port, part of the Side port on the ROG Phone 7/7 Ultimate, is more potent than the other Type-C port on the bottom frame of the phone. While both handle charging just fine and support the same Asus HyperCharge/Direct Charge and PD + QC 5.0/3.0 protocols at up to 65W, the side port is USB 3.1 gen 2 in terms of transfer speed. That means theoretical speeds of up to 10Gbit/s. All the while, the bottom Type-C comes with a simple USB 2.0 data link.

The side Type-C is also how you get video out the phone - DisplayPort 1.4, in particular. That means 4K@30Hz, 144p@75Hz or 1080p@144Hz without any chroma subsampling.

These are generally the same I/O capabilities as the ROG Phone 6 and Rog Phone 5 generations of phones. Which, by the way, is not us complaining since even as they stand, these are miles ahead of the connectivity of your average smartphone.

By the way, as we mentioned already, the Asus Professional Dock works just fine with the ROG Phone 7 family, and so do other similar Type-C hubs.

Circling back to that second or rather first, depending on how you look at it, USB Type-C port, you will notice that it is also deliberately tucked away as far to one side as possible. The same goes for the 3.5mm audio jack, which made a return with the ROG Phone 5 and is still present. Both of these are placed so as to be as out of the way as possible.

The same goes for the 12MP selfie camera. It is pushed nicely to the side to make covering it up or smudging it during gaming that little bit more difficult.

We also have to praise Asus for still finding space for the said camera in the now narrower top bezel and leaving the gorgeous 6.78-inch AMOLED panel uninterrupted by notches or punch holes. And let's not forget also managing to fit the two symmetrical and identical, large front-facing speakers.

It is easy to nitpick about the still relatively large top and bottom display bezels on the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, but the truth is that these are there by design. Not only is the space utilized to its fullest with the speakers, selfie camera and even an RGB notification LED, but the space is also essential for gaming comfort. Asus wants to make resting your thumps as you game as comfortable as possible.

Speaking of gaming and holding your device comfortably, you can rest assured that any grip you choose will not interfere with Wi-Fi, thanks to the trio of internal antennas. The same goes for the trio of on-board microphones. It is really hard to cover all of them up at once.

Continuing our control tour with some more-traditional entries, there are a standard volume rocker and a power button right underneath that on the right-hand side of the device. Both are strategically placed to avoid accidental touches, which surprisingly left them in a convenient location for reaching with a thumb.

The in-display fingerprint reader is speedy and accurate. It is nothing special in hardware, just a regular optical unit. Still, this tech has matured nicely over the years. It also uses machine learning to improve over time. Plus, Asus still brings that extra bit of flair to it with a set of unlocking animations.

For the last boring bit, we have a dual nano-SIM card slot on the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate within an eye-catching accented cradle that takes a card on each side. There is no microSD slot.

The AirTrigger and Ultrasonic buttons system remains largely unchanged from the ROG Phone 6 generation but is still one of the most attractive and fun input setups on the entire device. This supplementary control system has remained a staple of the ROG Phone line and has been continually evolving from generation to generation.

Two ultrasonic sensors sit at the core of the experience. These are positioned on either end of the right side of the phone - pretty close to the top and bottom of the bezel, which has been the case since last year's ROG Phone 5/5s. We personally find the position a bit uncomfortable and requiring too much thumb-stretching, but Asus seems to be sticking with it. Asus justifies the position by claiming it is more convenient for users with smaller hands and shorter fingers, which makes sense on paper.

Most of the base input types the system recognizes seem to be carried over from the ROG Phone 5/5s and the ROG Phone 3 before that. You can tap on the whole area on half of it, long presses, swipes and slides. Each of these can be individually and meticulously mapped to an on-screen control in-game for what is nothing short of a massive advantage.

You can also get pre-made mappings for many popular games and even skip some setup steps while still retaining access to an impressive array of tweaks to things like sensitivity, area, trigger distance and distance multiplier. It is an industry-leading system on a level of its own that no other manufacturer has even come close to matching.

The total number of mappable inputs on the current generation of AirTrigger is 14, just like on the ROG Phone 6 generation. Gone are the rear ultrasonic buttons from the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate. Still, if you strap on the AeroActive cooler and its four omnidirectional buttons, you can get the number of mappable inputs up to a whopping 18.

Gyroscope Aiming is also available. It can be beneficial for some finer aim adjustments. As always, mapping can be used in any game out there.

AirTrigger settings

Beyond in-game use, the AirTrigger sensors also provide squeeze detection during the general use of the ROG Phone 7. This aspect of the system is fairly versatile, as well. The phone can differentiate between a short and long press.

Then there are Motion controls which seem to be carried forward in their entirety from the ROG Phone 6 generation, the 5/5s before that and are a few more in number than what the ROG Phone 3 could recognize.

If, for some reason, you feel like the ultrasonic mapping system does not provide enough inputs for your need, you can map the gestures to inputs, as well. For what it's worth, we did try to test a few of these out, and they did seem to work. Ultimately, though, we were way too overwhelmed by the sheer number of things to remember.

This is an ongoing theme on the ROG Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate. The sheer number of options and their depth and scope is enough to make anyone's head spin. While this makes some of the systems less approachable to casuals or newcomers, it is this kind of complexity that truly marks a pro-grade tool and sets it apart from the competition. We have nothing but admiration for what Asus has managed to build up over the years. And if you don't plan on using these features or you are reluctant to fiddle with them, they stay out of the way.

Connectivity

In keeping with its pedigree, the ROG Phone 7/7 Ultimate is loaded for bear in the connectivity department. It is a dual-SIM phone with dual standby SA/NSA Sub-6 5G on both slots as well as DSDV LTE.

Beyond that there is support for Triple-Band (2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz) Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be, Wi-Fi 7 with three antennas. You get a total of three Wi-Fi antennas with 2x2 MIMO support and intelligent seamless switching for the best possible signal. HyperFusion technology allows for simultaneous connection to Wi-Fi and cellular data and seamless automatic switching to the more stable of the two.

Local connectivity also includes Bluetooth 5.2 with HFP, A2DP, AVRCP, HID, PAN, OPP profiles and Bluetooth LE support. It's a bit odd that it does not support the latest Bluetooth 5.3.

The ROG Phone 7 Ultimate also supports Qualcomm Snapdragon sound and is certified for HI-RES AUDIO and HI-RES AUDIO WIRELESS. It also has support for multiple major Bluetooth audio protocols, including aptX, aptX HD, aptX adaptive, aptX Low latency, aptX Lossless Audio, LDAC and AAC.

There is NFC on board with card mode support. The GPS receiver on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has dual-band support (L1 + L5) and covers GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS and NavIC.

In terms of other connectors, you still get a 3.5mm audio jack and a total of two Type-C ports.

To reiterate, the Asus Side port is the more capable of the two, wired for USB 3.1 gen 2 data transfer up to 10Mbps and also carrying an alt-mode Display Port 1.4 connection.

In contrast, the bottom Type-C port is just wired for USB 2.0 speeds. Other than that, both ports support the same fast charging standards - Asus' own HyperCharge, sometimes called Direct Charge, which is entirely standard Power Delivery 3.0 with Programmable Power Supply (PPS) with additional support for Quick Charge 3.0 and 5.0.