Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra review

Triple rear camera setup

At first glance, the Zenfone 11 Ultra borrows most of its camera setup from the ROG Phone 8 line. Broadly, you get a 50MP main camera with a gimbal OIS setup, a 32MP 3x telephoto with OIS, and a 13MP fixed-focus ultrawide.

The ultra-wide camera has a free-form lens for reduced edge distortion. The same goes for the 32MP RGBW selfie. Both lack autofocus.

• Wide (main): 50 MP Sony IMX890 f/1.9, 24mm, 1/1.56", 1.0µm, PDAF, gimbal-OIS (6-Axis Hybrid Gimbal Stabilizer 3.0); 8K@24fps, 2160p@30fps
• Ultra wide angle: 13 MP OmniVision ov13b, f/2.2, 13mm, 1/3", 1.12µm; 2160p@30fps
• Telephoto: 32 MP OmniVision ov32c, f/2.4, 1/3.2", 0.7µm, PDAF, OIS; 1080p@60fps.
• Front camera: 32 MP OmniVision ov8856, f/2.0, 22mm, 1/4", 1.12µm; 1080p@30fps

The ROG camera app UI is a fairly custom affair. We would say it is surprisingly feature-rich without being chaotic. The camera app does a fair bit of automatic scene detection. This is indicated by a small scene icon in the top left corner and a Night Mode UI, which automatically pops up in the bottom right corner when the camera decides it is dark enough. Clicking on the Night mode icon itself presents two options for exposure duration. The numbers themselves are dynamic and also dependent on ambient light conditions.

Pro mode is surprisingly versatile. You get a level meter in the middle of the frame and a histogram in the bottom left corner. You get white balance, exposure compensation, ISO, shutter speed and a manual focus slider with focus peaking.

There is a Pro video capture mode, as well. It offers the same set of controls on the right-hand side as Pro photo mode and a nifty smooth zoom feature. You can just click on an area in the frame and have the phone gradually zoom in. The ROG camera app also allows smooth switching between the main and ultrawide cameras while filming.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

The main camera on the Zenfone 11 Ultra captures stills at right around 12.5MP due to pixel-binning. These photos are solid overall, but nothing to phone home about. Detail is good, but it could also be better. The same goes for dynamic range and contrast. Colors are nice and natural.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 12.5MP main camera samples

Sharpening is a bit aggressive, leaving behind plenty of artifacts, resulting in a slightly overprocessed and harsh look. It's not really noticeable unless you pixel-peep, though.

Faces come out looking well but are a bit overprocessed as well, with sharpening artifacts frequently taking the place of actual facial features and skin texture. Still, these are perfectly serviceable shots, especially with good lighting.

Portrait shots aren't particularly impressive in any way, either. Definitely serviceable as well, but subject detection and separation are far from perfect, especially with a busy background. The quality of the background blur is okay.

You might notice that some of our sample portrait shots are zoomed in. Perhaps a bit unintuitively or perfectly intuitively, depending on how you look at things, the Zenfone 11 Ultra captures 2x zoomed portraits with its main camera. There is also no option to capture portraits with the 3x telephoto.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 12.5MP main camera portrait samples

You can force the main camera to capture in its full 50MP resolution. This, however, doesn't result in more detail or cleaner shots, just larger life sizes.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 50MP main camera samples

Telephoto camera

The 32MP telephoto camera on the Zenfone 11 Ultra triggers at 3x zoom and above in daylight conditions and captures stills at around 8MP resolution. The phone does have a 2x camera toggle, which captures zoomed-in and cropped shots with the main camera. These are pretty decent, but expectedly, not as clean and detailed as the 3x shots from the dedicated telephoto. The detail is plenty, and the colors look good and are quite well matched to the main camera.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 8MP telephoto camera 3x zoom samples

There is some noise and sharpening artifacts, but nothing severe. Contrast and dynamic range could be better, too.

The camera interface on the Zenfone 11 Ultra features quick toggles for 10x and 30x zoom levels, with every other digital zoom level in between available on a slider as well. We have to say that even at 30x, the telephoto camera produces surprisingly clean and usable photos when there is enough light. This is thanks to what Asus calls its Hyper Clarity engine, which uses image reconstruction and deep learning models and kicks it past 10x zoom. Here are some 10x and 30x samples.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 8MP telephoto camera 10x and 30x zoom samples

Ultrawide camera

The 13MP ultrawide camera is decent enough but mostly unimpressive in practice. Detail, contrast, and dynamic range are okay for an ultrawide, though the latter could be better.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 13MP ultrawide camera samples

The ultrawide tends to expose lower on average than the other two cameras, leading to darker shots and colors. These colors are a bit more saturated than on the main camera, but not a bad match overall.

Selfie camera

The 8MP selfies from the Zenfone 11 Ultra look quite decent. Again, it's not spectacular in any way, but it's definitely alright. The detail is there for the most part. Skin tones look natural, and there is some texture coming through.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 8MP selfie camera samples

The fixed focus of the selfie cam is not a major issue since the focal plane is nice and deep and quite forgiving to various handholds.

Low-light camera quality

The main camera on the Zenfone 11 Ultra has solid low-light performance. There is plenty of detail in the frame and a very tasteful amount of processing. Noise is practically absent, which is quite impressive.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 12.5MP low-light main camera samples

Colors look great, and the dynamic range is quite wide. Shadows are very well developed, and so are highlights. Light sources are well-contained. Overall, we have no obvious complaints to point out.

The Zenfone 11 Ultra applies some automatic night mode processing through the regular photo mode.

Beyond that, there is also a dedicated night mode that offers a choice between a long and a short exposure time. Choosing the longer exposure time means you sometimes have to wait up to seven seconds for a photo to capture, but the results are better. The benefits are marginal, so the extra time spent taking each photo is probably not worth it.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 12.5MP night mode main camera samples

It is a more processed look overall, though.

The telephoto camera is also quite competent in low-light conditions. The detail is there. The colors are on point and well-matched to the main camera. There is practically no noise.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 8MP low-light telephoto camera 3x zoom samples

The ultrawide camera is unimpressive but serviceable in low light. There is a decent amount of detail and pretty low noise. Colors are a bit oversaturated for our taste. Shadows and highlights are both handled well, and so are light sources.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 13MP low-light ultrawide camera samples

In case you were wondering, we did try the long exposure time night mode on both the ultrawide and the telephoto, and we don't believe the results are any better than just shooting in regular photo mode. We found that night mode was outright worse for selfies than regular photo mode.

Low-light selfies from the Zenfone 11 Ultra look good overall. Perhaps a bit harshly processed, but with plenty of detail and mostly natural skin tones.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra: 8MP low-light selfie camera samples

Video capture quality

The Zenfone 11 Ultra can capture video at up to 8K@24fps on its main camera. The ultrawide is limited to 4K@30fps, while the telephoto can do 1080p@60, and the selfie can do 1080p@30. By default, videos get saved in a standard AVC/h.264 video stream at around 50Mbps at 4K and a stereo AAC 48 kHz audio stream inside an MP4 container. Alternatively, you can also capture in HEVC/h.265 to save some space.

The main camera captures excellent videos overall. Colors look good and are mostly natural. Greens and reds are a bit more saturated but nothing excessive. Contrast is good, and there is practically no noise. You get a lot of fine detail at 4K and a bit more still at 8K. Not enough, however, to justify living with 24fps or the larger file sizes in our book. 8K capture on smartphones is still a bit of a gimmick in general. It is there if you really need it, though.

The ultrawide camera does quite alright with its 4K videos. Detail is plenty, especially for the hardware at hand. Contrast and dynamic range are decent, and the frame has very little noise. Colors look a bit less saturated than on the main camera and quite alright in their own right.

As far as stabilization goes, the main camera has a 6-axis gimbal setup, and in keeping with Asus tradition, the Zenfone 11 Ultra offers two levels of video stabilization. One is called Adaptive, and as its name suggests, it dynamically punches into the frame and increases or decreases the level of EIS depending on the motion of the phone. It does a pretty great job overall and can be used on every camera on the phone without lowering the resolution.

Beyond that, there is Super HyperSteady, which takes its footage from the main camera and is capped at 1080p. It is meant for really aggressive motion compensation for things like sports and has been further improved this year. You'll probably want to stick with Adaptive most of the time.

Video sample playlist

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.

Despite its 1080p limit, the video from the telephoto camera looks relatively alright. Detail is decent given the resolution, and colors appear mostly well-matched to the main camera.

We quite like the 1080p footage from the selfie camera as well. Skin tones and textures look pretty good, and detail is definitely enough to be usable.

The main camera captures decent, low-light videos. Noise is a bit of an issue, but other than that, the detail and colors are on point. Unfortunately, we can't quite say the same for the telephoto videos, which are just too dark to be usable. The same goes for the ultrawide videos.