Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review

The competition

At the time of writing, we know that the Zenfone 12 Ultra is coming to Europe, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Japan will be joining the list later, and US and UK launches are currently unconfirmed. The base MSRP for a Zenfone 12 Ultra unit is €1099, though there is also an early bird special up until the end of February at a price of €999. That's about par for the course for a current flagship, but it's €100 more than what the Zenfone 11 Ultra launched at.

And for this amount of money, last year's S24 Ultra is well within reach too. It has depreciated nicely while still offering most of the same experience as the S25 Ultra. The display is practically the same, and so is the excellent camera setup. While you are getting slightly older hardware, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is still extremely powerful and has a lot of futureproofing potential. Speaking of which, the S24 Ultra comes with the promise of seven major OS upgrades, so it still has a bright future ahead of it.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra • OnePlus 13 • vivo X200 Pro

OnePlus has an interesting offer with the OnePlus 13. Despite its slightly lower price tag, it is a true flagship all around. It has a particularly impressive LTPO display, great IP protection, a versatile and powerful camera setup, modern connectivity, and a large 6,000 mAh battery that did great in our battery tests.

If cameras are your primary concern and you are in a market where it's available, it's hard to go wrong with the vivo X200 Pro. It, too, has a great display and excellent ingress protection. There is a large battery onboard this phone as well, and it has good battery life. Its camera system is arguably the biggest highlight, though.

Our verdict

The Zenfone 12 Ultra is very much an iterative update. Not a lot has changed since the Zenfone 11 generation. Asus is really not pushing the envelope in any way.

We do appreciate the new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and the noticeable upgrade in burst performance, but the chip thermal-throttles quite aggressively under prolonged loads.

Another thing that shouldn't go unnoticed is the huge infusion of AI smarts and features in the Zenfone 12 Ultra. Plenty of new and older features are on offer that make a very impressive roster, easily on the level of rivals like Samsung and their flagship line. We also enjoyed the subtle tweaks to the UI, including things like the rich battery care options.

The gimbal system upgrade introduced with the Zenfone 12 Ultra is also nice to have. Though, to be frank, the previous generation of the hardware was already good enough in this respect unless you regularly shoot video while running. All the while, the overall camera quality of the Zenfone 12 Ultra hasn't been upgraded in any significant manner over the Zenfone 11 Ultra. That is to say that it is okay, but nothing more than that.

We are also not fans of the subtle design changes introduced this year. We think the black camera island and the decals across the back gave the Zenfone 11 Ultra more character.

On the plus side, the Zenfone 12 Ultra is an equally well-made device with excellent ingress protection and premium materials that can last you a long time.

We still think the Zenfone 12 Ultra is worth considering because there is nothing bad about it, but it doesn't really shine compared to its predecessor either.

Pros

• IP68-rated body with no-nonsense design.
• The 144Hz AMOLED E6 LTPO screen is brighter this year.
• Great battery life.
• Very good stereo speaker setup.
• Android 15 with custom Asus tweaks, 5 years of security updates.
• Powerful set of AI features, most of which can run on-device.
• Snapdragon 8 Elite provides excellent burst performance.
• Good (if uninspiring) photo quality and great video quality.
• 3.5mm audio jack, eSIM support.

Cons

• Generational upgrades are few and far between.
• No charger in the box.