Asus Zenfone 9 long-term review

Camera setup, image quality

The Zenfone 9 comes with an honest rear camera setup, which we highly appreciate. There are two camera circles on the back, because there are two real, useful cameras in the phone. There's no third or fourth macro or depth sensors put on the back for decoration purposes, in order to give the impression that there are more focal lengths on offer than there really are. Like we said - it's an honest setup, and we dig it.

And if you were decrying the lack of a macro shooter, fret not because the ultrawide camera has autofocus, and as such, can double as a macro cam. That said, we didn't test that for this review as macro photography is still a niche thing, but if you're interested in some samples, make sure to check out our normal review of the Zenfone 9.

The main camera has an interesting, and still quite rare, trick up its sleeve - gimbal-like optical image stabilization (OIS), a 6-axis system capable of compensating up to 3 degrees of shake (up from 1 degree on conventional OIS systems). So let's see what this means for picture quality.

During daytime, the main snapper's shots come out with good dynamic range, high contrast, good white balance and colors that pop without going overboard. Detail levels are good, but if you look closely, there's a processed look all over, which may put some people off and may be loved by others.

Daytime samples from the main camera

The ultrawide is good in daylight, with decent dynamic range and pleasant colors, but a little bit of noise in the shadows. Otherwise, detail levels are good too, and the photos look ever so slightly less processed than the main camera's.

Daytime samples from the ultrawide

There's a 2x zoom option in the viewfinder even if the Zenfone 9 doesn't have a telephoto camera. The zooming is done digitally on the main sensor, and the results aren't bad, while not standing out either. Intricate textures can get mangled, and that's where a standalone 2x zoom sensor would do better. Overall, for a quick social media share, and with no pixel peeping, these are plenty usable.

Daytime 2x zoom samples

For nighttime shots, there's a setting that engages Night Mode automatically when the phone sees fit. If you turn this on, you can also engage Night Mode manually, but the results are exactly the same - this isn't like Auto Night Mode on some other phones, where it goes for an ever so slightly shorter exposure compared to manually engaged Night Mode. It's literally the same thing.

So, in order to give you an accurate idea of what the main camera can produce at night without Night Mode, we turned that feature off. You can see for yourself that there's definitely a reason why Auto Night Mode is on by default. A lot of these shots come out underexposed and lacking in dynamic range, so we recommend leaving the Auto Night Mode function turned on. That is, if you don't mind that it takes more time to shoot images in this way than you might be used to from another phone - the capture itself is generally between 2 to 4 seconds, but then there's some extra waiting for processing on top of that.

Nighttime samples from the main camera

If you do leave Auto Night Mode on, or if you don't and manually engage Night Mode, you'll get images that are much better, with brighter shadows, restored highlights, and extra details, at the expense of more sharpening, which is never not observable, but is probably worth the cost in most scenarios.

Night Mode samples from the main camera

At night, the ultrawide (with Auto Night Mode off) does like to underexpose shots much more than the main camera, which was already pretty bad. The results are thus always bordering on unusable.

Nighttime samples from the ultrawide

So, again, we recommend either leaving Auto Night Mode on or going for manual Night Mode whenever possible. You'll get images with less noise, more details, and nicer colors, at the expense of an oversharpened look. Note that Night Mode shots on the ultrawide take even more to capture than on the main sensor, and they're never as good.

Night Mode samples from the ultrawide

The zoom shots at night are soft and noisy, and get progressively softer and noisier the less ambient light you have around. There's a point of overall lighting up to which one could argue that these were barely usable in a pinch, but once that point is reached they're best trashed. There's no dedicated 2x option in Night Mode, so we didn't test that, although you can 'hack' your way around it by using pinch to zoom. We're pretty sure most people will never go that route, hence why we didn't either.

Nighttime 2x zoom samples

Selfies come out great during daytime, with a wide dynamic range and pleasantly saturated colors - a look most people seem to enjoy a lot. Detail levels are good too, while the autofocus helps keep your face in focus no matter what your arm's length may be.

Selfies, day and night, Portrait mode off/on

Portrait Mode seems okay as well, although the blur is very, very subtle compared to what the competition offers. At night this subtlety makes it pretty hard to identify which selfies were shot in Portrait Mode and which weren't, especially in low ambient lighting, since then all of them look very blurry anyway. We'd avoid Portrait Mode selfies at night, and for normal shots we'd go for backlit environments. If you can still find some light around you, the results aren't half bad, but they're very far from what the main rear camera can deliver.

Overall then, the Zenfone 9's cameras are perfectly adequate, but they don't make us scream with joy. They're definitely not disappointing in any way, but they also seem like they're not really trying very hard to beat the handset's competitors in any way. That may be Asus simply hoping the size would sell this device regardless, or it may be a lack of resources pointed in the camera direction. While we can't say you'd ever feel let down by these shooters, you're also probably never going to be truly wowed by them either.