ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro Review: Snapdragon 888+ doesn’t give it an edge

Paco Zheng — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 13:28:52 +0000

After entering the second half of the year, Qualcomm updated its top chipset, the Snapdragon 888 Plus with upgraded performance. ROG, as one of the top gaming brands, naturally was quick to bring this new chip to its gaming phone lineup.

ASUS officially released the ROG 5s series in August, which was also the first gaming phone featuring the new 888 Plus chipset in the second half of 2021.

In July, we made a video about our pick of best gaming phones released in the first half of 2021. In that video, the ROG Phone 5 won the title with its stable performance and excellent gaming features. And now we are wondering whether the upgraded series has any significant improvements. So this time we bought in the top version of the ROG 5s series, the ROG 5s Pro, which comes with 18GB Ram and 512GB ROM.

I guess that is enough of an introduction, let’s check out the phone now.

ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro Review: Unboxing

The package of the ROG Phone 5s Pro still continues ROG phone’s unique hexagonal column shape.

When you open the box, there is the same AR comic for users to scan with the ROG Phone, when setting up the phone for the first time. And under this, the Phone is on the right side, and ROG attaches the aero-active cooler fan on the other side. Considering the high price and the thermal issue of the 888 platform, the included accessory seems to be reasonable and obviously necessary for heavy gamers with the ROG 5s Pro series. At the same time, it’s also a very useful operational accessory for gaming.

About its performance, we will talk it in detail in our performance test later. Let’s equip the fan accessory first.

ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro Review: Design & Display

Looking back at the phone. When compared to the standard version of the ROG 5 and ROG 5s, the Pro model still has some premium features over its design. But, to be honest, there are not many surprises over the design of the ROG 5S Pro since it still utilizes the same design as its predecessor, the ROG 5 Pro.

The most impressive detail of the 5S Pro’s design is the ROG Vision, a small display that shows a neon light effect. But the location of the window display is slightly different from the 5 Pro, which is closer to the central area of the back. It looks pretty cool, as it reminded me of the game Cyberpunk 2077. Apart from that, for now, it’s pretty useless as we couldn’t find more interesting customized content for the phone and also because it’s not useful when you are using the phone or playing games. Apart from this, from the design point of view, there’s almost no difference from its predecessor in the ROG 5S Pro.

For example, the new Asus ROG Phone Pro still follows the off-screen button design of its predecessor, including two shoulder buttons which could split into two-slide buttons respectively and two back slide buttons.

The display still uses a 6.79-inch Samsung AMOLED E4 panel with a 144Hz refresh rate, and the sampling rate is boosted up to 360Hz. It’s worth noting that the display is still the AMOLED display with the highest refresh rate. You don’t need to worry about the performance of the E4 display, which is almost the best display that you can have in the gaming phone market. The peak brightness for the full screen can reach up to 775 nits, while in the 20% window of the display, the figure even can go up to 1050, which made it look stunning when playing HDR content.

For audio, the ROG 5s Pro features dual symmetrical speakers to deliver stereo sounds, and it also reserves the 3.5mm earphone jack.

ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro Review: Performance & Gaming

Before testing its performance, we were quite sure that the ROG Phone 5s Pro has the best performance on the Android platform, not just because of the upgraded 888 Plus chipset, but also because of its amazing 18GB LPDDR5 Ram. To be honest, there’s almost no scenario that requires such high configuration on the Android platform. But that’s not what the brand ROG would consider. After all, it’s one of the few brands that keeps seeking the ultimate in performance.

What we are really curious about is that how much improvement it brings compared to its predecessor. First, let’s look at the benchmark results.

Well, from the benchmarks, there’s almost no gap between the ROG 5 and the ROG 5s Pro. Even the results of the Lenovo Legion 2 Pro powered by the 888 chipset can compare to the ROG 5s Pro. So we cannot draw the conclusion about the actual improvement of the 888 Plus if based on these benchmark results.

So let’s move to actual gaming. Well, the tests didn’t reveal any significant information about the improvement either. Because in the games like Genshin Impact and Nimian Legends, which are also the heaviest games that we can find on the Android platform, the ROG 5s didn’t achieve better frame rate results than the ROG 5. In fact, it’s slightly lower than the ROG 5 model. But it doesn’t mean that the 5s Pro got downgraded in actual gaming, since we didn’t run the games multiple times to reduce the errors. But we are still confident to say that the improvement is really unperceivable. Both of them are still the most powerful beasts in the gaming market.

And their thermal performance is also close to each other. Under X gaming mode, both of them fully released the performance of the chipsets. And consequently, their surface temperature could go up to around 55℃. And to be honest, the ROG 5s Pro under the X gaming mode is the hottest model that we’ve tested in 2021. I couldn’t even hold it in the last 10 minutes. And this made us realize why ROG was so generous to include the cooling fan right inside the box. After attaching the cooler, the heating situation got much better, with an acceptable holding temperature, that reduced by around 8 degrees. So if you’re not going to attach the cooling fan while gaming, our suggestion is, not to turn on the X mode. It won’t make a difference in most games.

For the gaming operations, the ROG 5s Pro feels almost the same as its predecessor. When you attach the cooling fan to the phone, you are able to have a more complicated combo operation with 8 fingers. But it’s really a challenge to get used to those slide buttons.

As for software support, to retain almost all the gaming features from the ROG 5 series, ROG has made them more detailed. For example, the brand not just provided with all the information about how the phone is performing, but you are also allowed to access more specific control over performance. There are several preset performance modes for users, and gamers can modify all the sub-options.

ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro Review: Cameras

Another big surprise of the ROG 5s Pro came from the cameras. It’s the first time that we like the cameras on a gaming phone so much. No matter from its SONY IMX686 64MP main camera or the super wide-angle lens with 13MP resolution, we really saw its potential that even compared to some flagship killers. Especially for the main camera, the images are sharp and bright with a true color presentation.

While for the wide-angle camera, It’s probably the widest viewing angle that I’ve ever seen on a smartphone.

Main Camera

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UltraWide Camera

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Macro Camera

ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro: Battery & Charging

As for battery and charging, it’s obvious that ROG tried to support your long gaming sessions with a 6000mAh battery. However, in our power-consumption test, the 6000mAh battery didn’t show significant advantage in gaming battery life. Especially under X mode, the power dropped quickly with heavy games. And with the included 67W charger, it took around 50mins to finish our charging test.

ASUS ROG Phone 5S Pro Review: Verdict

So that’s all about the new ROG gaming phone. Well, probably most of you would be a bit disappointed, just like me, after seeing very little real-life performance upgrades. But we also believe that most gamers who have already bought the ROG 5 series wouldn’t really care about the upgraded version. However, no doubt, the ROG 5s Pro is still the best gaming phone that we would recommend if you are looking for a new model in the market.

So what do you think about the top version of the ROG 5s series?