Asus Zenfone Go Indepth Review

Today we have another Zenfone which is a low budget phone with some good powerful specs. The device is Asus Zenfone Go. It is priced Rs. 7,999 in India and available on Flipkart. The budget smartphone market is growing rapidly and every company is trying to capture the market share. So does the Asus Zenfone Go have potential to compete with other budget smartphones? Lets check our in-depth review. Firstly take a quick look at the specs.

Specifications of Asus Zenfone Go

• 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) display
• 1.3 GHz MediaTek MT6580 processor with Mali 400 MP2 GPU
• 2GB LPDDR3 RAM
• 8GB / 16GB internal storage, expandable memory up to 64GB with microSD
• Android 5.1 (Lollipop) with Zen UI 2.0
• Dual SIM
• 8MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, LED flash
• 2MP front-facing camera
• 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS
• Weight: 135g
• 2070 mAh battery

Hardware & Build Quality

Asus Zenfone Go is a good built phone. The slight curvy matt finish back cover feels good in hand. Obviously it doesn’t look that premium like Asus Zenfone Laser or other Zenfones. The back cover is made of plastic.

The smartphone has a 5.0 inch IPS LCD display on the front. On the top of it has a 3.5 mm headphone port. On the right edge it has a chrome finish power button and volume rocker button. Unlike other Asus Zenfones the power button is not placed on the top of the smartphone. On the back it has a 8MP camera with LED flash. At the bottom of the back cover we can find the speakers.

Under the smartphone the USB port is placed. In other Zenfones users were pretty disappointed with the power button placement but this time Zenfone Go has perfect power button placement. Still it offers the double tap feature which is really handy. The smartphone is perfect to hold in one hand. So in build quality and hardware part Asus has done a very good job.

Display

When in comes to the display the Zenfone Go has a 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) IPS LCD capacative display with 67.2% screen-to-body ratio and 294 ppi pixel density. Sadly there is no protection glass on the display. So you may need to use a tempered glass to get rid of any display damage. The display looks pretty good, the colour saturation, brightness is good. The viewing angles are also good. But like other Asus Zenfones the display is very reflective.

Performance & Gaming

The Asus Zenfone Go is powered by 1.3 GHz Quad core MediaTek MT6580 processor with Mali 400 MP2 GPU and 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM. It runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with Zen UI on the top of it. The device is pretty smooth both in software part and multitasking. There is no clear all apps feature in the multitasking so you have to remove every app manually.

We have tested some very high graphics intense games like Asphalt 8 Airbone, Modern Combat 5, Dead Trigger and it runs good enough. Though we have seen frame drops sometimes but still it’s playable. The phone doesn’t heat up much while playing heavy graphic intense games and it’s a good sign for gamers. So in performance and gaming the device works pretty descent being a budget phone.

Camera

The rear camera of this device is 8MP with f/2.0 aperture and LED flash. The camera performs just average. The colour of pictures looks good but somewhere it lacks the saturation. In bright light you will not notice much noise but in low light the noise levels are easily noticeable. The focus, defocus works good.

The front-facing camera is 2MP and it’s just average. With beautification mode turned on you will not get good images. When coming to the camera app it has rich features like skin toning, selfie panaroma, HDR mode. So overall we can say the camera is pretty average looking at the price point too.

Camera Samples:

Rear Camera

Front Camera

OS and Software

The device is running on Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box with Zen UI on the top of it. The software is pretty much smooth and usable with daily apps like Messenger, Whatsapp. When comes to the multitasking it also works fine. The Zen UI is heavily customizable and you can customize the device with latest Zenfone Themes available. There are also so many good stock wallpapers. The device is not coming with 4G LTE support which is a very big drawback.

Battery and Sound

The Zenfone Go has a 2070 Li-Po mAh user removable battery. The battery is pretty descent. With medium usage it will last a day and with heavy usage it will give around 8-10 hours of talktime.

The sound is also descent while watching movies and playing games. The call quality is also okay.

Final Verdict

Asus Zenfone Go a packed featured smartphone though it’s not the best at it’s price point as it’s missing the 4G LTE which other brands like Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime, Yu Yureka are providing. If you are looking for a 5 inch display phone with a descent performance and software then this is good to go. If you want a good camera then this device is not for you. Looking at the price-point the device is seemingly a slightly over-priced.

Looking to buy this device?

You can get it from Flipkart.