Taiwanese company Asus has recently added another model to their popular ZenFone series—the ZenFone 2 Laser. The ZenFone 2 Laser comes with a moderate price tag, which is a little shy of $200.
With its reasonable price tag, this phone could be an excellent option for users looking for a budget smartphone with decent specifications.
Six months ago, its predecessor the ZenFone 2 hit the markets and has been able to garner positive reactions from users since then. The ZenFone 2 Laser has similar looks to that of its predecessor and is quite comfortable to hold.
It sports a curved body while the edges of the phone are thin at just 3.9mm, giving an overall sleek appearance to the device.
Though having a plastic body, the design and finishing of the device gives it an aristocratic appearance.
The phone retains the 5.5-inch screen of its predecessor that comes with an IPS LCD display along with a resolution of 1080p and a 401 ppi pixel density. The screen comes protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 4.
The ZenFone Laser 2 runs on Android Lollipop combined with the Asus Zen UI 2.0 and has a 64 bit Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor on the inside along with 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 405 GPU.
The screen of the Laser sports great viewing angles with superb color reproduction. The display has a great color calibration and the new color settings added by Asus to the device enhances it even further.
Using the device under direct sunlight may pose a problem for users as the device has somewhat poor sunlight readability.
A blue light filter toggle placed in the device’s notification shade makes it easier for users to read the display in low light surroundings.
The phone comes in two variants- one with 16GB of internal storage and the other with 32GB of it. The storage capacity of the device can be extended up to 128 GB using external SD card in its microSD slot.
The laser autofocus 13-megapixel camera of the device which comes with an aperture of F/2.0 gives the device its name. The camera comes accompanied with a Dual LED real tone flash which will work towards maintaining natural skin tones in pictures taken in low lights. The F/2.0 aperture is composed of 5 elements and produces images with great clarity.
It was claimed by Asus that their new laser autofocus system is amazingly fast which results in the enhancement of the camera and turns out laser-sharp images.
The front camera is of 5 megapixels and sports an 85-degree wide angle lens with the same F/2.0 aperture as that of its rear counterpart.
The Dual SIM feature of the device comes in handy. It supports Dual active SIM and thus users will be able to remain connected to both the cellular networks at the same time.
The device is LTE compatible and comes with the feature of selectable data connectivity which will allow users to choose which SIM to use to connect to data services through the settings menu of the device.
With ZenFone Laser 2, Asus has switched from the Intel chips that were used in earlier ZenFone models to the Qualcomm processor. This could turn out to be a negative point for the device if the distended Zen UI, affects the performance of the device which would lead to hampered user experience.
Unlike its predecessor, the Laser has a removable battery. The 3000mAh high capacity battery has enough juice in it to last through the day. The removable feature also allows users to replace a discharged battery with a charged one; given the user has an extra one, in case of emergencies.
Removal of the back cover of the device provides users access to the battery, the Dual SIM cards and the micro SD card slot.