The upcoming Asus ROG Phone 5 will be the first major gaming smartphone of the year when it goes official on March 10. DxO has already put it through its paces, revealing massive upgrades on the audio front.
Back in October, the DxOMark Audio test protocol was announced to rate and rank the audio playback and recording capabilities of smartphones in an objective and scientific fashion. Ahead of its launch, the Asus ROG Phone 5 was tested, emerging as the new top smartphone when it comes to audio performance — dethroning the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro which had a score of 76.
With an array of four microphones, a headphone jack and two symmetrical front-firing speakers, the ROG Phone 5 scored 79 points overall: 79 in recording and 78 in playback, topping both parameters.
On the playback front, DxoMark says that it has a very homogenous frequency response with “top-tier” timbre performance while being consistent across the range. While it’s amongst the loudest smartphones available, there is some additional pumping at the highest levels and a tad insufficient bass.
The Asus ROG Phone 5 also claimed the highest scores in tests for dynamics (energy level reproduction), spatial attributes with perfect channel balance, as well as for artifact distortion due to in-device processing and speaker output. It doesn’t top the charts for loudness but does offer even distribution allowing for precise adjustments.
As for recording, the gaming phone has “excellent microphone performance” with strong tonal balance across treble and mid-range, a very wide soundstage with easy localizability and distance rendering and very low distortion and artifacts in even the loudest environments. The signal-to-noise ratio does take a hit though. Once again, it leads the charts for artifacts, timbre and spatial performance.
The Asus ROG Phone 5 should serve most use cases well, be it for gaming, music, watching movies or recording. With only about two weeks for the launch, we can be hopeful to learn about its other features in the coming days.
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