The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is a high-spec phone that doesn't do enough to earn its 'Ultra' name

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra two-minute review

If you're going to call a smartphone ‘ultra’, it needs to embody that adjective. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a top-tier camera system. The Motorola Edge 50 Ultra has mind-boggling charging speeds and a chic textured look. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has a stylus (and lots more besides).

Throughout my testing of the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra, I couldn't quite put my finger on what made it worthy of the 'ultra' designation. It’s undoubtedly a highly capable premium Android phone, but in the competitive mobile market, ‘good’ just isn’t good enough.

The latest entry in Asus’ one-per-year line of flagship Zenfone mobiles, the Zenfone 12 Ultra is another top-spec handset that costs a blisteringly large amount of money. On paper, it's a stablemate of the best Android phones and best iPhones – and it certainly competes with those devices in some areas.

Indeed, if you look at the specs sheet below, you’ll see that the Zenfone 12 Ultra bears all the hallmarks of a premium smartphone. Its Snapdragon 8 Elite processor provides a huge amount of processing power, and its giant 6.78-inch display is great for gaming or streaming movies. The phone's three-lens rear camera array also gives shutterbugs much to delight in.

Certainly, from a specs perspective, there's nothing to dispute the Zenfone 12 Ultra's status as an 'ultra' phone. But that's no longer enough.

All of those aforementioned ‘ultra’ phones go that extra mile to justify the suffix, offering unique features or specs that make their hefty price tags seem almost reasonable. I don’t see any such selling point in the Zenfone 12 Ultra. It’s not ‘ultra’, it just is. Ironically, the lack of a non-ultra Zenfone 12 seems to underline this fact.

If you were to ask Asus, the company would likely say that the killer additions here are the phone's AI features. Most new phones nowadays tout a long list of ‘AI features’, a buzzword given to what we’d otherwise call ‘new software tools’ or, less forgivingly, ‘unnecessary software extras’ – but you need to call everything ‘AI’ in today's tech landscape.

Among the Zenfone 12 Ultra’s AI features are an article summary tool, call translation, a feature that creates AI-generated wallpapers, and plenty of AI-powered camera tools. Now, regardless of the usefulness of many of these features (how many people actually phone someone else who doesn't have a language in common?) and the unproven interest of normal tech buyers in AI features, they don’t allow the Zenfone 12 Ultra to collect the 'ultra' suffix for one simple reason – so few of them are actually new. Honestly, the Zenfone 11 Ultra had most of them.

Speaking of the Zenfone 11 Ultra, the 12 Ultra barely brings any upgrades over it to the table. A newer chipset and some minor tweaks to the camera lenses are the only improvements I could discern. I checked the price of the now-year-old Zenfone 11 Ultra one week prior to the 12 Ultra’s release, and it was going for over a third off from Asus itself. So, you’d be saving loads of money on a pretty similar mobile.

What's more, the Zenfone 12 Ultra has even more similarities to the recent Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro. Their appearances are near-identical, as are their specs, with the scant differences being the 12 Ultra's smaller battery and a refresh rate that doesn’t go quite as high, and the ROG Phone's trigger sensors and LED back panel.

Okay, let's take a breath. I may sound down on the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra in this review, but it's undoubtedly a good phone. It provides a top-tier experience across the board and I enjoyed using it throughout my testing process.

That said, Asus loaned me the device for review purposes, meaning I didn’t have to part with a scary amount of my salary to buy it. When you factor in the phone's high price, it’s hard to see why you should opt for the Zenfone 12 Ultra over its equally expensive rivals – or, for that matter, mid-range rivals that offer similar specs for a dramatically lower price.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: price and availability

• Released in February 2024
• Costs €1,099.99 in European markets
• US, UK, and Australian availability unconfirmed for now

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra was launched in early February 2024, a year on from its predecessor, and with nary a standard or Pro sibling to speak of.

At the time of writing, it's only available in European markets for a price of €1,099.99, which will net you 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. "As for pricing and availability in the US, UK, and Australia", Asus told TechRadar, "we have yet to get a clear date or price at this moment." That said, we expect the Zenfone 12 Ultra to launch in at least some of these regions soon.

For a little bit of context, the Zenfone 11 Ultra started at $899.99 / £869.99 (around AU$1,450) for its 12GB/256GB starter model. There was also a 16GB/512GB model, which offers a better price comparison to the Zenfone 12 Ultra, but it was only on sale in the UK (for £949.99). The Asus Rog Phone 9 Pro, meanwhile, is available globally for $1,199.99 / £1,099.99 / AU$1,999.99.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: specs

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: design

• Blocky phone that looks like predecessor
• Still has a 3.5mm jack
• IP68 protection

There’s no getting around it: the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is a blocky phone. I won’t quite call it ‘ugly’, not when the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra lays claim to that term with such an iron rule, but it’s a little on the boring side.

It looks almost identical to the Zenfone 11 Ultra, and pretty similar to the ROG Phone 9 Pro, but without the lines pattern of the former and the ‘gamer chic’ of the latter.

It’s a big phone, measuring 183.8 x 77 x 8.9 mm and weighing 220g, so if you remember how Asus used to cater to the small-phone market with its Zenfones, you’ll be disappointed. It stretched my hands out and I’ve got fairly average-sized mitts, and it was a pretty big burden in the pocket too.

The right edge of the mobile has the power button – pretty easy to reach, despite the phone’s big size – and the volume rocker, which was a little harder to stretch to. There’s also an in-screen fingerprint sensor, positioned higher up than on other phones, which took a little getting used to.

Talking of acclimatizing, the USB-C charging port on the phone’s bottom edge isn’t right in the middle. Instead, it’s to the left – as far as I’m aware, Asus is the only company that uses this design quirk. There’s nothing wrong with it, once you get through the first few days of jamming your charger into the wrong place. There’s another novelty here too, in the form of a 3.5mm headphone jack. How many mobiles cater to wired headphone users these days?! Props to Asus for that.

I mostly used the Zenfone 12 Ultra in a protective case (provided) but even when I didn’t, it took drops and bumps like a champ. It has an IP68 rating, so it can withstand dust ingress, as well as brief drops in the tub or pool.

• Design score: 3.5 / 5

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: display

• 6.78 inches, 1080 x 2400 resolution
• 144Hz refresh rate max, though usually at 120Hz
• A few display customization features

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra has a nice big display: it’s 6.78 inches diagonally, which explains how much of a hand-stretch the mobile itself is.

The screen’s resolution is FHD+ or 1080 x 2400 — that’s pretty standard for most smartphones, although you’d be forgiven for wanting a little more at this price range.

Mind you, the phone's refresh rate is super fast at 144Hz (good luck finding many games to utilize that spec, though) and the max brightness is nice and high at 2500 nits. In typical use, you can expect a buttery smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

There's another feature here I love to see in smartphones: a color temperature and balance mode for adjusting the way the screen looks. Max saturation with the warmest possible temperature? Don't mind if I do!

• Display score: 4 / 5

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: software

• Android 15 with optional Asus overlay
• Only two years of OS updates
• AI features aren't very useful

In a pretty unusual move for an Android phone, you actually have your pick between two software systems when you first boot up the Zenfone 12 Ultra. Both are technically Android 15, but you can choose between stock Android and Asus’ reskinned version. The differences are minimal but it's nice to be given the choice.

Stock Android is, if you don’t know, the standard Google-made version of the Android operating system, and it’s popular for being quite clean-looking. However, it misses many custom features that certain other versions of Android have. Asus doesn’t add any of these features in its own version, mind; it’s just a redesign for how menus and icons look.

Whether you pick stock or Asus Android, you’re getting software that’s quite minimal, which is a good thing; there are few pre-installed apps (beyond lots of Google ones) and a smartly laid-out quick-settings menu with big icons that are easy to press.

Asus has only promised two years of software updates for the Zenfone 12 Ultra, which isn’t a particularly ‘ultra’ commitment given how many years of updates rivals offer. That doesn’t mean it’ll stop working after two years, but you won’t get new features added after that point.

As mentioned in the introduction to this review, a few AI features on the Zenfone 12 Ultra seem to be its main selling point, but I wasn’t hugely impressed by any of them. The option to use them is often buried in menus (to use the AI article summarizer, for instance, you need to go into the browser’s ‘share’ menu to share it with the summary tool) and they were often pretty slow to work. In fact, for summarizing articles online, I found it quicker to literally just read the article than to wait for the summary tool to work.

You have to download extra kits for most of the AI features, too, and they’re pretty big, often several GB each. I can see these tools eating up a fair amount of storage space.

I’m always a little cynical of AI features on phones, with most of them seemingly designed to fix problems that no one actually has, and offered in lieu of actual improvements to a given device. Suffice to say, I never used these AI features on the Zenfone 12 Ultra beyond my obligatory testing of them.

• Software score: 3.5 / 5

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: cameras

• 50MP main, 13MP ultra-wide and 32MP telephoto lenses
• 32MP selfie snapper
• Scene optimization comes in clutch

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra may not offer the megapixel overload of its rivals, but it covers its bases.

On the back of the phone is a 50MP main camera, which is joined by a 13MP ultra-wide and a 32MP telephoto, the latter of which can reach 3x optical zoom.

All three combine to give you a decent level of versatility and control over the shots you take (as long as you don't want to go above the 30x digital zoom cap), and there's largely a consistency between image quality at these ranges

Coming in clutch is the image optimization and HDR, which was quick to punch up the contrast and saturation of pictures to improve their vibrancy without making them look unnatural. Look at the curry bowl or football field images below as cases in point; neither looked as bright in real life as they do on camera.

These improvements increase the Zenfone's camera grade from 'fine' to 'good', even if the phone misses the extra lenses, sensitive sensors, and super-high-res MP counts of its competitors. That said, the latter would have been preferable for situations in which the AI optimization didn't step in, like in the pizza pic below.

Another thing to note is that photos often took longer to capture than I'd expect; I'd often press the shutter button and assume the photo had been taken, only to move the phone and end up with a blurry end image. My advice to owners would be to hold the Zenfone 12 Ultra in place for a few seconds longer than you think you need to, or else you'll end up with a long list of camera reel mistakes.

The selfie camera hits 32MP, and its result is largely similar to the rear ones: it has the potential to make some bright and bold pictures, and succeeds most of the time, thanks to software.

The phone can record video in 8K/30fps, 4K/60fps, or down to HD/480fps in the slow-mo realm.

The Zenfone 12 Ultra also has a small selection of extra modes. Some, like Night and Portrait, work well; the latter was great at balancing contrast and exposure, as you can see in the photo below, and Portrait was fantastic at adding a natural-looking bokeh and also balancing the colors and tones of a shot.

There are a few modes being touted as 'AI' ones too, despite the fact that almost all camera software features use artificial intelligence in some way or another. These include AI Panning, which creates a "dynamic focus effect" on a moving object, and in effect, this is very similar to Portrait mode. The other is AI Tracking, which lets you record a video of something moving and it'll output a zoomed-in photo that keeps the moving subject framed center. I can see this being situationally very useful, although I only ever found myself using it for testing's sake.

• Camera score: 4 / 5

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra camera samples

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Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: performance and audio

• Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset
• Fast for gaming and everyday use (mostly)
• Range of audio options

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra really embodies the ‘ultra’ in its name when it comes to performance: it’s a certifiable beast.

The processor at work here is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is the chipset you'll find inside many of the current best Android phones (at the time of writing, at least) and it tells. It’s paired with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.

Games were snappy to play, and could easily handle the highest graphical settings; they didn’t lag or stutter once and, in the most noticeable improvement (in my mind) over a lesser chipset, they were really quick to open too.

In a Geekbench 6 multi-core test, the Zenfone 12 Ultra returned a score of 9,818, putting it in the higher echelons of phones we’ve tested. For context, Geekbench’s own rankings mark the iPhone 16 Pro at a score of 8,528 (though no recent 8 Elite-toting phones are listed).

The speed is mostly noticeable in other parts of the phone, too, for example when you’re trying to edit a big photo. However, I noticed that the AI features could cause the phone to slow down noticeably. This isn't a deal-breaker, especially given that most of the features take only a second to use, but the minor slowdown was still noticeable.

The Zenfone 12 Ultra has stereo speakers and, in a surprisingly retro turn, a 3.5mm headphone jack. As a result, audio fans have a choice as to how they’d like to listen to content on this phone, which is a rarity in this day and age.

• Performance score: 5 / 5

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: battery life

• Pretty big 5,500mAh battery
• Lasts for over a day of use
• 65W charging, 15W wireless

The Zenfone 12 Ultra packs a 5,500mAh battery — that's pretty big, but it’s also necessary for a phone of this size and power.

When I used the Zenfone as a normal mobile (i.e. not as a gaming phone) it could reliably coast through a single day of use and reach mid-way into the second day without trouble, but I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say it’s got two-day battery life.

When I did go heavier on the gaming side of things, I was happy with how well the Zenfone 12 Ultra could handle a few hours of gaming without losing too much battery — it’s hard to be scientific when talking about experiential battery use, but the phone lost charge slower than lots of other handsets I’ve tested recently.

Charging is a little slow. That feels silly to say for a phone with 'fast charging', but it’s at 65W, which is slower than lots of its rivals. There’s also 15W wireless charging.

• Battery score: 3.5 / 5

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: value

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is an undeniably pricey premium phone. While an argument could be made that no phones in this price range really offer value for money, it's doubly the case with the Asus.

I say this because it doesn't really offer any killer features, either over its predecessor or comparatively priced rivals, that make it a must-buy. When you cost this much, specs alone will only get you so far.

If you can find the Zenfone 12 Ultra at a meaty discount, it's potentially more deserving of your money, but I'm talking a 25% discount as a minimum for that to be the case.

• Value score: 2.5 / 5

Should you buy the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: Also consider

If you want other 'ultra' smartphones to compare the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra to, here are some other similar-priced picks.

How I tested the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra

• Review test period = 2 weeks
• Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
• Tools used = Geekbench 6, Geekbench ML, GFXBench, native Android stats

To properly test the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra, I used it daily for two weeks; this doesn't include a short period beforehand when I set it up, took the review photos, and played a few games on it.

The testing of the handset occurred in two parts. The first saw me run benchmark tests, take sample photos, and run down the battery. The other was more experiential; I used the handset for personal things like music and video streaming, social media scrolling, mobile game-playing, and other everyday tasks.

At the time of this review's publication, I've been writing reviews for TechRadar for exactly 6 years (happy anniversary, me!). I've reviewed countless smartphones in that time, including multiple Asus models as well as headphones, smartwatches, and tablets.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed February 2025