Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: Good, but definitely not Ultra

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra makes a great first impression, but then trips up and lands face-first. It's a powerful phone, it's an efficient phone, its price is competitive and its camera stabilization is second to none. But the fact there's no U.S. availability, and currently no confirmed price or release date for the U.K., plus an overall lack of hardware and software upgrades from the Zenfone 11 Ultra, mean it's going to stick in your mind for the wrong reasons.

In theory, any phone shopper could find something to like in this new Asus flagship, and you'll see them all on display throughout this Zenfone 12 Ultra review. But in such a competitive market, where software and AI features and camera quality are critical, you'll also see why familiar options from Samsung, Google and OnePlus are on our best phones guide, and this phone, sadly, is not.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Specs

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Price and availability

At €1,099, with only one 16GB/512GB version offered, the Zenfone 12 Ultra is €100 more than the Zenfone 11 Ultra cost, although the same if you account for the increased default storage, and cheaper than then the Asus-made alternative, the ROG Phone 9 Pro.

But more importantly, the latest model costs not only less than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, or the OnePlus 13, but less than a Galaxy S25 Plus, the closest comparable device. It's the same price as a Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, but when you factor in that Asus offers more default storage than its rivals, it's still a superior deal. We don't have U.K. pricing yet to compare it fully, but the Euro pricing levels should hold true for GBP too.

Unlike the Zenfone 11 Ultra, this model's not coming to the U.S. directly. That's not an insurmountable hurdle with third-party retailers and resellers, but it does make it a little harder than just picking up a phone that is stocked by your local Best Buy or Verizon store.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Design and display

Last year's Zenfone was hardly a complex-looking phone, but the Zenfone 12 Ultra is even plainer, with the matte-textured back panel featuring only a centered Zenfone logotype and a small Asus icon in the camera block for decoration. This is especially clear in the case of the black version of this phone (featured in this review), but the pink/white or green versions appear more lively for anyone who wants more of a statement.

Measuring 6.78 inches and 7.76 ounces, the Zenfone 12 Ultra is similar in size to other leading Android phones, but a touch lighter. (There's still no sign of a replacement for the small but perfectly formed Zenfone 10, which is even today one of the best small phones you can buy.)

The AMOLED display has an FHD resolution, while its rivals offer higher QHD resolutions. But the Zenfone 12 Ultra claws points back with its enhanced smoothness. It's capable of a 1 - 120Hz adaptive refresh rate like other premium phones, but the Zenfone also offers a 144Hz mode for compatible apps.

We weren't able to measure the brightness of the Zenfone 12 Ultra's display in our lab. But holding the Asus next to other devices displaying the same webpage, I noted that the Zenfone is not as bright as the Pixel 9 Pro XL, currently the brightest phone we've tested. The Asus is instead closer in brightness to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, with the same sort of cooler default color temperature.

Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protects the Zenfone 12 Ultra's display while IP68 water/dust resistance keeps unwanted particles and liquids out of its innards like last year. And also like last year, a headphone jack can be found on the Zenfone 12 Ultra's bottom edge, on the other side from the off-center USB-C port.

Any audio gear you plug in is enhanced by a Dirac Virtuo for Headphones audio codec, but to be honest just seeing a 2025 phone still ship with this once-basic feature would have been good enough.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Cameras

Asus' big camera upgrade this year is another improvement to the Zenfone's signature gimbal-stabilized main camera. But the sensors it's using - a 50MP main one, a 13MP ultrawide, 32MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom and 32MP selfie - are all the same resolution as last year's model.

Similar hardware doesn't necessarily mean no change to the camera quality though, so I took the Zenfone 12 Ultra, alongside the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S25, on a couple of trips into London to capture what you see below.

First up is a main camera photo of Oxford Circus between the Zenfone and the iPhone. The Asus' shot is bluer than iPhone 16 Pro Max, and not quite as sharp in the details. It's easier to read the signs around the crossing in the iPhone image, and see the texture of the road surface.

Similarly, we see dimmer colors in the Zenfone's take on the entrance to Cardinal Place versus the Galaxy S25. This helps in the case of the glowing letters on the round display in the middle of the plaza, but otherwise makes the scene a little drab.

I also tried the Zenfone 12 Ultra's main camera in night mode, with a scene near Kings Cross station against iPhone 16 Pro Max. The Asus' image shows less glow from the lights in the tree, which helps preserve some of the finer branches and other elements. But the extra color in the iPhone shot, particularly in areas distant from the light sources, gives the image a more lively look.

Leaving the main camera behind, we come to this ultrawide image of the Tudor gazebo in Soho Square Gardens. Compared with the Galaxy S25, the Zenfone has a brighter and less saturated photo, but also one with less dynamic range. It's easy to see how much the gray marks on the wall of the gazebo increase in darkness and size on the Galaxy S25.

This 3x telephoto comparison of Westminster Cathedral shows the Zenfone 12 Ultra at its weakest. The shot is darker and fuzzier than the Galaxy S25's, although one could be kind by noting the contrast of the Asus helps show off the brickwork in clearer fashion.

Our final photo comparison is a portrait selfie, again with the Galaxy S25. It's the Zenfone that skews warmer and darker this time, to the extent it's hard to figure out where the bokeh effect begins and ends. It has caught the edge of my glasses with the blurring unfortunately, whereas the Samsung cuts around them neatly while keeping the shot appealingly bright.

Before we move on from the cameras, we've got a video sample to look at, once again against the Galaxy S25. Because the Zenfone 12 Ultra uses a gimbal-stabilized main camera, it should in theory be much better at taking shaky action shots than other flagship cameras, which use a combination of sensor/lens and electronic stabilization.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Stabilized video - YouTube

Watch On

Galaxy S25: Stabilized video - YouTube

Watch On

The Galaxy S25's maximum stability mode enabled is hardly bad for a purely software-based option, but my footsteps along this footbridge over a train track are far more obvious in that clip than in the Zenfone's. Plus, the S25's FOV is smaller, presumably as a way to cut out additional camera motion.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Performance

Fitting a phone with a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip and 16GB of RAM is exactly what you'd want to see from a flagship Android phone in 2025, and fortunately that's what Asus has gone for with the Zenfone 12 Ultra. But its scores are a little on the low side compared to phones with the same chip, especially when it comes to graphics.

A session of Ex Astris at maximum settings backed the test results up. The game mostly ran fine, but there were occasional hiccups in the frame rate that I didn't notice on the Galaxy S25 Ultra or OnePlus 13.

It's an easy choice when it comes to the Zenfone 12 Ultra's storage: it's 512GB or nothing. But that's a large amount of storage for the price, with the S25 Plus and Ultra starting at 256GB, and the Pixel 9 Pro XL at 128GB.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Battery and charging

The 5,500 mAh battery found in the Zenfone 12 Ultra isn't any different from the one in the Zenfone 11 Ultra, but it's still on the larger side compared to similarly large phones.

In my YouTube-based battery test, the Zenfone 12 dropped 11% after three hours of 1080p video and 50% brightness. For comparison, the S25 Ultra lost 15% on this test, the Honor Magic7 Pro 20% and OnePlus 13 14%. That's a strong result for the Asus, although part of this could be down to the display being lower resolution and dimmer than the other phones mentioned here.

65W wired and 15W wireless charging is back for the Zenfone 12 Ultra. Using a ROG Phone charger, the Zenfone 12 filled to 42% in 15 minutes, 81% in 30 minutes and 100% in 47%. There's no included charger in the EU model, but any adequately powerful charger/cable combination that supports the USB Power Delivery 3.0 or PPS standards should be able to charge the Zenfone at full speed.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra: Software and AI

Asus keeps things simple with the AI abilities of the Zenfone 12 Ultra. Familiar but handy features include live translation and noise cancelation for voice calls, audio transcription, text translation, AI wallpaper generation Magic Fill and Unblur for removing or sharpening-up images. Google Circle to Search is here too to help you launch into a query with just a tap and a swipe.

While summarization is one of the standard AI features on recent smartphones, the Meta Llama 3-powered version on the Zenfone 12 Ultra is a centerpiece. I especially like how your summaries automatically get stored in the AI Article Summary app, which then acts as a mini reading list for articles you've asked the phone to distill for you. While the names of the articles don't translate well (you can change these yourself if you like), the summaries themselves are on par with other services of this type.

It's also been fun trying out semantic search for the Photos and Settings apps, like we've seen on the Galaxy S25 series. This lets you find a photo or option to tweak by describing vaguely what you're after. This also works for finding functions in a small selection of other default apps via the system/app search window in the app drawer, which can be quicker than swiping through pages of apps to find the one you're after.

While five to seven years is now the typical support period for Android phones post-launch, Asus is still committing to just two years of OS updates and four years of security updates. That's not great value for money if you were hoping to keep this phone going for several years to come.

Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra review: Verdict

The irony is that despite going for a more mainstream size, the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra's ended up a niche product, just like the small Zenfones of the past.

This isn't to say there's no reason to buy the Zenfone 12 Ultra. It has a strong battery life and top-tier performance, and offers a good value for money for a phone of its size. Plus, its unique gimbal-mounted camera remains a potential deal-clincher for some users.

I'd endorse the Zenfone more heartily if it had made more hardware upgrades. The Galaxy S25 mostly got away without doing this it because of its revamped AI features that show new and useful applications of the technology.

But the Zenfone 12 Ultra is currently too far behind with its AI tech to pull off the same gambit, and won't get many software updates to help close the feature gap, even if the implementation of things like the AI summary app or semantic search is done well.

You might be the right type of person for a Zenfone 12 Ultra if you fancy some of the ROG Phone 9 Pro experience for a cheaper price but without the glowing, aggressive styling or more-specific gaming features.

That goes double if you're not too interested in smartphone photography, the main aspect that rival phones in this bracket have over the Zenfone.

But personally I'd look at the far more readily available Galaxy S25 Plus or Ultra, Pixel 9 Pro XL or OnePlus 13 before the Zenfone 12 Ultra, depending on whether you prefer cutting-edge AI features and better software support,or overall value and feature quality.