Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro review: power overwhelming

ROG Phone 9 and ROG Phone 9 Pro Intro

Table of Contents:

ROG Phone 9 and 9 Pro Specs

Faster than a speeding bullet

Of course, Asus went over the top with the hardware, to a point we wonder how it all fits in those phones. But subtlety has never been a part of the ROG Phone vocabulary!

The ROG Phone 9 and ROG Phone 9 Pro have very similar spec sheets. They mainly differ in the camera setup, as the Pro has a dedicated zoom lens, and the LED lights that adorn the phones’ backs — we’ll get to that in the next section. Otherwise, if you choose to save some money and not get the Pro — the regular model performs just the same, no corners cut!

The ROG Phone 9 models come with a pretty matte glass on the back, a metal frame, and a fullscreen front, like last year’s models. The screen is quite big, at 6.78 inches, but thanks to the super-thin bezels, it feels manageable. Well, as long as you are used to phones of the caliber of a Galaxy Note, Galaxy S Ultra, iPhone Pro Max, and other such big-screened handsets.

Of course, it has unique buttons, as always. The ROG Phones rock two shoulder triggers, which can be mapped for gaming. They are pressure-sensitive areas on the frame with ultrasonic tech beneath them, instead of actual mechanical buttons. You can edit and fine-tune the pressure they respond to, and the phone does give you a nice, clicky feedback through its vibration motor whenever a press is detected.

Your choice in colors is limited, though. The regular ROG Phone 9 comes in Phantom Black and Storm White. The Pro models only come in Phantom Black.

Where the ROG Phone’s flavor comes from is the lighting on the back. This time around, none of the models has an RGB-lit logo. Instead, both the Pro and the non-Pro have an area of dotted LED lights that can show a number of pre-made ROG animations, notifications, clock, and weather conditions. Or, you can upload your custom image, but there’s a ruleset for image resolution and colors, which you have to follow.

Asus calls these LED areas the AniMe Vision. As before, you can unlock special AniMe logos if you meet another ROG Phone user in the wild and tap your phones together. The ROG Phone 9 Pro has 648 LED dots and you can now play small games on it, too, when you need to quickly pass the time. Think games like Snake and Aero Invaders (kind of like Space Invaders but not quite), where you simply use the shoulder triggers to move left and right. Fun little touch.

The non-Pro ROG Phone has 85 dots, so its animations are much smaller and no games here.

But, with both phones, if you want them to be more subtle, simply disable AniMe from the Armoury Crate app (the gaming hub app that every ROG Phone has). The LEDs disappear under the matte glass back.

The display is an excellent AMOLED panel, made by Samsung. It now goes up to 185 Hz refresh rate, yes you read that right. Small caveat, you can only enable 185 Hz when in-game, from the Asus gaming console. We can barely complain here — the ROG Phones were already overkill at 165 Hz, but hey, more bragging rights!

The colors are pretty amped out of the box, but the good news is that Asus gives you 5 different color calibrations to pick from, plus extra sliders for warmth and saturation if you really want to get in there. We found it easy to get a warmer, more natural tone with the “Standard” and “Cinematic” options.

Peak brightness is rated at 2,500 nits for HDR, but the ROG Phone 9 models also comfortably hit 1,600 nits of fullscreen brightness, so they are perfectly visible outdoors.

As before, there’s a fingerprint scanner under the glass. It’s quick and accurate, but not ultrasonic tech, so it can be a bit picky if your hands are dry or if there’s some smudging.

ROG Phone 9 Pro Camera

Look… it’s a gaming phone. Not bad, though

Last year, we noted that the ROG Phone 8 made strides to give you a more… acceptable camera performance. That’s usually the weak spot of gaming smartphones — lots of R&D and money go into the performance, and the camera is an afterthought.

The ROG Phone 8 added a hybrid gimbal stabilizer, the ROG Phone 9 improves it with +5 degrees of wobble compensation, which is great. But how are the images?

Well, we don’t see a huge improvement in the ROG Phone 9 and 9 Pro cameras. The pictures are fine, don’t get us wrong. They have some sharpening issues, the dynamics are not super-wide, and the colors could use some extra pop. They can’t really compare to photos from a Galaxy S24 Ultra or an iPhone 16 Pro Max. That said, they can do perfectly fine if you are trying to capture some memorabilia inbetween your gaming sessions. I, personally, held on to the ROG Phone 8 pro for a few months last year, and didn’t find myself minding the camera.

Main Camera

The oversharpening is on display here, seen in the leaves and bricks in the cityscape shots. Also, the images have a pale look to them, due to the camera not being comfortable with wide dynamics, and the slightly washed-out colors.

Night shots look a bit better in terms of colors, with more saturation and life into them. However, the oversharpening becomes even more visible. And highlights can easily get burned out. But we did note that there’s slightly better night camera performance this year, so Asus has been working on it!

Zoom Quality

The zoom camera holds it together pretty well. Even at 10x zoom, we get a lot of good detail. Though noise is starting to creep in. We’d say up to 10x can still get you a “share-able” photo. The ROG Phone 9 Pro caps out at 30x, where it’s still usable, but more in a “help me see what’s on the far-away information board” type of way.

Selfies

The selfie camera has pretty good colors, though a slight struggle with dynamics, like its back-facing counterpart. In general, the selfies come out detailed and honest. They get a bit washed out in night time, but the front camera still holds it together — maybe up the saturation a bit after you’ve taken that night selfie.

Video Quality

The ROG Phone 9 Pro is capable of recording 8K footage at 30 FPS, if you even have where to view that. At 4K, the image looks pretty nice. We can see that hybrid gimbal stabilizer putting up extra work to smooth out our steps! The dynamics here are OK, and the colors are vibrant. Put side-to-side with an iPhone, the latter still records a more pristine-looking clip, but by itself the ROG Phone 9 camera is a fine recorder.

ROG Phone 9 and 9 Pro Performance & Benchmarks

Welcome to the Elite!

Here’s the Snapdragon 8 Elite — the first flagship SoC for Android phones built on a 3 nm process. More power, more energy-efficiency, and it certainly helps that we get to experience it on an ROG Phone. Asus truly shines when it comes to optimizing its phones to squeeze out the maximum out of the given hardware. If you want the most performance — go into X Mode. If you want more battery life — toggle Ultra Durable on. We typically just rely on the Dynamic Mode, which feels like it has no weaknesses, really.

Performance Benchmarks:

Yep, we have a contender to beat Apple’s A18 Pro. Standing toe-to-toe in Single-Core scores, hitting a higher result in Multi-Core in the GeekBench test. And, in the 3DMark stress test, the ROG Phone 9 Pro absolutely ate the competition for breakfast. Not only that, it didn’t even throttle. Admittedly, the ROG Phone 9 Pro automatically goes into X Mode when such demanding apps are detected, but it didn’t heat up, and it didn’t eat away at the battery more than other phones would.

Daily use performance is just lightning fast. Honestly, it may take you a while to get used to just how quick and responsive this phone is. Of course, any game on the Play Store runs at the highest settings.

And if you attach the AeroActive Cooler X accessory, you get two extra hardware buttons on the back of it, and prolonged cooling for long gaming sessions at peak performance.

The regular ROG Phone 9 comes with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB of storage for $999. Then, the ROG Phone 9 Pro will have 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage for $1,199. The all-out ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition comes with 24 GB of RAM, 1 TB storage, and the AeroActive Cooler X Pro included in the box, all for $1,499.

ROG Phone 9 and 9 Pro Software

Most of the special ROG features are held in an app called Armoury Crate. It’s the game launcher hub, but also the place you customize the AniMe Vision LED lights on the back, the way the shoulder triggers respond, and the lights of the AeroActive Cooler.

Here comes the bad news, though. Asus still promises 2 years of Android updates, and 4 years of security patches post release. That’s in stark contrast to Samsung and Google now committing to 7 years of overall updates. In a time when these flagship phones comfortably push beyond the $1,000 boundary, that’s an important point to consider.

The ROG Phones have always been endurance beasts, and the ROG Phone 9 series is no exclusion. The battery capacity has now been upgraded to 5,800 mAh and it just feels like it can go on forever. Check out these benchmark results:

Yeah, that’s 18 and a half hours of screen-on time for regular usage, more than 12 hours of gaming. Safe to say, we felt zero “battery percentage phobia” when using that phone in the day-to-day. We even took it out to take camera samples when it was at 24% and our only thought was “Yeah, it’ll last”.

Even if you end up emptying that tank, you can still charge it quickly with the included 65 W charger:

PhoneArena Charging Test Results:

You get up to 49% in only 15 minutes of charging. Less than an hour for the full 100%. Keeping in mind that this 49% can last you through the day comfortably, you can always get out of a pinch with minimum time on the charger.

The ROG Phone 9 series do support wireless charging, but it’s not Qi2 — Asus lists it as Qi 1.3. The specs sheet says 15 W, but it feels slower.

ROG Phone 9 and 9 Pro Audio Quality and Haptics

Unfortunately, since Asus moved the speakers to a bottom-firing woofer and a strong earpiece, instead of the front-firing stereo speakers of before, the audio quality dropped. Our favorite from the series was the ROG Phone 7, with its strong, detailed, and meaty sound, plus the subwoofer in the AeroActive Cooler that came out with it.

Here’s the good news — the speakers in the ROG Phone 9 are slightly better than the ROG Phone 8. There’s less of an upper midrange hump, and they feel more balanced. They are still kind of muffled in the low mids.

More good news — the new AeroActive Cooler X Pro has the subwoofer back to enhance that deep low end. Yes, the ROG Phone 9 sounds like a portable Bluetooth speaker, and yes you can enjoy music through it.

Even more good news — the ROG Phones still have headphone jacks!

The haptics feel great, as it should be on a gaming phone. They are precise, short, and pronounced, so you know exactly when you’ve tapped on the screen or pressed a shoulder pad.

Should you buy it?

The ROG Phone 9 Pro and the ROG Phone 9 are not joking around. They are packed to the brim with high tech, the optimization is flawless, and they are performance and endurance champs. It has the distinct, aggressive look, but reigned in a bit so you can rock it as a daily phone without looking like you are holding a gaming console up to your ear.There are a couple of drawbacks. The cameras, while usable, are not on par with other $1k phones out there. And the 2 year Android update commitment is not great.

That said, there’s a good reason why the ROG Phones have a strong following in the gaming niche. Asus hold nothing back and they are always the top performers to compare others to. They are truly an enthusiast’s smartphone. If you are in that niche, you have probably already decided on buying it. And we’re here to say — it won’t disappoint you!