[Hands On] Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG Review

Its been quite a long time Asus has launched its Zenfone in India which created quite a buzz as they comes with nice build quality and provide good user experience as well. We had already reviewed Asus Zenfone 5 and Zenfone 6, today we had got our hands on Asus Zenfone 4.5 or Asus Zenfone 4 A50CG.

Inbox contents Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

When you open Zenfone 4.5 box you will get :-

• Zenfone 4.5
• Some manuals
• Micro USB cable
• Wall charger

There is no headphone inside box which means you have to buy them separately.

Build And Design Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

Like its elder siblings, Asus Zenfone 4.5 has same design language, it has got 4.5 inch of FWVGA display screen with screen resolution of 854×480 pixels, display is being protected by Corning Glass 3 which makes it scratch free. When you hold this device in hand you will get premium feel. It feels nice and solid in hand. Viewing angles on this phone are also good and you will be able to view it from almost all angles without any pixellation.

Front panel of this phone is mostly taken by display screen, just above screen you will find sensors, earpiece, led notification light, front camera as well and Asus branding. Below the screen you will find the Android capacitive touch buttons, it misses backlight but you will be used to once you start using it, and below it you will find a concentric circle pattern which we had seen in other Zenfone also.

At top you will find 3.5 mm Audio jack, at right you have power and volume rocker buttons, they has chrome finish and looks like metal although they don’t.

At left you have nothing, and at bottom you will find Micro USB port and a primary microphone, this phone dont have any secondary mic for noise cancellation.

At the back you will find a matte finish back panel which can be removed and give access to the SIM card and micro SD card slot, underneath back panel you will find 1,750mAh battery which is sealed and can’t be removed. At the back you will find an 8MP camera along with LED flash, we will talk about camera later in details. Below camera you have Asus branding and at the bottom you will find Zenfone branding, Intel branding and speaker grill as well. In our test speaker were able to throw out good amount of volume.

Hardware And Specs Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

If we talk about under the hood specs of Asus Zenfone 4.5 or Zenfone 4 A50CG, then it is powered by Intel Atom Z2520 dual-core processor ticking at 1.2GHz, it has got hyper threading technology which makes it to give performance equivalent of quad-core processor. It has got 1GB of RAM which makes task smother. While running normal apps we didn’t face any lag but yes while playing some heavy games we did face minimal lags.

If you talk about muti-tasking and switching between apps then it went smoothly, all apps open up and closed very smoothly. We had played games like Temple Run OZ, Subway Surfer and Candy Crush Saga and we didn’t face any lag, but if you play heavy games then you might face some lags but its OK and you can expect with a smartphone at this price tag.

It has a rear camera of 8MP which can record full HD videos and at front it has got a 0.3 MP camera which is below level as we are seeing more and more selfie focused smartphone which comes with the powerful front camera. For connectivity it has 3G, WiFi, GPS and Micro USB.

As we had mentioned earlier, Asus has released updates for Zenfone and now they support USB OTG functionality, which means you can attach USB cable via OTG cable and see stuff on your phone.

Software and UI Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

Unlike other Zenfone, Asus Zenfone 4.5 comes pre-loaded with Android 4.4 Kitkat and on top of it you will find ZenUI. Other Zenfone has recently got KitKat update as well. Asus ZenUI is quite smooth and has blue and white color combination which looks good.

On first boot you will find around 4.8GB of free storage out of 8GB and out of 1GB of RAM around 680 MB of RAM will be free for you which is quite good enough. On lock screen you have access to three shortcuts which are Dialer, Messaging and Camera.

Like other Zenfone it do comes with some pre-installed apps like What’s Next, an app for managing apps, Do It Later, app to manage your to do list, Share Link, Party Link, PC Link, and Remote Link, Asus WebStorage, a company’s cloud storage app which gives 5 GB free storage for a lifetime, and Omlet Chat, free instant messaging app.

Camera Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

Asus Zenfone 4.5 aka A50CG comes with an 8MP auto focus camera with LED flash, Auto-focus and BSI sensors. It also has a below average front facing camera of 0.3MP but back camera is very much decent at this price tag. Camera UI is also customized and you have access to several modes like HDR Mode, Low Light Mode and it also comes with continues shooting mode which allows you to take up to 100 images.

We tried taking images in low light and results were above average, all thanks to company’s low-light PixelMaster technology. While taking images outdoor in daylight we did find sometime images are over exposed. Again camera is good but it could be better.

Here are some Images shoot by us check them out, click on images to see them in full view :-

Video :-

Performance of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

In terms of performance this phone did perform very well in our test, we played games, played full HD videos and loaded heavy web pages and it took all smoothly. Here are some benchmarking test.

AnTuTu :- 18408

Quadrant Standard :- 6983

Mutli Touch Points :- 10

Nena mark 2 :- 58.7 fps

Battery Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

In the era of rapid technology innovation, battery is one of the department which still needs a lot of improvement, Asus Zenfone 4.5 houses 1750 mAh battery which lasted around 20 hours in our moderate usage.

Call Quality Of Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

Call Quality on this phone is good, in our test both end users were able to listen each other without any problem, Network strength was also good and we didnt faced any issue in this segment.

Full Hands-On Video :-

Final Verdict on Asus Zenfone 4.5 A50CG :-

At this time you will find lots of smartphones in the entry level segment, recently Google has also launched its Android One smartphone, Micromax Canvas A1, Spice Android One Dream, and Karbonn Sparkle V. Xiaomi Redmi 1S is also a good option in entry level. But as per us you should take a look at Asus Zenfone 4.5 if you are planning for a mid-range Android smartphone. You can find it on Flipkart.