The Asus ZenFone 6 is a reasonably priced mid-range smartphone (starting at £499) with all of the camera app features you expect to see on smartphones nowadays, an excellent battery and one really standout feature - a flip camera module.

Of course, the flip camera is a really cool feature that grabs your attention but a fun piece of tech is no good if it can't capture decent images so shall we find out just how good the portraits, selfies and other images captured with the Asus ZenFone 6 really are?  

One image can change us.

A picture, a moment can change the way we feel. Change how we see ourselves. Change our understanding and change the rules. Provoke and change history.

MPB puts photo and video kit into more hands, more sustainably. Every month, visual storytellers sell more than 20,000 cameras and lenses to MPB. Choose used and get affordable access to kit that doesn’t cost the earth. Sell the kit you’re not using to MPB. Trade in for the kit you need to create. Buy used, spend less and get more. Buy. Sell. Trade. Create.

Asus ZenFone 6 Features

The standout feature of the Asus ZenFone 6 is, of course, the flip camera module. The unit features a 48MP Sony main camera and 13MP 125-degree ultrawide secondary camera which you can use to shoot landscapes then when you want to capture a selfie in the same location, hit the camera rotate button and the smartphone flips the camera module around. When using the main camera, you can capture 48MP or 12MP images but 48MP images don't support HDR+ or effects. 

There's no zoom but you do get access to Phase Detection Auto Focus, a Portrait mode with bokeh and beauty options, a Night mode for low light photography and an auto panorama mode. Plus, you can shoot manually in Pro mode and 4K video is supported. Also, as the camera module flips, this means you can capture selfie videos in 4K at 60fps - something bloggers may find useful. 

Away from the camera, a Snapdragon 855 chipset is built in along with 128GB or 256GB of storage and the battery is pretty huge at 5000mAh! The Corning GorillaGlass 6 display is also rather impressive measuring 6.4-inch and as there's no notch or hole cutout, it looks clean/slick. 

Key Features

• Flip Camera: 48MP f/1.79 main camera and 13MP f/2.4 125-degree ultrawide secondary camera
• Phase Detection Auto Focus, Motion Tracking
• Snapdragon 855 chipset
• 6.4-inch, FullHD+ display with Corning Gorilla Glass 6 
• 5000mAh battery 
• HDR+ Mode 
• 48MP & 12MP images 
• Night mode 
• Portrait mode
• Change the angle of the camera from 0-180 degrees 
• Auto-panorama
• 4K video 
• Headphone jack
• Stereo speakers
• 64GB/6GB RAM or 256GB/8GB RAM 

Asus ZenFone 6 Handling

The mid-range camera phone market is a bit full currently and the Asus ZenFone 6 doesn't really do anything in terms of looks to stand out. In comparison to other smartphones, such as the Huawei P30, it doesn't look quite as good but the curved Gorilla Glass, curved aluminium sides and glass back make it comfortable to hold. The supplied case is a bit weird with big cutouts but you could describe the overall design of the ZenFone 6 a bit strange, I suppose. 

As for its size, it's big but with most smartphones offering over 6-inches of display nowadays, it doesn't look overly large. In fact, it's smaller than the OnePlus 7 Pro which also has some clever camera tech built in. However, when you consider the camera tech that's built into the ZenFone 6, as well as the impressively big 5000mAh battery, it's actually surprising the smartphone isn't bigger than it is. 

Bezels are small and thanks to the flip camera, there's no notch or in-display camera so you get a screen-to-body ratio of 92%. As for the screen itself, you can view it clearly, it's bright and sharp. Impressively so to say it's an LCD. 

Turn your attention to the bottom of the phone and you find a headphone jack along with the USB-C port. The phone has stereo speakers. To the side are the usual control buttons and on the back is a perfectly placed fingerprint sensor. Above this sits the camera unit with 2 lenses and a flash in the centre of them. When you flip the camera, the back of the smartphone does look a little odd with a rectangular hole in it but we're pulling teeth a bit really. 

We've already said that the camera module is a cool thing that's fun to play around with but we do have some concerns with its sturdiness as if you jiggle it (don't do this by the way) there's some serious movement. In fact, you can manually open/close the unit (again, don't do this) which isn't a good thing and it just doesn't feel quite as resilient as the pop-up camera on the OnePlus 7 Pro does.  The metal block it's built into uses a mechanical mechanism to change it from the rear camera to selfie-ready and it does make a rather obvious whirring noise when it does. You can angle the flip camera manually which is a nice touch but it does seem a bit clunky when doing this and not as smooth as hitting the flip camera button. 

Overall, the flip camera is a quirky, fun feature that has potential but it probably still needs a bit of work to make it more robust. 

As for the cameras built into the unit, you get a 48MP main camera and a 13MP ultrawide secondary camera but there's no optical zoom or a telephoto lens. As the rear cameras turn into the front-facing cameras, the selfie camera has the same specs and you can even capture group shots thanks to the ultrawide lens. Motion tracking is built in along with Phase Detection Auto Focus. 

Thanks to Quad Bayer technology, you can capture 48MP or 12 MP images (main camera only), something we'll compare in our performance section, and various modes are built into the camera app which includes HDR+, a portrait mode, night mode and auto panoramas. You don't get access to as many modes, as you do on the Huawei P30 but the main ones are there. You can also shoot manually, should you want to. 

The camera app is straightforward, easy to navigate and is very similar to any other native camera app built into smartphones. 

For those of you who like numbers, we ran an AnTuTu benchmark, and the phone scored an impressive 389747. The Geekbench 4 score is 3525 (single-core), and 11222(multi-core).

Battery life - The battery is rated at 5000mAh which is huge and you won't have problems with the battery depleting too much on a typical day's use.