The ASUS ROG Phone II Review: Mobile Gaming First, Phone Second

With a 6000 mAh battery, the ROG Phone II already promised out of the gate to have some substantial staying power. The big battery is meant to compensate for having additional features like the 120 Hz display and X Mode which might consume more battery during gaming. Nonetheless, in our standard Wi-Fi battery test, it smashes new records.

Setting the display to 200 nits, our web battery test simulates accessing webpages with a variety of features with scrolling – standard operation for any smartphone.

In the default 60Hz mode that the phone ships in, it results in over 16 hours of runtime, that caters for any ‘all-day’ battery claim, and is certainly above any other smartphone on the market. Moving to a perminent 120 Hz mode loses about 20% of the battery life.

Similarly, the PCMark battery test also dropped 20%, however the average score in the PCMark battery test on 120 Hz mode did increase by 17% (10746 vs 9152) , indicating the tradeoff that a higher refresh screen might bring.

Not being the standard smartphone reviewer, unfortunately I do not have access to all the tools that Andrei does for his testing. As a result, our display testing is fairly basic. At 100% APL, the peak brightness was measured at ~450 nits, which is below ASUS’ claim of 600 nits. It is likely that ASUS’ number is peak brightness (1% APL), not full screen. We also measured the white point at ~8450K.