The ASUS ROG Phone III Review: A 144Hz 6000mAh Beast With Caveats
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 28, 2020 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon 865
- ROG Phone III
Display Measurement
The display on the ROG Phone III is an OLED panel that features a 1080p resolution and a very high refresh-rate of up to 144Hz. Although it was something quite extraordinary back in 2019, in 2020 it’s doesn’t showcase the same kind of spec-list advantage versus the 1440p 120Hz panels by some other competitors in the market.
The phone gives you the options to operate at 60, 90, 120 or 144Hz which is quite wide array of selections. Unfortunately, much like other super-high refresh-rate panels on the market, going beyond 90Hz comes at a quite larger power consumption cost.
Colour settings on the ROG Phone III are very varied and customisable, giving you four different predefined display gamut selections. The “standard” profile is the calibrated sRGB target with a default colour temperature near 6500K, so that’s what we measured and what I would recommend users to choose when looking for accurate display colours.
We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the ROG Phone III screen. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using Portrait Display's CalMAN software.
In terms of brightness, the ROG Phone III fares well, with manual brightness reaching up to around 423cd/m², whilst when in adaptive brightness mode this boosts up to 652cd/m² full-screen white (100% APL) when under bright ambient light conditions.
In the standard display profile, colour temperature is quite good at the high levels, tracking whites at 6453K. At the mid-levels there’s a bit too much greens.
Although greyscale colour accuracy is quite excellent with a dEITP of only 1.76, the overall error rate when including luminosity is quite bad in our results here, and the reason for that is that the phone is targeting a much higher gamma of around 2.4. Unfortunately this aspect is valid for all colour profiles of the phone and there’s no way to fine-tune or change this.
What this means is that mid- and low-levels will appear darker than they are meant to.
Saturation accuracy against the sRGB target is excellent, with only minor deviations which are exaggerated by the higher gamma target of the display profile.
The Gretag MacBeth chart of common colour tones and skin tones is also quite accurate in terms of colour saturations and hues, however the off-target luminosity because of the higher gamma is the main reason the total dEITP error rate is quite high at 8.57.
Overall, the screen of the ROG Phone III is excellent, although not class-leading. It’s not quite as high resolution or as bright as some competitors, but it still fares very well, and it’s currently amongst a very small number of phones which can claim a 144Hz refresh-rate, although the actual benefits of that over 120Hz devices is rather minor.
Colour accuracy is good, although you’d have to get used to that higher gamma target which produces darker colour tones.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
71 Comments
View All Comments
ArcadeEngineer - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
I don't get this idea that bluetooth headphones are somehow more convenient than wired ones. Having another charger to juggle outlets on is the opposite of convenient.Tchamber - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
I use my headphones all day work. For fun, I can listen to music, whatever. But I'm standing, walking, bending over and leaning in my CnC mill all day long, and having a cord was a hassle for me. That's pretty much the only place I listen to my phone. For me, it's no hassle having one more plug, especially when my LG Tones last two days at work.ads295 - Saturday, August 29, 2020 - link
High five from someone who owns two Swiss-types :-)flyingpants265 - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Of course it's not a f****** hassle.The reason for deleting headphone jack is to sell wireless headphones, it is a multi-billion dollar market on its own. This is a tech website, everyone should know this by now.
Comments about removing the 3.5 jack, have been bought and paid for. Haha. What I mean is, Corporations have successfully used money for advertising and other various influences to ultimately engineer legions of smooth-brained human beings to tell me that plugging in my headphones is bad. Yeah, ok. I'll do anything you want. Why don't you just sodomize me too while you're at it?
Great_Scott - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
The good news here is that there's a cottage industry of USB-C sound cards with 3.5 jack support for phones like this. And the huge battery means that you wouldn't need to charge it at the same time...s.yu - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
You don't. Because there are two C ports. As long as there exists flagships with headphone jacks or two C ports, I will not buy one with one C port no jack.Quantumz0d - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
Tell me does any of those BT sets have a good driver to boot, and then tell me whether any of them support AptX technology to be able to play my FLAC files / 24 Bit files or Can they work without an app always to function.Dude I have a V30 with me, the ESS DAC in that is not possible to be beaten by any company, I even have a Modi stack with me for monitors, and I can plug in my IEMs, Monitors, HD600s and I don't have to fiddle with some stupid charging box and worry about them, my IEMs are Triple Drivers with Hybrid technology. And you say you want Audio fidelity ? nice joke esp with Power Beats ? Muddy Bass technology is what they have.
I'm sorry there's none of the BT technology which makes any aspect from Sound quality, Fidelity, Convenience & Price to Performance, there are NO BT sets in mainstream that we can buy which have stunning audio performance you need to shell out for MMCX, like Shures.
Let me tell you one more thing, my phone has BT as well, and I can buy any BT set I want and a 3.5mm enabled any of the ChiFi or Japanese or European IEMs/Cans. Also instead of that overpriced Powerbeats Apple set go and buy an RHA T20 wireless, it has AptX, great battery, superior sound, superior build quality and have 3.5mm wire also.
vol.2 - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
you're just walking into a dumb argument here. people are allowed to like their specific wired headphones and they should be able to use them if they want to. i have both; i use the bluetooth for calls and watching youtube, i use one of my many pairs of wired headphones for music.Tchamber - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
Sure, I didn't think I was arguing though. I get it, wired headphones sound better.Lolimaster - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Thing is, the two technologies can coexist till the end of time. Point is, there's no excuse to remove the jack from a phone or worse, from a tablet (S7 line). Then ironically, gigantic camera bumps are protruding from phones in futile attempt to keep the rest of the phone "slim". 0.9 or 1cm thicc phones are perfectly fine, that's around my S9 + cover included and that phone feels way more secure in the hand than the stock 0.85cm.