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Asus’s ROG Phone 5 is a gamer’s delight

And it probably makes phone calls too

Like sticking a bone-rattling stereo in your hatchback or hanging an 85in TV on the wall of your bedroom, some things are quite obviously overkill – but that doesn’t mean we don’t still want them. The smartphone equivalent is Asus’s new ROG Phone 5 (from £799) – an absurdly powerful blower that’ll have hardcore gamers trading in their liquid-cooled keyboards to buy one. Underneath the 6.78in, 144Hz/1ms AMOLED display, which also has an extra-responsive 300Hz touch sampling rate, you’ll find a beefy Snapdragon 888 5G processor and up to 16GB of RAM, which means you’ll be able to pump up the settings without worrying about it having a breakdown. It also comes with an AeroActive Cooler 5 fan to keep the CPU nice and chilled, while the whopping 6000mAh battery should mean you don’t find yourself in need of a charger at the wrong time. If you do, the side-mounted USB-C port means you don’t even need to stop playing, plus its 65W fast-charging skills mean it’ll go from flat to almost full in less than an hour. Pick either the Ultimate or Pro version and you also get a ROG Vision matrix display on the rear of the phone that can show customised animations. Overkill? Sure. But don’t pretend you don’t want one.

Profile image of Tom Wiggins Tom Wiggins Contributor

About

Stuff's second Tom has been writing for the magazine and website since 2006, when smartphones were only for massive nerds and you could say “Alexa” out loud without a robot answering. Over the years he’s written about everything from MP3s to NFTs, played FIFA with Trent Alexander-Arnold, and amassed a really quite impressive collection of USB sticks.

Areas of expertise

A bit of everything but definitely not cameras.