the Snapdragon 8 Elite lives up to its name

Asus has just announced its latest crop of ROG Phone 9, with a base model and a Pro model. They logically follow the ROG Phone 8 Pro. We had the chance to take charge of the more high-end model of the two before its official announcement and to pass it through the hands of 01Lab before its full test.

What is the performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite worth?

Very often, in the West, the ROG Phone is the first smartphone to integrate the new high-end chip from Qualcomm. This is again the case with this ROG Phone Pro 9 which is therefore equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Unsurprisingly, the new chip equipped with an Oryon CPU core significantly outperforms the competition in all the benchmarks to which we subjected it. On Geekbench, the lead is comfortable in all categories, with a jump of almost 1000 points in single-core, including against the Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra, one of the best smartphones in pure performance measured last year.

SoC Geekbench 6 Single-Core Geekbench 6 Multi-Core Geekbench 6 Compute Score (GPU)

Asus Rog Phone 9 Pro Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

Samsung Galaxy S24+ Samsung Exynos 2400

Xiaomi 14T Pro Mediatek Dimensity 9300+

GFX Bench, more focused on GPU performance, also gives it a comfortable lead.

SoC GFXBench 4K Aztec Ruins Vulkan (HT) Offscreen GFXBench 1440p Aztec Ruins Vulkan (High Tier) Offscreen GFXBench Car Chase GFXBench 1080p T-Rex Offscreen

Asus Rog Phone 9 Pro Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

Samsung Galaxy S24+ Samsung Exynos 2400

Xiaomi 14T Pro Mediatek Dimensity 9300+

The chip therefore promises high performance, but at what cost in terms of temperature management? 3DMark offers us the beginnings of an answer. Here again, the best loop of the panel quite logically goes to the ROG Phone 9 Pro. But just like the Zenfone 11 Ultra, its high performance costs it thermally, with a very significant variation between the lowest and highest temperatures. Watch out for your fingers!

Despite this significant heating, it manages to maintain a certain stability compared to smartphones equipped with much slower chips such as the Galaxy S24+ under Exynos 2400 and the Xiaomi 14T Pro under Dimensity 9300+.

SoC 3DMark Wild Life Best loop score 3DMark Wild Life Stability Amplitude

Asus Rog Phone 9 Pro Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3

Samsung Galaxy S24+ Samsung Exynos 2400

Xiaomi 14T Pro Mediatek Dimensity 9300+

Here is a timelapse heating of the ROG Phone 9 Pro.

During our test, we will see if all this power is found in real use in video games. Especially since as usual, Asus has integrated tactile triggers on the right edge of the phone. Enough to chain the TOP 1s.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro © Hanna Lalivic

External screen: Asus engineers still on the job

If there is one quality that we cannot take away from Asus, it is its constant search for innovation. In other words, it is one of the rare brands on the very wise smartphone market that still tries unorthodox things on the design of its phones, to the great pleasure of the internal engineers, we imagine.

For the ROG Phone 9 Pro, this translates into an external screen, or rather a panel of 648 mini LEDs on the back of the phone. More precisely, there is a first panel of 27 × 19 white LEDs, arranged over a second panel of 27 × 5 red LEDs. The device even has a name: Anime Vision.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro © Hanna Lalivic

If as usual, the screen allows you to display some animations (ROG logo, charging icon, notifications, etc.) Asus has taken the fun a little further by allowing you to play four pixel art games, who use the triggers. We have a Snake, a Space Invaders, a Brick Smasher and a runner with a t-rex, like the game that appears when you no longer have a connection on Chrome.

An engineering delirium in all its splendor, which clearly has its place on a device oriented towards video games, but whose use should remain limited once the fun of the first weeks has passed.

For information, the classic ROG Phone 9 also includes a more modest and vertical 5 × 19 screen with more than 20 animations, but no games.

The rest of the ROG Phone 9 Pro specifications

For the rest, the Asus smartphone integrates a classic configuration for a high-end smartphone, but nevertheless muscular. To finish on performance, the base ROG Phone 9 has 16 GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 256 GB of UFS 4.0 storage. The Pro version goes up to 24 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage.

If the Oled screen is based on a full HD definition (2400 x 1080 pixels), it nevertheless pushes the limits of refreshing by going up to 185 Hz. A very gadgety detail since very few applications support even only 120 Hz on Android smartphone.

Who says gaming smartphone, says big need for autonomy. After all, the promise of such a device is to be able to play comfortably on the go. We therefore have a fairly generous 5,800 mAh battery, which can be supplied with a power of 65 W.

Asus Rog Phone 9 Pro Getting Started4 — Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro © Hanna Lalivic

And a small subtlety, the ROG Phone integrates two USB-C ports, one traditionally placed at the bottom, and the other on the left edge of the smartphone. So you won’t be bothered when you want to charge the phone while playing. 15W wireless charging is also included.

The photo configuration is undoubtedly one of the weaknesses of the smartphone, with modules with relatively small sensors compared to the price of the product. We therefore have a wide angle stabilized by a 6-axis gimbal, but with a 50 Mpx 1/1.56 inch sensor. The X3 telephoto lens on the ROG Phone 9 Pro is also stabilized with a 32 Mpx 1/3 inch sensor. The classic model swaps it for a rather disappointing 5 Mpx macro module. Both models finally integrate a 13 Mpx ultra-wide-angle module.

Two final details regarding the design: the smartphone benefits from IP68 certification for dust and waterproofing. There is also a 3.5mm jack port.