Parting with the cash for a premium phone is a tough call in today’s economy, especially with hardware advancing at a relatively slow pace. It’s even harder for gaming phones to justify that extra cash, given other Snapdragon 8 Elite phones will be on the market soon enough, even if they’re not quite as fast. Not to mention that there are often so many more compromises in the gaming phone niche.
Thankfully, the ASUS ROG Phone 9 series bridges the mainstream gap better than most, and while I definitely missed a few familiar Pixel features during my time with the ROG, I wouldn’t say that the latest iteration of ASUS’ experience felt miles behind. ASUS has two models on sale this year. The ASUS ROG Phone 9 costs $999, while the Pro model starts at $1,199 and hits $1,499 for 1TB storage and a bundled AeroActive Cooler X Pro — I’ve been testing out the Pro version for over a week now. Let’s get our game on and see if I can be convinced that the promise of higher frames and peak mobile gaming features is actually worth the cash.