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Asus Zenfone 10
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Asus Zenfone 10 Audio test

OTHER AVAILABLE TESTS FOR THIS DEVICE

We put the Asus Zenfone 10 through our rigorous DXOMARK Audio test suite to measure its performance both at recording sound using its built-in microphones, and at playing audio back through its speakers.
In this review, we will break down how it fared in a variety of tests and several common use cases.

Overview


Key audio specifications include:

  • Two speakers (Top center, bottom right)
  • 3.5mm audio output
  • Dirac HD Sound technology

Scoring

Sub-scores and attributes included in the calculations of the global score.

Asus Zenfone 10
Asus Zenfone 10
131
audio
128
Playback
121

158

127

149

145

162

131

162

119

157

138
Recording
124

147

143

146

127

159

130

170

137

145

137

166

Playback

Pros

Cons

  • Severe lack of treble, upper spectrum sounds muffled
  • Inconsistent dynamics in the low-end of the spectrum

Recording

Pros

  • Good timbre performance
  • Good dynamics performance
  • Relatively free of artifacts

Cons

  • Quite sensitive to wind noise, especially with the selfie camera and the memo app
  • Compression when recording at high sound pressure levels, slow volume adaptation

The Asus Zenfone 10 delivered a balanced performance in the DXOMARK Audio tests, doing quite well in both playback and recording. The device’s main drawbacks in terms of audio quality were a lack of treble in playback, which resulted in a slightly muffled and dark sound, as well as a high sensitivity to wind noise in recording, despite a dedicated wind-noise reduction function.

Playback performance through the built-in speakers was consistent across use cases, whether listening to music, watching movies or playing games. As a recording device, the Zenfone 10 delivered the best results with vocal memos, but performance was also great with the main camera app.

Test summary

About DXOMARK Audio tests: For scoring and analysis in our smartphone audio reviews, DXOMARK engineers perform a variety of objective tests and undertake more than 20 hours of perceptual evaluation under controlled lab conditions.
(For more details about our Playback protocol, click here; for more details about our Recording protocol, click here.)

The following section gathers key elements of our exhaustive tests and analyses performed in DXOMARK laboratories. Detailed performance evaluations under the form of reports are available upon request. Do not hesitate to contact us.

Playback

128

Asus Zenfone 10

163

Black Shark 5 Pro
How Audio Playback score is composed

DXOMARK engineers test playback through the smartphone speakers, whose performance is evaluated in our labs and in real-life conditions, using default apps and settings.

In our tests, the Asus Zenfone 10 delivered a decent performance in the timbre category. The tonal balance was overall good but left some room for improvement, most notably the insufficient treble. Treble was more present at maximum volume but also introduced some unwanted harshness. Dynamics performance was slightly inconsistent, with good punch across all use cases, but attack lacked detail and wasn’t as impactful as our testers would have liked. Envelope was spotless on some tracks but could be inconsistent on others, with shorter-than-expected sustain of some bass notes.

In terms of spatial attributes, the Asus offered quite good depth rendition. Distance rendition was decent, too, but voices could sound a little distant at times. Both wideness of the sound scene and localizability of individual sound sources were fairly average. While the distribution of volume steps was very consistent, loudness at the maximum setting was only average. Minimum volume was tuned properly but slightly too quiet for listening to low volume passages in highly dynamic content, such as classical music. The Zenfone 10 did well in terms of unwanted audio artifacts, with only some slight distortion at maximum volume. Our testers also noted that the right speaker could be occluded when holding the device in portrait orientation. The effects on sound quality were fairly minor, however.

Listen to the tested smartphone’s playback performance in this comparison with some of its competitors:

Asus Zenfone 10
Samsung Galaxy S23
Google Pixel 7
Recordings of the smartphones playing some of our music tracks at 60 LAeq in an anechoic environment by 2 microphones in A-B configuration, at 30 cm
Here is how the Asus Zenfone 10 performs in playback use cases compared to its competitors:
Playback use-cases scores

Timbre

121

Asus Zenfone 10

158

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Timbre score represents how well a phone reproduces sound across the audible tonal range and takes into account bass, midrange, treble, tonal balance, and volume dependency. It is the most important attribute for playback.

Music playback frequency response
A 1/12 octave frequency response graph, which measures the volume of each frequency emitted by the smartphone when playing a pure-sine wave in an anechoic environment.

Dynamics

127

Asus Zenfone 10

149

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Dynamics score measures the accuracy of changes in the energy level of sound sources, for example how precisely a bass note is reproduced or the impact sound from drums.


Spatial

145

Asus Zenfone 10

162

Black Shark 5 Pro

The sub-attributes for spatial tests include pinpointing a specific sound's location, its positional balance, distance, and wideness.


Volume

131

Asus Zenfone 10

162

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Volume score represents the overall loudness of a smartphone and how smoothly volume increases and decreases based on user input.

Here are a few sound pressure levels (SPL) measured when playing our sample recordings of hip-hop and classical music at maximum volume:
Hip-Hop Classical
Asus Zenfone 10 71.6 dBA 69.5 dBA
Samsung Galaxy S23 73.9 dBA 69.1 dBA
Google Pixel 7 71.8 dBA 72.9 dBA
The following graph shows the gradual changes in volume going from minimum to maximum. We expect these changes to be consistent across the range, so that all volume steps correspond to users’ expectations:
Music volume consistency
This line graph shows the relative loudness of playback relative to the user selected volume step, measured at different volume steps with a correlated pink noise in an anechoic box recorded in axis at 0.20 meter.

Artifacts

119

Asus Zenfone 10

157

Asus ROG Phone 5

The Artifacts score measures the extent to which the sound is affected by various types of distortion. The higher the score, the less the disturbances in the sound are noticeable. Distortion can occur because of sound processing in the device and because of the quality of the speakers.

Playback Total Harmonic Distortion (Maximum Volume)
This graph shows the Total Harmonic Distortion and Noise over the hearable frequency range.
It represents the distortion and noise of the device playing our test signal (0 dB Fs, Sweep Sine in an anechoic box at 40 cm) at the device's maximum volume.

Recording

138

Asus Zenfone 10

160

Honor Magic6 Pro
How Audio Recording score is composed

DXOMARK engineers test recording by evaluating the recorded files on reference audio equipment. Those recordings are done in our labs and in real-life conditions, using default apps and settings.

When recording, the Asus offered on overall good tonal balance. Treble was satisfactory with the main and selfie cameras. Midrange was good with the main camera, with natural sounding voices, but sounded slightly hollow when recording with the selfie cam. Timbre remained good when recording at high sound pressure levels, for example at concerts. Our testers also noted that both bass and treble were boosted with the Audio HDR feature activated. The tonal balance sounded slightly richer and background rendition in urban environments was noticeably improved. Dynamics performance in recording was good, with an accurate and precise envelope across all use cases and a very good signal-to-noise ratio.

The sound scene was wide when recording with the main camera but noticeably limited with the selfie camera in portrait orientation. Localizability of sound sources was also better with the main camera. In addition, voices could be perceived to be at a distance when recording with the selfie camera. The Audio HDR feature improved both localizability and distance rendition with the main camera, while distance only was improved when capturing selfie video. Recordings were very loud and free of unwanted artifacts. Apart from some slight clipping on loud voices, recorded sound was overall very clean. At high sound pressure levels our experts noticed multi-band compression which became more intrusive with Audio HDR active. Background rendition was very good, thanks to a pleasant tonal balance and hardly any artifacts.

Here is how the Asus Zenfone 10 performs in recording use cases compared to its competitors:

Recording use-cases scores

Timbre

124

Asus Zenfone 10

147

Honor Magic3 Pro+

The Timbre score represents how well a phone captures sounds across the audible tonal range and takes into account bass, midrange, treble, and tonal balance. It is the most important attribute for recording.

Life video frequency response
A 1/12 octave frequency response graph, which measures the volume of each frequency captured by the smartphone when recording a pure-sine wave in an anechoic environment.

Dynamics

143

Asus Zenfone 10

146

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Dynamics score measures the accuracy of changes in the energy level of sound sources, for example how precisely a voice's plosives (the p's, t's and k's, for example) are reproduced. The score also considers the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), for example how loud the main voice is compared to the background noise.


Spatial

127

Asus Zenfone 10

159

Vivo X Fold

The sub-attributes for spatial tests include pinpointing a specific sound's location, its positional balance, distance, and wideness on the recorded audio files.

Recording directivity
Directivity graph of the smartphone when recording test signals using the camera app, with the main camera. It represents the acoustic energy (in dB) over the angle of incidence of the sound source. (Normalized to the angle 0°, in front of the device.)

Volume

130

Asus Zenfone 10

170

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Volume score represents how loud audio is normalized on the recorded files and the how the device handles loud environments, such as electronic concerts, when recording.

Here are the sound levels recorded in the audio and video files, measured in LUFS (Loudness Unit Full Scale); as a reference, we expect loudness levels to be above -24 LUFS for recorded content:
Meeting Life Video Selfie Video Memo
Asus Zenfone 10 -29.1 LUFS -19.8 LUFS -18.5 LUFS -20.9 LUFS
Samsung Galaxy S23 -26.5 LUFS -21.8 LUFS -22.4 LUFS -21.6 LUFS
Google Pixel 7 -29.4 LUFS -19.4 LUFS -17 LUFS -23 LUFS

Artifacts

137

Asus Zenfone 10

145

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Artifacts score measures the extent to which the recorded sounds are affected by various types of distortions. The higher the score, the less the disturbances in the sound are noticeable. Distortions can occur because of sound processing in the device and the quality of the microphones, as well as user handling, such as how the phone is held.

In this audio comparison, you can listen to the way this smartphone handles wind noise relative to its competitors:

Recordings of a voice sample with light background noise, facing a turbulent wind of 5 m/s

Background

137

Asus Zenfone 10

166

Black Shark 5 Pro

Background evaluates how natural the various sounds around a voice blend into the video recording file. For example, when recording a speech at an event, the background should not interfere with the main voice, yet it should provide some context of the surroundings.

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