Asus’ ROG Phone 5 is now available in the US from its official store, with a price tag of $999.99. It’s Asus’ latest maxed-out gaming phone, with all of the top-notch specifications: a Snapdragon 888 Plus, 144Hz display, front-facing speakers, and a massive 6,000mAh battery.
Asus says the Ultimate and Pro versions of the phone will be available later this year. We reviewed the Ultimate in March and found that it was a good phone that went a little — okay, maybe a lot — overboard with its specs. The vanilla version available for sale today, though, is perhaps a bit more reasonable: it “only” has 16GB of RAM (as opposed to the Ultimate’s 18GB), has half the storage (256GB instead of 512GB), and features an RGB logo on the back instead of an entire OLED screen.
The other thing the regular version is missing is the extra touch-sensitive buttons that provide an alternative to touchscreen controls (though it does still have two of the ultrasonic sensors).
For those who want more buttons, though, there’s always the gamepad bundle or the AeroActive Cooler 5 accessory, which has two buttons built in. They do cost extra — with the gamepad bundle coming in at $40 more than just the phone and the cooler costing $70 — but that’s still likely going to be way less than shelling out for the Ultimate version.
