Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Review: Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Gaming Unleashed

With Qualcomm's latest mobile chipset, the ROG Phone 9 Pro has all the 5G bands you need. It doesn't support millimeter wave networks, but sub-6GHz is far more pervasive for maintaining connectivity. The phone skips eSIM support in the US, but the international model will have eSIM, and Asus may choose to expand that functionality to the US in future ROG Phones.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Voice And Data

We've been testing the ROG Phone Pro on T-Mobile's mid-band Ultra Capacity network. The data speeds will obviously vary from place to place, but the speeds we see with the ROG Phone 9 Pro are at least as good as other flagship phones.


Qualcomm says the updated X80 modem is more powerful than ever with 4x6 MIMO support. It has a peak download rate of 10 Gbps and upload of 3.5 Gbps, but you'd need mmWave for those speeds. The ROG Phone is plenty fast on sub-6, pulling 300-400 Mbps down and several dozen megabits up with good signal.


Some past Asus phones had trouble with phone calls, but things have been better for the past couple of generations. The signal is strong, audio is clear, and we haven't had any calls drop.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Benchmarks And Performance

The Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro is the first retail device we've seen with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite. This chip is notable not only for changing the naming scheme, but also because it's the first mobile processor with Qualcomm's Oryon CPU. This core was initially used in the Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm's latest (and most successful) laptop processor.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite has eight CPU cores, including two high-speed Oryon cores (4.32GHz) and six slower Oryon CPUs (3.53GHz). This chip, manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process, also includes an upgraded Adreno GPU and an NPU that can process AI workloads more quickly than previous chips. However, most apps don't yet support this NPU, so we can't be sure exactly how much faster it is.


Day-to-day performance with the ROG Phone 9 Pro has been good—apps open quickly, and touch response is lightning quick. The ROG Phone isn't the best form factor for split-screen multitasking, but it can handle multiple active apps without breaking a sweat. With 24GB of RAM, you never have to worry about an app closing because of a lack of system resources. Even games will hang out in the background for an extended period.

Asus makes system tuning a user-facing feature with its ROG Phones. The ROG 9 defaults to an "Adaptive" power mode, but the phone activates its highest performance "X-mode" whenever it detects a game. You can also toggle this on in the settings, or change to a low power mode that boosts battery life.

In our testing, Asus' default power mode is slower than expected. Again, it doesn't feel slow, but the benchmark numbers come in substantially lower than X-mode. In some tests, Adaptive mode on the ROG Phone 9 Pro is even slower than phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or Gen 3. This might be an intentional choice by Asus to improve battery life, and X-mode does turn itself on reliably. In high-performance mode, the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the ROG Phone leaves all other chips in the dust.

Last year's ROG Phone could actually get hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold during extended gaming in X-mode. The redesigned cooling system keeps the new ROG Phone 9 Pro about 10 degrees cooler—it won't burn you, but it does still get relatively hot. Attaching the cooling fan allegedly lets the phone run at its full potential. After plugging in the fan, it immediately spins up and shifts the phone into X-mode if it isn't already. The fan does keep the phone cooler, both internally and externally, but only by a few degrees. Benchmarks don't improve, and thermal throttling does not seem meaningfully different. The cooling fan made a bigger difference with the ROG Phone 8 Pro, but it seems there's less reason to use it with the ROG Phone 9 Pro.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Geekbench Results

The latest Geekbench 6 test has new ways of testing multi-core configurations and uses higher-resolution diagnostic assets than older versions. The ROG Phone 9 Pro shared the top of our benchmark results with the Snapdragon 8 Elite reference phone, as well as the iPhone 16. Note the drop in single-core speed in the default mode versus X-mode. The latter lands right where we would expect based on the Qualcomm reference device, but the default power mode falls off substantially while still being objectively quite fast.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro PCMark For Android Results

UL's PCMark for Android is an excellent suite of tests if you want to benchmark a wide range of tasks on a handset -- things like image and video editing, as well as lighter-duty, everyday workloads such as email and web browsing. When you see the test running live, it's clear the scripted application tests are carefully selected and tuned to make use of the mobile platform in a very controlled way.


PCMark shows an even wider gulf between the two power modes we tested. The full-speed X-mode takes the top spot, besting even the Qualcomm demo phone. In Adaptive mode, the ROG Phone 9 Pro scores around the same as Qualcomm-based phones from a year or two ago—it's running almost neck-and-neck with last year's ROG Phone 8 Pro. Even today, these phones are not slow, but the performance gap is surprising.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro AnTuTu Benchmarks

AnTuTu’s benchmark returns a number of metrics ranked with somewhat nebulous scores, rather than frame rates or time to complete. Here, we're running the latest version of AnTuTu across multiple Android devices. AnTuTu offers four top level performance results which are all included here: CPU, RAM, 3D, UX (or User Experience), along with a total score.


The ROG Phone 9 Pro scores in AnTuTu are closer together, with X-mode running just behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite demo phone we tested at the Snapdragon Summit. The default power mode falls back a few slots, running just ahead of the last-gen Qualcomm flagship.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Graphics And Gaming Benchmarks Results

Now, let's take a look at how the ROG Phone 9 stacks up in GFXBench, which has been one of the standard mobile graphics/gaming performance benchmarks for years. To ensure that display refresh (v-sync) and resolution aren't limiting factors, we're comparing off-screen test results here. GFXBench tests OpenGL ES graphics workloads and we're specifically testing OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Vulkan in the latest iterations.


GFXBench shows impressive numbers in the more advanced Aztec test, with the ROG Phone 9 Pro running just behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite reference phone. The Dynamic power mode does fall behind X-mode but only to the degree we would expect. The OpenGL benchmarks show Adaptive mode falling well behind. Again, the chip struggles to keep up with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 phones in its non-gaming power state.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Slingshot Tests

UL's 3DMark Sling Shot is one of several modules in the 3DMark mobile suite. Unlike previous gen 3DMark mobile tests, Sling Shot is a much more advanced OpenGL ES 3.1 and Metal API-based benchmark that employs more advanced rendering techniques, like volumetric lighting, particle illumination, multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers, and transform feedback. We're running this test in off-screen mode once again to remove display resolution differences from the equation. This allows us to compare cross-platform results more reliably.


Slingshot is an interesting test because it includes a CPU-based physics benchmark in addition to the GPU-dependent rendering test. The GPU manages big scores in both Dynamic and X-mode, but the physics (CPU) sub-score drops considerably in Dynamic mode. That brings down the total score even though the two modes have similar GPU scores.

Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro Wild Life Benchmark Tests

3DMark's Wild Life benchmark is newer and more demanding than Slingshot, and it allows powerful devices to shine.


There's no CPU component of the Wild Life test, so the Dynamic and X-mode scores are very similar. The RPG Phone 9's scores are also very good, trailing only the Snapdragon 8 Elite prototype.

While the Snapdragon 8 Elite in this phone starts blazing fast, heat is the enemy of performance. Every modern smartphone system-on-a-chip experiences some thermal throttling, but it takes a longer-term test to measure. We used the Wild Life stress test, which runs the benchmark 20 times, to gauge the performance loss you can expect during sustained usage.




The ROG Phone 9 Pro will insist on being in X-mode for any gaming unless you specifically turn it off. The scores we've seen on Wild Life are a bit inconsistent, but in general, the phone maintains performance well when it heats up, with stability of 82% in X-mode. Even at the end of this throttling test, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is faster than last year's Qualcomm flagship without throttling. The AeroActive fan didn't meaningfully change the phone's throttling behavior at 84% stable (see above). It's moving a lot of air, but the air isn't very warm, which you'd expect if heat were being transferred to the heatsink efficiently.