Gaming laptops tend to get crazy lights to make their style, which may explain the path of the latest gaming phone from Asus.
Computers for gamers tend to come with more than just meaty graphics cards and fast sizeable screens. They also usually get flashing LEDs you can set for a variety of styles and colours, making these laptops stand out in ways other laptops geared for work and professionalism just don’t have.
The latest MacBook Pro will have backlighting, sure, but it’s just there to aid your typing. Meanwhile, an Asus Republic of Gamers laptop will see lights for the sake of being fun, and so too will the latest phone from the same company, as well.
That’s the news for the year’s second major phone series, following Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy S25 range back in January. It’s not even Mobile World Congress yet, and we’re already seeing new phones arrive.
The second major phone release Australians get to experience is the Asus ROG Phone 9, a range that follows on from previous ROG Phone models and launches in three models, two of them slightly confusingly named.
On the one hand there’s the ROG Phone 9, the model that kicks it all off, and then there’s the ROG Phone 9 Pro and ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition, two models with seemingly identical names and yet slightly different hardware.
They all share the same base specifications, including the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, a minimum of 16GB RAM, a minimum of 512GB storage, 6.78 inch AMOLED display, 5800mAh battery, and at least three cameras on the back delivering a 50 megapixel wide angle camera with 6-axis gimbal, 13 megapixel ultra-wide, and 5 megapixel macro. The 9 Pro and 9 Pro Edition will get a fourth camera, covering a 32 megapixel 3X zoom.
However, the crazy feature may not even be the souped up hardware, which for 16GB RAM and the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite is pretty up there.
Rather, it could be on the back, with a series of LEDs that you can program to look different. It’s distinct from the LEDs Nothing uses on its phones, and more like the dot LEDs Asus has included on laptops before, though there are more of these lights on some of the ROG 9 models than others.
On the standard ROG 9, there are 85 “Anime Vision” Mini-LED dots, while the ROG 9 Pro and ROG 9 Pro Edition offer 648 for more control and playfulness.
Asus confuses things a little more with the difference between the 9 Pro and 9 Pro edition, which mostly comes out to specs and a cooling system: the ROG 9 Pro Edition comes with an external cooler, plus 24GB RAM and 1TB of storage, while the sans-“Edition” model sticks to 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage with no extra cooler.
While the model name is a touch on the confusing side — Pro vs Pro Edition could have easily been Pro and Ultra, or something else — the specs of the entire range definitely make the ROG Phone 9 Pro look like a gaming force to be reckoned with.
Pricing will see the handset in the high-end of mobiles, with the ROG Phone 9 range set to launch in Australia in March, priced at $1799 for the standard 9, $1999 for the ROG Phone 9 Pro, or $2499 for the Pro Edition variation on the theme.
