ASUS’ ROG Phone 6D Ultimate has an even more comprehensive cooling system

After the launch of the ROG Phone 6 Pro gaming phone, some hardcore fans wondered what happened to the “Ultimate” variant. As it turns out, ASUS waited more than two months before unveiling its “one more thing”: the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. It is identical to the 6 Pro in almost every way, except for four things: the new “space gray” color, the interesting choice of the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor (that’s what the “D” in “6D” stands for), the move to the faster LPDDR5X RAM and the new “AeroActive Portal” design for blowing cool air into the internal heat sink fins – I’ll abbreviate this as heat sink from here on.

The AeroActive Portal itself is essentially a door flap that opens when the included AeroActive Cooler 6 is attached, allowing some of the cool wind produced by the fan — at nearly 1,000cc per second — to be routed through a wind tunnel and into the heat sink. , with hot air coming out of the top slot. The heatsink is, of course, coupled with the generous thermal layers that cover the circuit board and battery cells, to transfer heat from the components to the airflow. This is intended to maintain a high frame rate for a longer period of time while gaming and to ensure that the phone still fits comfortably in the hand.

ASUS claimed that after 60 minutes of Perfdog benchmarking on Genshin impact at 60 Hz in air-cooling mode, ROG Phone 6D reached 36.9°C (98.42°F), which was 3.4°C lower than ROG Phone 6 in the same mode. It seems that the AeroActive Portal makes a remarkable difference. Likewise in “Frosty” and “Frozen” modes (with the Peltier thermoelectric cooling chip enabled), and it’s worth noting that the AeroActive Cooler 6 is the only Peltier-enabled cooler on the market that doesn’t require any external extra power – it is only needs that for the more powerful “Frozen” mode.

Although the AeroActive Portal only works when an AeroActive Cooler 6 is connected, you can access it temporarily in the settings for cleaning purposes. The cover is also tightly closed to ensure the phone’s IPX4 splash resistance. It also has drop detection for automatic flip retraction, and the stepper motor along with its zirconium alloy hinge are apparently good for over 40,000 flips — both of which are based on lessons learned from the now-retired Flip Camera feature from the Zenfone- series.

The 6D Ultimate has the same set of key features as the 6 Pro: 165Hz 6.78-inch AMOLED display, 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 512GB storage, 6000mAh battery, 65W fast charge (42 minutes), Dirac-tuned front-facing stereo speakers, ultrasonic “AirTiggers” and a customizable “ROG Vision” color display on the back. It’s also the same set of cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with Sony’s IMX766 sensor, a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera plus a 5-megapixel macro camera; and on the front there is a 12-megapixel selfie camera with a Sony IMX663 sensor.

As for the processor, ASUS made the surprising move to MediaTek for its Dimensity 9000+ processor, which apparently ranks a tad higher than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 of the ROG Phone 6. The company added that while the flagship chipset Snapdragon has a better GPU, the Dimensity’s CPU is said to be 10 percent more powerful (albeit with the same maximum clock speed of 3.2GHz), and this is more important for most mobile games. The CPU is also complemented by the faster LPDDR5X RAM, although it’s the same reason it’s limited to 16GB here instead of 18GB.

The ROG Phone 6D Ultimate will be available across Europe very soon, with the single model (16GB RAM with 512GB storage) priced at €1,399 (about $1,400) or £1,199. Again, this premium model comes with an AeroActive Cooler 6. It also launches the ROG Phone 6D, which is basically the ROG Phone 6, but packs MediaTek’s chipset and LPDDR5X RAM instead (it’s also just an RGB one). logo instead of a ROG Vision screen on the back; and of course no AeroActive Portal). This starts from €949 (about $950) or £799 with the 12GB RAM plus 256GB storage base model.