Asus ZenWatch: An Android Wear smartwatch that achieves fashion zen [REVIEW]
We're using cookies to improve your experience.
Asus ZenWatch review
Killer style
The Asus ZenWatch is one of the prettier Android Wear smartwatches that doesn't sport a round-shaped display.
Mashable, Brian Heater
Sleek from front to back
The rear of the ZenWatch looks as nice as the front — perhaps even better.
Mashable, Brian Heater
Swappable bands
I didn’t love the band the ZenWatch shipped with.
Thankfully a standard size means it can be easily swapped out.
Mashable, Brian Heater
One of several customizable watch faces. There really is something for everyone.
Mashable, Brian Heater
Cradle my ZenWatch
This is what the charging cradle looks like.
Mashable, Brian Heater
The age of the
is upon us, and like the smartphone and tablet eras before it, it’s a case of
vs. everybody else.
, naturally, falls into the latter category, having hitched its wagon firmly to the
wagon, along with a number of other (here in the U.S. at least) higher profile companies.
attempts to maintain some semblance of software consistency across the devices, manufacturers are once again forced to distinguish themselves almost entirely on hardware. From the moment the
comes out of the box, Asus’s play is pretty clear: Making a smartwatch people might actually want to wear.
It is, oddly, still a bit of a novel concept in 2015, especially when coupled with a surprisingly reasonable $199 price tag. But even as Asus has managed to step away from the pack, the question still remains, is now the time to get on the Android Wear train?
Fashionably smart
Some day, in the not too distant future, good-looking smartwatches will no longer be an anomaly. They’ll look less like late-80s Casio calculator watches and more like legitimate fashion accessories. Until that day comes, it’s worth pointing out those companies who manage to produce smart wearables we
(or even alive, for that matter).
With the ZenWatch, Asus has produced a top contender for the best-looking smartwatch around. As with smartphones and tablets before it, gadget makers would do best to chant the mantra “less is more” before taking a seat at the old design table. And indeed, the ZenWatch is probably most succinctly described as a tiny, wrist-worn tablet.
It’s slick, it’s thin and it’s nearly all screen. All of the bright and shiny stuff occurs in that backlit space between the bezels — which is exactly as it should be. If you drop a couple hundred bucks on a watch, you’re going to want to be as inclined to wear it to a wedding as a morning jog, and the simple black front and metal framing fits that bill.
The brushed stainless steel back looks pretty nice, too — not that you or anyone else will spend much time looking at the thing. When it’s not on your wrist, you’ll almost certainly have it nested in the charging cradle.
The rear also houses the microphone, which is just off to the side enough so your “OK Google” commands don’t get muffled by your wrist and the single physical button: power/reset, which is flush against the backing. Power is more of an emergency
hold it down for a few seconds if things lock up or if you find yourself desperately needing to conserve battery.
The ZenWatch is relatively thin and reasonably light at 9.4mm and 1.7 oz, respectively, but the device is still fairly big. As a 5’11 human male, the watch ran the length of my wrist. Any larger and it would have been unwieldy, which I suspect is the case for those with smaller wrists. Hopefully Asus will pull an Apple for the next generation and offer two size options.
At present, Asus offers two band options for the ZenWatch — both leather. The one it ships with is best described as a sort of orangish/tan. It’s a classier affair than most of the fitness-focused bands I’ve used, though there’s something a little sickly in the tint. Asus also sells a darker leather band as an after-purchase add-on, which looks to be the nicer of the two options.
It also features a snap clasp of the sort you often see on metal bands. It makes a snug fit, and the brushed metal Asus-branded tab is a nice accent that matches the watch well. There’s good news: If all of this isn’t to your liking, the ZenWatch bands are standard size and can be swapped out for non-Asus straps.
On the face of it
Of course, the watch’s footprint is completely beholden to the its screen size. At 1.63-inches, the ZenWatch is about average, with most of these devices hovering around the 1.6-inch mark. Ditt it clocks in at 320 x 320 putting it at 278 pixels per inch (ppi).
That’s low for those of us who regularly geek out over smartphone and tablet resolutions. It’s pretty clear at a glance that you’re not looking at a physical watch face, but it does the trick just fine for the sort of short informational bursts that define the Android Wear card interface.
Brian Heater/MashableIn default mode, the display is pretty tough to make out in sunlight, as one would expect from an LCD, but a few swipes turns on sunlight mode, substantially upping the brightness. The watch will automatically knock itself back down, though, since that level isn’t really sustainable on a limited battery.
If there’s a big complaint to be leveled against the display, it’s the amount of the face that’s monopolized by a pretty sizable bezel. Roughly one-third of the space seems to be taken up by the grayish-colored borders — a phenomenon only compounded by the fact that space is such a premium on devices like these.
The rest of the insides are pretty on-par with the competition. There’s a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor and 512MB of RAM — enough to respond quite zippily when flipping through all of those informational cards. I didn’t detect any noticeable lag on the device while putting it through its paces.
There’s also 4GB of on-board storage — same as the
and the latest Samsung Gear — for storing things like Play Music songs locally. As with the vast majority of the smartwatches out there, most of what you do on the ZenWatch will be heavily reliant on that ever-important smartphone tether.
Batteries are nearly always a dim spot for wearables, and I’m sad to report that there’s not much difference here. The battery life on the device is middling, at best. With light usage, you should be able to make it through a day. If you actually want to get the most out of your watch, however, you’re going to want to make sure you’re within charging distance of an outlet mid-day.
You’ll be able to accomplish this courtesy of a snug matte black charging cradle with a detachable USB cord.
Here’s the part where I’m obligated to mention that, at this point, the Android Wear experience is awfully similar across devices, and the ZenWatch certainly isn’t an exception in that respect. The core of the UI are little cards that deliver bite-sized bits of information, formatted for the small screen.
Default mode is, as one would expect, a watch face. This is, naturally, highly customizable. Press and hold on the screen, and you’ve got more than 20 different faces, representing a wide scope of styles, many exclusive to the ZenWatch. It covers a lot of ground and should keep the majority of users satiated.
I went with "Aviator," a minimalist analog face that matches the ZenWatch’s relative elegance. It’s a white face that turns dark after a few seconds of inactivity to save that ever precious battery life. Swipe down to mute and check out the remaining battery life and keep swiping there for additional settings like Theater Mode, which turns off the backlight without completely turning the watch off.
Typical Android Wear on the ZenWatch.Image:
Brian Heater,
MashableOnce tethered, notifications will begin popping up in the lower portion of the display, along with some accompanying haptic feedback. A down swipe will bring up the full message. From there you can check out your daily step rate, read incoming emails, check out
notifications, peek at stocks, view the weather, etc.
In many cases (as with the weather), more information can be viewed by swiping right. In pretty much every case, however, the watch recommends to take a trip to your smartphone for the full experience. But hey, at least the ZenWatch does you a solid by opening up that app for you.
If you’re sick of all of the swiping, give voice commands a swing with a simple “OK Google.” Personally, I have yet to get used to talking to a watch that won’ I found myself having to repeat commands multiple times in some cases.
Asus exclusives
But while the base experience is pretty much universal across these devices, Asus has done an admirable job bringing some of its own unique flavor. For example, there's the ZenWatch Manager which brings added security, an app for finding the watch should you misplace it and even more customizable faces.
Asus also has a few more proprietary Android apps for additional functionality, including a basic music management program and Remote Camera, which lets you snap and preview smartphone photos by tapping your watch. At the moment, I can’t think of too many instances where I’d need that functionality, and the preview really drives home how much the tiny display is lacking relative to a smartphone, but it’s a cool proof-of-concept at the very least.
Worth a wear?
Given that we’re dealing with a first-generation device, it’s perhaps not too surprising that Asus doesn’t do a ton to stand out from the pack.
The Android Wear experience is pretty universal across devices at the moment, but the company has certainly brought out some nice additions here in the form of its Android apps to help create a fuller experience.
The watch does, however, stand out in the looks department. It’s that rare smartwatch that doesn’t scream, “Hey, check out the crazy gadget on my wrist!” Rather, I was able to wear the thing out without drawing curious glares from on-lookers, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.
Asus ZenWatch
, , , , , , ,
Brian HeaterIs the Apple Watch a Good Health and Fitness Tracker?
Is the Apple Watch a Good Health and Fitness Tracker?
By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer |
June 12, pm ET
{{ title }}Watch: Is That Your Chick? We Got the Run Down on Steph Curry's Thirstiest Fan, Roni Rose | Stephen Curry | Sports | BET
Watch: Is That Your Chick? We Got the Run Down on Steph Curry's Thirstiest Fan, Roni Rose
She may have broke the internet, but we're guessing Ayesha wants to break some things of hers.
Oh, the thirst traps. Borderline stalkers out here are very real.
In the midst of the back-to-back MVP and his Golden State Warriors thrashing
and the Cleveland Cavaliers to take a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals on Sunday night, one curvy Warriors fan was eyeing Steph as if she wanted to eat him alive.
Um, Ayesha might want to start attending every Warriors game from here on out.
— (M)arcusD (@_MarcusD_)
And it didn't take long before the Internet was able to pinpoint her identity as model Roni Rose, turning her thirst trap moment during Game 2 into an instant social media lituation.
Stop Game 2 immediately and let this chick play Ayesha 1-on-1 — Rob Perez (@World_Wide_Wob)
Rose herself caught on to all the attention and uproar she caused, seemingly soaking up all of it and inviting more hate.
Last night wasn't the first time that Roni has been around NBA circles, especially at Warriors games in Oakland.
She even traveled to Oklahoma City during the Warriors' grueling Western Conference Finals series with the Oklahoma City Thunder last week.
Now, that's dedication...or supreme thirst.
It's a good thing that Ayesha is unfazed by any potential threats.
She's not having it.
— Get the latest news and information about African-Americans in sports, including weekly recaps, celebrity news and photos of your favorite Black athletes.
Written by BET Staff
(Photo: Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Get Your news Fix
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Look: Reggie Bush's Alleged Baby Mama Has a Very Nice Registry for Their Love Child
Recommended
Latest in news
+ Load more
Soul Train Awards '16
Add to mycalendar
Premieres inWatchThatPage - Monitor web pages extract new information
Monitor pages, extract new information
WatchThatPage is a service that enables you to automatically collect
new information from your favorite pages on the Internet.
You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which
pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you.
The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal
web page. You can specify when the changes will be collected, so they
are fresh when you want to read them.
The service is
free!*
&#42Professional and heavy users are requested to pay a fee.
With WatchThatPage you can
make your own newsletter customized with the information important to
you, from the sources of your choice.
Competitors, partners, online news and magazines, reports, events. Any page on the
Internet can be watched.
There is nothing to download to use WatchThatPage. All the
heavy work is done on our server. All you have to do is to
your profile, and add the pages you want to watch. From now on, just
lean back and let the updates come to you.
WatchThatPage gives you several options for how you want
to monitor the Internet. You can get all the new content
collected in one email, or separated into several emails, i.e. to
sort the information on different topics or importance.
You can receive all changes, or just changes that match keywords you
specify. You can get daily updates, or customize the updates to the
weekdays of your choice. If you want, we can keep the emails short and
only tell you which pages did change, and leave it up to you to
visit the pages yourself and find the changes.
We can inform you about pages that are unreachable.
With WatchThatPage you can specify when to check for changes, so you are sure
to get fresh changes i.e. when you get to work in the morning.
You can also get several updates every day. We update on your demand.
You can install a special bookmark or button in our browser, so you can add pages to your WTP account while surfing the net.
about this.
Take a look at an . You can also get a
of the WatchThatPage service.
WatchThatPage is the only service of its kind that
can extract new information from multiple web pages, and present the collected
changes to the user in an email friendly, easy readable way.
If you want to inform your customers when your pages
change, you can use the WatchThatPage notifier mechanism free of charge.
You can also get statistics about interest for your
Help us keep this service running!
Server crash
Front end server crashed. Admin on travel at the time so two days of downtime.
[05 Oct, 2016]
ISP having network problems
Our ISP is experiencing problems. Service outages may occur.
[29 Apr, 2016]
ISP doing stupid things
ISP blocked outgoing emails erroneously. We engineered around it.
[03 Dec, 2015]
New IP address
Got new IP address for our front server. Led to some downtime.
[20. Nov, 2015]
Huge power outage
Huge power outage in Oslo and Barum brought the service down.
[18. Nov, 2015]
Hard disks replaced
New disks in place. Erratic updates today. Should be better tomorrow.
[28. Jan, 2015]
Problems with hard disks
Three out of four disks for the store of watched pages broken.
New disks ordered. Updates may be erratic and slow.
[23. Jan, 2015]
Problems with mail server
Due to summer holliday it took us some time to fix it.
[3. Aug, 2014]
Problems with server
Server problems combined with summer holliday has given two days of downtime. Up again now.
[1. July, 2014]
Problems with back end server
Some software problems with a server. Service may be reduced.
[19. November, 2013]
Disk problem
A hard disk on the back end server is failing. Updates may miss some pages.
[17. June, 2013]
New server online
The previous server which broke down has finally been replaced by a brand new server.
[21. April, 2013]
Backend server problems
Backend server broken. Customers may experience reduced services.
[13. January, 2013]
Power outage
Power outage. Many hours of downtime.
[12. January, 2013]
Disk problem
Problems with a disk on backend. Again. Will be fixed today.
[21. December, 2012]
Disk and network problem
Problems with a disk on backend server that when fixed left us with a network problem has left us with a problem this weekend.
[16. December, 2012]
Disk problem
Problems with a disk on backend server. Hope to get it fixed before the week end. Hopefully our customers will not be affected.
[26. January, 2012]
Comcast blocking our emails
Comcast is currently blocking our update emails as spam. Hopefully the problem will go away in a couple of days. Nothing we can do about it.
[01. January, 2012]
Maintenance and disk trouble
A quick server sw upgrade and reboot also revealed a defective hard disk. Disk changed but a few hours of down time.
[19. August, 2011]
Mailserver listed in SORBS
Our email server has been listed as spam server on SORBS [www.sorbs.net]. Problem usually goes away by itself after a few days.
[14. June, 2011]
Problems with mails to yahoo
and addresses hosted by them are currently being blocked by yahoo. Hopefully this will go over by itself.
[19. January, 2011]
Server fixed
We have managed to fix the server and operations should be back to normal.
[3. January, 2011]
Server failure
The main server for sending updates short circuted last night and is completely dead. We are working on a replacement. You might find the service slower than usual as we are on a backup solution.
[2. January, 2011]
Power outage
Power outage yesterday. Some problems with the internet router. Up now.
[21. December, 2010]
The service and virtual server from
Our email server at linode based on postfix and centos is great!
Nice giving praise for once. And yes: We are nerds.
[29. October, 2010]
Sending updates again
Our ISP really sabotaged us. Shame on vikenfiber.no.
We have now set up our own, external, email server .
More costs for us. But we hope a better solution.
[14. October, 2010]
ISP Problems
Mix up from our ISP blocks our outgoing emails. Will be fixed tomorrow.
[12. October, 2010]
New server up and running
Almost completely configured and up.
[11. October, 2010]
Defective HW
Our main server broke. Bought a new server. Getting it into shape.
[10. October, 2010]
Problems with @free.fr again
Same problem.
[19. March, 2010]
Problems with @free.fr
The mail server @free.fr is blockin emails from our ISP.
Usually such problems go away after a few days.
[10. December, 2009]
New disks installed
Defective disk changed. Also added some new ones.
Hopefully we can achieve better stability and performance with these measures.
[29. November, 2009]
Broken disk again
Another disk broke last night. Hope to fix it during the week end.
[28. November, 2009]
Changed one disk
Changed one hard disk yesterday. So far no new problems.
Keeping our fingers crosed.
[19. November, 2009]
Pestered with disk problems
We have reoccuring problems with disks on the back end server.
New disks have been ordered.
[17. November, 2009]
Blacklist problems
Our ISP, Vikenfiber, has gotten it's mail servers
listed on several blacklists e.g. ix.dnsbl.manitu.net
So some of you will not receive the updates.
[11. November, 2009]
Disk fixed
Hopefully updates should be ok again.
[11. November, 2009]
Hardware problems
A defective disk casues problems. Hope to change it this evening.
[10. November, 2009]
More electrical work
Electricians finished today. So more downtime.
And again a hard disk broke on the back end server.
Luckily we bought two spares today. Up and running now.
[15. December, 2008]
Power again
Electricians working in the building yesterday. So downtime.
One hard disk broke on the back end server. Fixed now.
[13. December, 2008]
Power outage
Power outage for a couple of hours this afternoon (GMT).
Everything should be ok now.
[23. October, 2008]
Update emails now being sent
After having talked to our ISP's tech support, emails are being
sent again.
[13. October, 2008]
New ISP, new problems
Today we have encountered problems sending out emails through our
new ISP. Will contact tech support monday morning (CET).
[12. October, 2008]
PRIORITY users!
Users that donate USD 20 gets PRIORITY!
[9. Oct, 2008]
Moved to a new ISP (vikenfiber.no). Much faster. Hope for stability.
Unsuccessfull attempt to change the disk. Need to investigate further.
So even with new ISP WTP may be a bit slow.
[8. October, 2008]
Planned downtime
Planned downtime this afternoon (GMT) to fix the disk and move to
a different ISP. Wish us luck!
[7. October, 2008]
Network problems
Due to an error our bandwith is reduced to under 200kb/s. We are
working with our ISP nextgentel.no to fix it. We are not pleased!
[4. October, 2008]
HW Problems
A disk on our backend server broke. We are working on it.
Service may be slow or non excisting until we get a replacement.
[3. October 2008]
Probles with Comcast and ATT
Comcast and ATT blocking the WTP update emails (from our ISP).
[13. August, 2008]
sbcglobal.net not accepting emails from WTP
sbcglobal.net is currently not accepting emails from our ISP.
So no WTP updates for sbcglobal.net user for now.
These problems usually goes away in a couple of days.
[27. June, 2008]
Comcast problem fixed
Comcast no longer blocking the WTP update emails.
[21. June, 2008]
Comcast is blocking WTP updates
Comcast is currently blocking all emails from WTP
(more correctly our ISP). Nothing we at WTP can do about it.
Sorry for the inconvinience. Let us hope Comcast
and our ISP sorts it out.
[17. June, 2008]
Spring cleaning
We are cleaning up. Accounts where we receive
many email bounces are suspended. These can be
unsuspended by contacting us.
[18. April, 2006]
PRIORITY users!
Users that donate USD 20 gets PRIORITY!
[18. April, 2005]
WTP featured on BBC World
BBC World's internet magazine Click Online demonstrates
WatchThatPage.
[24. April, 2004]
You can now help keeping WTP running.
[23. February, 2004]
Increased bandwidth
We have increased our bandwidth four times to be able to handle more users
[6. September, 2003]
HTTP link delimiter
Choose which HTTP link delimiter to use
[16. October, 2002]
Update on demand
Get fresh updates! Specify yourself when WatchThatPage should check for changes.
Also, multi-update option available
[27. September, 2002]