We don’t receive smartwatches everyday. Asus gave us a chance to review their ZenWatch 2, their charm to keep you connected to the world with your watch. The watch costs around RM699 (approx. $170), is it worth it? Or even functional? Let’s find out!
The Asus Zenwatch 2 has some quite functional features built into it rather than just looking at the time. The Asus Zenwatch 2 has a pedometer built into it to track your steps. The phone also allows you to set reminders for yourself as the phone has the world of Google built into it. The Zenwatch also allows you receive calls and notifications or even reply to them if that’s what you will.
The Design & Build Quality
The Asus Zenwatch 2 comes with a premium build featuring metal build all around with different straps to choose from. The Zenwatch 2 also has quite a large footprint and weight to it measuring about 45mm~ from the longest side while sustaining a width of 11mm. The watch also features a 1.45 inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 280×280 resulting in a PPI of 273.
The build quality on the Zenwatch 2 is great, during my daily usage it had quite a rough time as I scraped the watch on rough surfaces mistakenly, yet the watch remains as good as new. As of the straps, they also seem fine. I have no complaints with them as well.
The Hardware used to JUICE this thing up
The Asus Zenwatch 2 comes with Snapdragon 400 with an Adreno 305 GPU under the hood packed with 4GB of internal storage. The Zenwatch 2 also comes with 512MB of RAM which seems okay, nothing earth-shattering. The UI has no hiccups running everything.
The Zenwatch 2 has okay specs on paper and runs Android Wear pretty fluently. Here are some screens from AIDA 64 that was synced to the Zenwatch 2 from my smartphone.
Android Wear in its full Glory
Pairing up the Zenwatch to my smartphone was a super easy process. Simply install the Android Wear app and turn on your smartwatch for the first time, or factory reset it at your will. Then simply follow the instructions, select the visible smartwatch on your phone and done, it will pair but the smartwatch will take time. That’s it.
As of the software side of things, the Asus Zenwatch 2 runs on Android Wear OS which means that this watch will feel home as soon as you set it up since it syncs all your contacts and even your Android phone apps that are compatible with Android Wear. For those Apple iOS users, we are happy to say that the Zenwatch 2 is also compatible with iOS.
Battery Life
The Asus Zenwatch 2 sports a 290mAh battery which takes about 40 minutes to completely charge the battery which seems pretty good. Though always taking off the watch really makes me feel a bit frustrated. The battery lasts usually for a day, but if you reduce everything, it may survive for the next day as well.
Pricing & Conclusion
Well, the Asus Zenwatch 2 isn’t cheap. But it isn’t expensive either when compared to other Android Wear watches. Yes, it is functional and definitely premium. Asus has managed to pull off an appealing smartwatch. Best of all, Apple iOS users can also use this with their iPhones.
