Hardware

A sense of style and personality is crucial for wearables; it's the difference between tossing something in the drawer after it's technically obsolete and wearing it anyway just because you like it. The ZenWatch falls squarely into that latter category, at least as far as I'm concerned. ASUS has put together a handsome, understated piece of kit that many people will feel proud wearing. So what's so nice about it? Well, for starters, the simple, curvy chassis is hewn from two layers of stainless steel sandwiching a rosy gold, steel midsection that helps to break up what otherwise would've been a monotonous, 75-gram silver slab. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think the rounded "2.5D" body and two-tone trim were smart decisions -- they make the watch feel understated and classy in a market that all too easily forgets what those words mean. In that respect, the ZenWatch lands somewhere in between the first, utilitarian batch of Android Wear watches and newer, flashier models like the Moto 360 and LG G Watch R. Definitely not a bad niche to camp out in.



You might not agree with ASUS' design choices, but you can't blame the company for shooting for style when it has the same dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 and 512 of RAM that've popped up in nearly every other Android Wear watch to date. There's also 4GB of flash storage under the hood in case you want to listen to music on the run without having to lug around a phone while you're at it, though that's hardly novel either.

My review unit came with a caramel-colored, stitched leather wristband that's both fetching and comfortable, a proposition that's tougher to nail than you might think. I'm no watch maven, but I've come across plenty of pretty leather straps that are too stiff and creaky until they're properly broken in. Not so here. The ZenWatch's band felt supple on my wrist from the get-go. And hey, you can swap out that stock leather band with any other 22mm strap you've got lying around. That's probably for the best too, especially if you're the sort to wear snug shirts: At its biggest, the metallic clasp that lashes one end of the band to the other is even thicker than the watch itself, making it sometimes troublesome to pull a sleeve over. On the plus side, the ZenWatch's body is water-resistant, so it'll survive bathroom splashes and other accidents (just try to keep the water away from all that leather).

Right, that's enough fawning -- let's get to the disappointing stuff. Sitting right up top is the square, 1.63-inch AMOLED screen swathed in a de rigueur panel of Corning's Gorilla Glass 3 to keep it from getting banged up. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of bezel separating the ring of steel trim from the screen itself, and it's probably the most disappointing thing about the ZenWatch's looks. All that unused space makes the screen seem smaller than it actually is, and it doesn't help that the bezel has a slightly textured look as if it's just begging to be noticed. Some better button placement would've helped a lot, too. We'll dig into the software in a bit, but here's a quick spoiler: The folks at ASUS seem to be huge fans of the analog clock aesthetic, so a crown wouldn't look too out of place on the ZenWatch. Frankly, it'd make a much better power button than the one we actually got; it's a tiny little thing that sits flush with the rest of the body, so it's tough to find by feel alone.

Display

Let's just get this out of the way now: The ZenWatch's 1.63-inch AMOLED screen isn't eye-catchingly round like some others out there, but that's no reason to write it off. After all, didn't a wise bard note ages ago that it's hip to be square?



Painfully dated jokes aside, the screen's generally a pleasure to cast your eyes on, even if those peepers have been spoiled by the smartphone the watch is connected to. It runs at 320 x 320 (that's a pixel density of 278 ppi, if you're keeping count), making it marginally crisper than the G Watch R, though Sony's SmartWatch 3 still beats it by a hair. Your eyes almost certainly won't notice a few extra pixels per linear inch, though, so there's not much point in getting too worked up over pixel density -- the ZenWatch's display is more than crisp enough to please all but the most scrutinous screen snobs. Oh, and since you'll be glancing down at an AMOLED screen, the bold colors Google likes are lively and vibrant with deep, sumptuous blacks to match. We're still a ways off from the holy grail -- a digital watch face that's as crisp and substantial as a physical one -- but this generation of wearables hasn't exactly left us wanting either.

Then again, there's the matter of all that stuff around the screen. I've already mentioned the expanses of bezel surrounding the screen, and man -- I can't ever not notice it. Maybe it's because the rest of the watch is so clean, so elegant that the bezel just seems like filler. At the very least, it would've been nice if ASUS fitted an ambient light sensor tucked away in there, but no dice. You'll have to choose from one of five brightness levels manually, a process that takes a total of four to five swipes and taps to get where you'd need to go. My time with the ZenWatch has mostly been spent with screen brightness dialed up halfway and I never had trouble seeing who was furiously texting me, even under the light of the harsh winter sun. By default, you can smack your palm down on the screen to shut it off, though 99 percent of the time I just waited the few seconds for the screen to do it on its own.

In use

Go ahead, pick up any Android Wear watch and start poking around. I'll wait. It won't take you long to realize that beyond all the cosmetic niceties -- the chassis, the bands, the different watch faces -- they're all basically the same. The incessant flow of information in the form of Google Now cards and notifications? Mostly impeccable voice recognition for taking notes, issuing responses and launching apps? Tap-and-swipe-friendly navigation? All of the core bits are here on the ZenWatch and work just the way they always have, so forgive me for not dwelling on them much. It's a testament to Google's grip on the platform, but it puts the onus on smartwatch makers to turn something so uniform and consistent into something special.



In the case of the ZenWatch, most of those special bits lean on a separate Android app called ZenWatch Manager. From there, you can customize the colors of the seven included non-Googly watch faces, and fire up extra features like a proximity warning to alert you when you've wandered away from your phone and the option to mute your phone's ringer by clamping your hand over your watch. Useful, though not exactly thrilling. Just beware the occasionally spotty English that pops up now and again -- whenever I modify a watch face, a dialog box cheerfully confirms that my changes have been saved and says, "You could select the watch face on your watch to use it." I could, but should I?