Asus ZenWatch is a classy Android Wear timepiece

Asus unveiled its first wearable, the ZenWatch, at IFA in Berlin this week and Wired.co.uk has been hands-on with the Android Wear device.

Asus hasn't made a huge impression in the smartphone world, but don't for a second underestimate its design skills. Its latest offering is one of the most attractive Android Wear devices to appear yet and borrows the Zen names from Asus's ZenBook laptops, which are a design success story themselves. Like many other companies that use Google's software, Asus has opted for a square face over a round one, but at least the central module is metallic and looks quite smart.



Behind the 1.6-inch 320x320-pixel touch-sensitive display is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 CPU running at 1.2GHz. This is the same chip used in many low- to mid-range phones and even tablets from the likes of Sony, Nokia and Samsung. It's paired with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. It's water-resistant with an IP55 rating and weighs 50g, or 75g with the strap attached (which, obviously, most probably will want attached).

As it's running on Android Wear it will support small apps available for that platform, as is the case with Motorola's new Moto 360 and LG G Watch R -- both of which we have also got hands-on reports for.



If you're looking for a watch that you'll be comfortable to wear with your everyday attire, this one could well be it. It was on the big side for Wired.co.uk's smallish wrist, but the lovely leather strap kept it feeling comfy and securely fixed in place. We also liked the way the leather matched the colour of the metal that ran around the core unit itself.

The ZenWatch will feature a special interface called ZenUI that has been specially created for it, but unfortunately we didn't get to try this out as the watch we were playing with was running an Android Wear demo. This is something we'll be testing in our full review when the device goes on sale in the UK at the end of the year for £199 -- the same price as other smartwatches, meaning this is another device likely to remain a niche aspiration for the mainstream for some time.
Wired