Gadgetory

the first a Susan Walsh was released just about a year ago and was one of our favorite Android wear smartwatches when the industry was just getting started this year Asus tries to improve last year's low price SmartWatch while decreasing the price by even more hello everybody I'm crystal and yes Asia's first Zen watch was a pretty great SmartWatch but of course it has some minor flaws so today we'll be taking a look to see if Asus improved in those areas or perhaps took a step backwards we'll find out today in our review of the Asus Zen while most Android smartwatches tend to all operate and perform the same the design of the watch oftentimes the main selling point and in this area the asus is then washed to shines literally the watch is made from high-quality stainless steel which looks and feels very elegant and beautiful its design closely resembles a traditional luxury watch while maintaining a nice simple form and it's also not too flashy which is good in a world still adjusting to the idea of smartwatches you have some choices in color of the stainless steel from silver gun metal or even rose gold another choice issues gives us users this time around is the actual size so you can pick up the Zen wash too in a big 49 millimeter model with a one-point 63 inch display or a 45 millimeter model with a one-point 45 inch display we've been using the 49 millimeter model and with me being a very short girl with small wrists it feels very comfortable and a lot of that is linked to the thinness of the watch it's not as bulky as most smart watches on the market right now and you'll forget that you're weighing it very fast actually it's very easy to exchange bands on the asu's n watch still by the little sliding mechanisms next to the body of the watch it's one of the easiest ways to take on and off watch bands on a SmartWatch that we try so far these straps come in different colors and materials like this black rubber band that has a slight texture to it it looks and feels quite nice nothing too eye-catching but it gets the job done you can also pick up leather and metal stainless steel bands and for the larger design watch to twenty two millimeter straps are available for the smaller variant there are 80 millimeter ones now unfortunately the pretty large bezel surrounding the display are still present with a Zen watch to which upset some people but with this being an AMOLED display black wash traces will seem to blend into these bezels and itself to determine where the screen stars and the bezels end which makes up for it and of course the biggest advantage to have an AMOLED display on a Smart Watch is his battery consumption with most of the time your smart watches screen will be displaying a couple of numbers and just two hands over a black background that's at least 80 percent of the pixels not being lit up so that saves a lot of power the quality of the display is quite nice colors have a nice vibrancy to them and although the resolution is not the best at 320 by 320 on the large model and 280 by 280 on the small model it's more of what we're used to with Android smartwatches in this day and age the ACS then wash to has a nice curved glass over the display Gorilla Glass Street to be exact so should be able to hold up over time and this watch is also bit more resistant to water and dust in last year's model being ip67 certified so you shouldn't be worried about getting the swell washing your hands or bringing it along in a rainy day a welcome to change is a relocation of the power button which is now found on the right side instead of the back and this time is capable of a couple more things by pushing it the display will light up or turn off if it's already on and by holding it you'll get into a menu with your apps contacts and Google now another way to turn off the screen and it's a lot more fun and easier is just by tapping the screen with the palm of your hand it works perfectly you'll feel a little vibration on your wrist and the display will turn off or go into a dimmer known color mode depending on your settings and like most Android smartwatches when you bring to watch up to glance at it the screen will turn on giving you more information it works pretty well and very rarely will not detect your motion and fail to light up the screen and of course there going to be some times throughout the day that the Zen watch toons thinks you're raising your wrist to take a look I'm really you're actually just reaching for something but the screen will quickly shut off depending on your timeout settings within both models of the AC Zen watch - we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and 512 megabytes of RAM which for an operating system like Android wear performs very well the Zen watch - connected to your phone using bluetooth 4.1 and can also connect to Wi-Fi Bluetooth connectivity is very good I can pretty much walk around the entire second floor of my house with my phone in one room and never lose connection inside the watch is a sixth act gyroscopes for detecting subtle wrist wrestlers the larger variant sports a four hundred million power battery and a three hundred million power battery for the smaller Varian when it comes to software you're not going to find many differences compared to other smartwatches running the Android wear operating system as Google doesn't allow any tweaking or skinning you do however have a lot of watchface choices that you can change by just holding down some are more customizable than others and some show more information such as battery life and step count if you want to save some battery going with something based around a black background will really help after syncing your Android phone or even iPhone now with the a season watch - via bluetooth you will start receiving notifications that you can browse through by swiping up or down and when you get to notification that you like to interact with you can swipe to the left to bring up more options or if you want to get rid of a notification simply swiping to the right will dismiss it while the screen is on you can initiate voice commands by saying ok Google to send text check whether etc really the main way to respond or do things on these smartwatches is with your voice so thankfully voice recognition is very reliable the watch does a very good job of remaining fast and smooth while navigation through cars and menus very few stutters are noticeable so it's safe to expect a very fast and reliable experience using this and watch - of course you can keep track and adjust settings - the Android wear app on your phone we can view battery life graphs change watch faces and mess with other settings but asus has some great apps of their own where you have some extra freedom to enhance your SmartWatch experience with the Zen watch app you can trigger a find my watch alarm send emergency messages to close contacts and even launch a flashlight which may not be too helpful another AC Zen watch app called remote camera allows you to view what your phone camera is seeing through your watch once again I'm not sure how many people actually find this useful and lastly one more ACN washout worth mentioning is a wellness app which can be an alternative to Google's fit app it's a little silly how a sees broke up every little feature into their own independent apps when they could have just made one then watch app that could do it all so you may want to just stick with Google's Android wear apps to make this simpler battery life on the first generation of the Zen watch was pretty good lasting a day to a day and a half before needing to charge now at first battery life on the Zen watch 2 was horrible it was to get to a full day without the wash time it would make it for the first nine or ten hours before hitting 0% and this is what the brightness set to three a medium setting and the screen always on ambient mode but after a couple of charging cycles the Zen wash twos battery was performing a lot better lasting at least a full day to a day and a half and if you turn off the ambient display so the watch only lights up when you raise your wrist you'll get a bit more battery life but you're probably going to want to keep ambient display on so you can view the time without raising your wrist now the charging experience on the new HSN watch 2 has tremendously improved there's no dock or cradle included but instead is a magnetic Pogo pin connector that makes connection for charging very easy the charger also charges pretty fast I was able to go from 0 to 50 in about 30 minutes which is pretty impressive probably the biggest selling point of the Asus then watch 2 is this price it's pressed very low for an android smart watch for the silver 49 millimeter model it only set you back $129 and that's including the rubber wristband there's also a Best Buy exclusive for the 49 millimeter in the gunmetal color and with that you'll receive a leather wristband for 149 dollars and for the smaller 45 millimeter model it'll cost you 149 dollars including a leather wristband an Android smart watch of this quality and of this price is a steal if you're just getting into the SmartWatch feel this Zen watch 2 is more than perfect as it's a beautiful luxurious look while still having very simple aesthetics so it is not too showy which is a big concern for people thinking about wearing smartwatches for the first time it's customizable enough with his different colors sizes and interchangeable bands that make matching it with your outfit very easy you'll most likely have to throw it on a charger before you go to sleep at night so it could last you to the second day but if that's the only compromise for such a cheap SmartWatch you can't go wrong with the Asus Zen thanks for watching everyone I hope you enjoyed this review and if you did give us a nice big thumbs up because that really helps us out also check out these cool videos on the side here and our weekly podcasts down there and lastly head on over to Android or e-comm as we all your source for all things Android