Today ASUS just officially unveiled their very first smartwatch, the ASUS ZenWatch. ASUS is one of a few different top OEMs who announced their brand new smartwatches today at the IFA conference in Berlin, Something that we weren’t necessarily extremely surprised about considering ASUS’s teaser that they had previously put out about the watch last week. Leading up to today’s events, ASUS had mentioned earlier in the year that they were planning to make a smartwatch of their own,(possibly based on Android Wear)to contend with the likes of the Moto 360, and LG and Samsung’s first Android Wear smartwatches launched earlier on in the summer. The Zen Watch was stated by ASUS as having some unique features, as ASUS first statements when they mentioned the watch having an existence would be carry something we had never seen before on the smartwatch as of yet, gesture based controls.
Prior to the event, the ASUS ZenWatch was also rumored to be coming in at under $199 to compete with the rest of the devices that should be launched around the same time. just from the previous sketches we knew the Zen watch would have a nice slightly curved watch face that would feel like it somewhat conforms to the shape of the wrist, something that we hadn’t seen in any of the smartwatches previously released, that is until Samsung lifted the curtain on their new Gear S, which has a somewhat similar design. The ZenWatch also sports 3G connectivity so the watch can be used without a smartphone pairing.
The case of the ZenWatch is made of Steel, so it definitely looks and feels high-quality, as we’d expect from ASUS. It also has a curved glass display, along with a quick-release clasp, keeping the ZenWatch looking great, but easy to take on/off. Of course, it runs on Android Wear which Google announced at Google I/O earlier this summer.
As far as specs go, the ZenWatch is featuring a 1.63-inch curved 320×320 AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage, Bluetooth 4.0, a bio sensor which can measure your heart rate, and water proof up to IP55 rating. So as far as specs go, it’s pretty similar to the LG G Watch, Moto 360 and Samsung Gear Live, but the ASUS ZenWatch does look really nice.
The ASUS ZenWatch is going to be priced at €199 (which is about $260 USD), and will hit retailers in Q3 and Q4 of this year.
