The Asus ZenWatch has been very well received as reviewers have praised its good and somewhat distinctive and elegant industrial design with a lot of attention put into details and good materials of its build. On the software side, some of the reviewers mention some stability issues with the ZenUI and the weirdly positioned heart rate sensor seems to be a bit of a hit-or-miss. Still it seems to be a very good device for the $200 price that goes along with it.
For the users of this particular smartwatch, there are some good news. A Reddit user reports that his ZenWatch has been updated to the most recent build of the Android Wear OS, the version 5.1.1. The first smartwatch to receive the update was the luxurious and recently launched LG Watch Urbane and ever since, more users have been receiving the update, so now it’s the turn for the Asus smartwatch. Hopefully, Asus took the chance to improve the stability of its own OS with this new update.
The ZenWatch doesn’t include WiFi support, so it won’t be able to use this particularly important change, keeping it completely dependent on the connection with the smartphone. Still it can take advantage of the other features, from the smaller changes like the one made on the Settings pull-down menu or the new organization for the Apps and Contacts making them more easily accessible to the more useful way of scrolling through the notifications with the movement of the wrist. Another relevant change is the possibility of replying with an emoji that you can draw on the surface of the smartwatch or simply choose from the two column list. Other apps can change their color scheme to black and white while the user is not looking at the screen in order to save battery. Let’s remember that the update process is more complicated than it may seem and not all of the devices get updated at the same time. In case you want to check if your device is ready to get updated you can swipe down on the watch face, go to Settings, scroll down to About and select System Updates.