The ZenWatch runs the same Android Wear software as smartwatches from LG, Samsung, Sony, and Motorola, and it has the same set of features and limitations. We’ve already gone in depth on Android Wear numerous times, so I encourage you to check out those earlier reviews if you’re not familiar with it. Basically: you can see all of your phone’s notifications on your wrist, send messages or perform Google searches with your voice, or do things like control your smart lights with one of the many apps that have been developed. It’s a powerful platform, but still has a number of usability and reliability issues, which prevents me from recommending it to anyone without reservations.
For better or worse, the ZenWatch’s performance is on par with other Android Wear watches, meaning that it’s mostly fine, but can be annoyingly slow at times. It isn’t as responsive to voice commands as the Moto 360, but that didn’t prevent me from sending messages to my wife without touching my phone. More frustrating to me is the ZenWatch’s poor response to the wrist motion to wake up the display.
The ZenWatch performs as well as any other Android Wear watchAsus isn’t able to change the main interface of Android Wear (Google doesn’t allow it), but it did add a few apps of its own for both the watch and your smartphone. The ZenWatch has a number of attractive exclusive watch faces that complement its more elegant design. Some of those can be customized to display extra information such as step count, watch battery life, phone battery life, or current weather conditions using Asus’ smartphone app. I’m particularly fond of the large digital face that I’ve set to also display the date, my step count, phone battery, and weather. There’s a camera remote, which turns the watch into a viewfinder for your phone’s camera, along with a compass and a flashlight app that displays a solid color on the ZenWatch’s display. (That last one’s not very useful.)
The ZenWatch Manager app offers a few exclusive features that other Android Wear watches lack. It lets you set the ZenWatch as a trusted device on your phone, even if you don’t have Android 5.0; sound an alarm on the ZenWatch in case you lost it in the couch cushions for some reason; or set up an alert on the watch if you leave your phone behind somewhere.
Asus also offers a health and fitness app for both the watch and the phone that logs step counts, heart rates, and mood as measured by the ZenWatch. It’s supposed to be the "zen" part of the ZenWatch. The Wellness app wouldn’t work on my Android 5.0 Lollipop phone, but the watch portion still measured my steps and vitals.
The larger problem is the ZenWatch just isn’t good for counting my steps or measuring my heart rate. Step counts varied wildly and were never in sync with the Fitbit I wear on my other wrist: sometimes they were thousands of steps higher, sometimes they were thousands of steps lower than what the Fitbit reported. The ZenWatch isn’t a device I’d wear at the gym anyways (the leather strap and metal body pretty much put that out of the question), but it’s not too much to expect reliable step counting for my day-to-day activities and the ZenWatch fails in that regard.
Step counts and heart rate measurements were all over the placeMeasuring your heart rate on the ZenWatch isn’t like with other smartwatches, which use a light underneath the watch to read your pulse. Instead, you place two fingers on the metal frame at the same time, completing an electrical circuit. Unfortunately, this isn’t any faster than the other method, and like the ZenWatch’s step counter, can be all over the place with its readings. I’m pretty sure my heart rate doesn’t shift 100 beats per minute in two minutes of standing still, but that’s often what the ZenWatch told me.
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