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Asus adds Zen to the Android Wear smartwatch

The ZenWatch is Asus' contestant in the Android Wear beauty pageant

Promises, promises. Asus went into this year's IFA show in Berlin with the immodest pledge of revealing the best looking Android Wear smartwatch to date. Featuring a curved 2.5D design on the front and a stainless cover on the back, its newly announced ZenWatch emphasizes style above all else. Its price also isn't bad, coming in at 199 euros, and it has a set of high-quality internal components, too — including a 1.6-inch AMOLED display, 4GB of storage and 512MB of RAM, and the same Qualcomm processor as inside the first Android Wear watches. But Asus wants to wow you with its looks, not specs.

A tan leather strap connects an Asus-branded buckle to its chunky and well polished body. Fine detailing like stitching on the strap and exposed screws in the back of the watch are borrowed from the classic watch industry. There's an elegance to the ZenWatch that would work much better if it a smaller device. As it is now, it has the dimensions of big and sporty watches but the smooth finish and style of a more refined device. That stylistic clash undermines Asus' premise of this being the most attractive Android Wear watch — the Moto 360 still seems to have more idiosyncratic character than any of its subsequent competitors.

The software on the ZenWatch is the standard Android Wear, complemented with a couple of added features. There's a "tap tap" function to find your phone, a remote control for your smartphone's camera, and more than a hundred watch faces to choose from. Asus hasn't yet revealed the release date for its first Android Wear smartwatch, but you can see it up close and personal in our photos below.

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