Asus on Tuesday brought its new smartwatches to India. The company said that the Zenwatch 2 would be available in India in two sizes – one with 1.63-inch screen and other with 1.45-inch screen. The bigger one (WI501Q) would be sold at a price of Rs.14,999 while the smaller one will have a price of Rs.11,999. For now the smartwatch will be sold at Flipkart but after some time it would also be available in Asus stores across India.
The ZenWatch 2 uses Android Wear. It offers the usual smartwatch functionality — syncing notifications with phone etc — as well as offers fitness-related features like tracking jogging session calculating how many calories a user is burning.
Asus said that the ZenWatch 2 comes in a hand-polished stainless-steel casing. It has a curved watch crystal and a crown button that echoes traditional watch style. The AMOLED screen in the watch has been topped with Gorilla Glass 3 for extra durability.
The ZenWatch 2 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with 512MB RAM and 4GB internal memory. It will be available silver and gunmetal colours and will come with two strap variants – rubber and leather. Asus says that the watch offers battery life of up to two days.
The bigger ZenWatch 2 has a screen resolution of 320 x 320 pixels while the smaller one sports resolution of 280 x 280 pixels. It is waterproof so if you want to wear it while swipping in a pool so that you can see who is calling you, you will be able to do so.
The ZenWatch 2 competes with the likes of Apple Watch and Motorola Moto 360 2 in the Indian market. However, unlike the other two, the ZenWatch 2 is priced more aggressively. The Moto 360 (2nd generation) sells in the market at a price of around Rs.20,000 while the Apple Watch costs around Rs.32,000. In comparison, the starting price of the ZenWatch 2 is very aggressive, something that may make it more appealing to consumers considering the limited — and often superfluous – functionality that smartwatches offer.
