DESIGN
Bezel, bezel, bezel. Almost every ASUS ZenWatch 2 customer has an opinion on it, most uncomplimentary, to say the least. The global marketplace is speaking volumes about it.
The ridiculously large internal bezel inside the display housing and underneath the display Gorilla Glass 3 layer of the ASUS ZenWatch 2 is one of the three resounding comments the customers of the ASUS ZenWatch 2 are issuing to ASUS and the global marketplace.
The other two resounding opinions are how smartly fashionable the ASUS ZenWatch 2 is and what an affordable price-performance value proposition this product offers for lots of prospective entry level smartwatch customers.
On all three accounts, the user community is absolutely correct.
The ASUS smartwatch user community does understand how a company can make a watch fashionably attractive. And they truly appreciate a company making a reasonably functional smartwatch that is often one-half the price of most other smartwatches on the market. The ASUS ZenWatch 2 is indeed one of the leaders in high fashion smartwatches and it is arguably the absolute world leader in entry-level affordability and price-performance value for your hard earned money.
Contrast this, however, with the overwhelming fact that the ASUS smartwatch customer base rather unanimously does not comprehend why the internal bezel is so obscenely, so ridiculously large – why it stands out as a sort of anti-fashion statement amongst the rest of global smartwatch world of industrial design and engineering.
None of the product reviews out there can explain it to the ASUS smartwatch user community. Nobody is calling out the correct answer.
Why the cognitive dissonance thrown the users’ way, ASUS?
Why make a beautifully efficient smartwatch housing design, with a Moto 360 2nd Gen-ish type of attractively thin housing or case bezel on the product’s exterior, an exterior bezel that looks Manhattan fashion smart, and then mar the product with a grossly oversized and elementary school looking internal bezel frame underneath the Gorilla Glass that puts a disappointing damper on the overall artistic design?
Note for needed emphasis, we’re not talking about the relatively thin bezel of the stainless steel casing or housing of the entire watch, which actually is a rather attractively thin bezel. The confusion on which bezel people are talking about here knows no bounds.
No, we’re talking about that square, dark, artfully painted, cardboard picture-frame-ish looking internal bezel that surrounds the rather nice, but small and rather square 1.63-inch diagonal AMOLED display.
Let me break it down for you – to let the ASUS ZenWatch 2 user community understand why that dumb looking internal bezel is so large.
All things considered, there can be only one logical reason for this bezel. Battery life!
It is the industrial product design anomaly that sticks out like a combination sore thumb and beautiful thumb.
Battery life, you say? What does that have to do with an internal bezel? That’s a good, rational question.
Battery life for a smartwatch is largely determined by three things: 1) the size and technology of the display, which consumes energy, 2) the energy consumed by the internal chipsets, which also consume a lot of energy, especially the wireless chips, and 3) the size and technology choice of battery module housed in the smartwatch.
The design engineers at ASUS smartly chose to bring a compellingly affordable, yet fashionable entry-level product to the global smartwatch marketplace. To do just that, they chose to maximize the product differentiation of their ASUS brand smartwatch on extended duration battery life, a feature desired by, oh, perhaps 95% of the entire global smartwatch swath of existing and potential customers.
OK Google, at least some smartwatch executives “get it.” Good job, ASUS execs! You differentiated your smartwatch “smartly.”
A smartwatch that most ASUS customers are claiming gets two (2) full days of mixed use battery life certainly stands out in a singular way from almost all other smartwatches on the market, save for the Pebble perhaps. That said, the difference between the fashion offered by the ASUS versus the Pebble is like comparing high fashion in Manhattan to that of Cleveland. There’s very little comparison.
Focusing on two-day battery life was a truly inspired and wise product design choice by ASUS executives! Well done.
In order to accomplish that, there was and is currently only one realistic industrial design and engineering choice. One needs to make the overall dimensions of the smartwatch casing (or housing) large, while making the energy consuming display relatively small. This allows a relatively large battery to be housed in the casing that powers a relatively small display.
Indeed, we see that the ASUS ZenWatch 2 sports a 42.5% screen-to-body ration. This is quite likely the singularly lowest or next to lowest screen-to-body ration in the entire global smartwatch industry. If you focus on that issue, it’s quite disappointing, in fact.
However, this presents a great counter benefit – extended battery life, due to the simple fact that there is less display to power, especially if and when one leaves the energy efficient AMOLED display on for two working days.
So if you, the ASUS ZenWatch 2 user or prospective buyer are extolling the customer satisfying virtues of this smartwatch’s great battery life and premium looking stainless steel housing while you are simultaneously decrying the ridiculously large internal bezel, well, at least now you know why you have unresolved until now cognitive fashion sense dissonance.
Now if you still have a cognitive dissonance headache on the ASUS ZenWatch 2 freakishly large bezel issue, there’s just one thing to do. Go see a doctor and let him or her know that you have “sustained bezel syndrome.” Your physician may or may not prescribe the proverbial, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”
Either way, you have your bezel answer, ASUS ZenWatch 2 customers. Finally!
WHO IS ASUS? The vast majority of the consumer smartwatch market does not know who ASUS is.
Well, ASUS is based in Taipei, Taiwan. It is the global market share leader (40%) in the manufacturing of motherboards.
As such, in the considered opinion of this review, their desire to get into the smartwatch business is simply a logical move to cost effectively extend their motherboard manufacturing business into yet another type of computing platform, motherboards for the wrist instead of the desktop, per se. They likely also see the wearables motherboard market exploding as well. ASUS certainly didn’t get to where they are now by being myopic to massive market trends in computing and consumer electronics.
That ASUS appears to have nearly copied the basic Apple Watch design except for a thinner metallic watch housing bezel (exterior), four (4) protruding lugs to hold the watch bands, larger diameter radius corner curves on their rectangular format, and a flatter & flush and eminently more elegant front surface to their device versus the Apple Watch is no surprise either given the global climate of intellectual property and a typically pragmatic business decision from ASUS in Taiwan, following Apple’s early customer adoption and market share success with this form factor.
Actually the flat and flush surface is more appealing than the Apple Watch design, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. Let’s get to the specs, shall we?