Asus ZenFone 2 Laser: All Performance

The Asus ZenFone 2 Laser, is now available in the U.S. from $199 off contract. That’s cheap, rivaling the impressive Moto G in terms of price and specs. Not to be mistaken with the ZenFone 2, which was released internationally earlier this year, the Laser boasts improved camera functionality with laser autofocus and dual-SIM capability. Has Asus put forth a handset worth pocketing? Read on to find out.

Build & Design

Asus ZenFone 2 Laser looks like a standard Android smartphone.

Palming the ZenFone 2 Laser for the first time is an experience not unlike one you’re already familiar with. That is to say, the Laser isn’t exactly a revolution in smartphone design – but by now, we’ve all pretty much come to know what to expect of the standard handheld mobile. In that regard, Asus has done nothing remarkable aside from delivering a sleek-looking mobile device.

The ZenFone 2 Laser body is lightweight and slender, weighing an even 6 ounces with the battery installed. That’s a bit heavier than the 5.5-ounceMoto G, but a hair below phablets like the iPhone 6s Plus and Galaxy Note5 that top 6 ounces. It’s also not what anyone would ever call a brick.

Android-standard Back, Home and Menu capacitive navigation buttons adorn the bottom of the front face – however for some reason Asus has chosen not to make these backlit, which can make quick navigation in poorly lit environments a minor challenge. Along the upper end of the face is where you’ll find the phone’s front-facing camera, notification LED, and receiver.

The edges of the smartphone are ultra-thin, measuring just 3.9mm. Its profile deepens around its curved back, reaching 10.8mm in thickness. This curved design is explained as a purposeful choice for effective ergonomic handling, but adding to that a height of 6 inches and width of 3.04 inches makes it somewhat unwieldy for one-handers and requires the use of both hands to operate. This isn’t unusual for large screen phablets, though.

The Asus ZenFone 2 Laser has rear volume buttons.

Owing to its super thin design, there are no buttons or ports on either edges of the device, save for a small fingernail groove for easier removal of the back cover. The volume rocker is situated on the device’s back side, just below the rear camera, which could present a bit of a learning curve if you’re migrating from a smartphone with side-located volume controls. Smartly, the volume buttons have been recessed into the body, which prevents you from accidentally altering volume settings anytime you set the phone down on its back. The speaker grille is also located on the bottom end of the back side, which can result in significant muting when it’s laid on certain types of surfaces. The top edge of the smartphone is home to a 3.5mm audio jack and power button. Along the phone’s bottom edge is where you’ll find the micro USB port and microphone.

The ZenFone 2 Laser ships in five different colors – Osmium Black, Sheer Gold, Glacier Gray, Glamour Red or Ceramic White – and comes with 16GB of internal memory, with the option to expand up to 128GB by way of a microSD port located inside the battery/SIM compartment. There is also a 32GB version of the same phone available for $249 as of this writing.

Display & Speakers

The ZenFone 2 Laser has a fully laminated 5.5-inch screen and a 72 percent screen-to-body ratio, which basically makes the screen look bigger than it is by virtue of the fact there’s less physical real estate surrounding it. The display is a 1280 x 720P IPS HD (with 267 pixel-per-inch density), which Asus claims offers viewing angle capability of 178 degrees.

The Asus ZenFone 2 Laser has a removable back panel.

Colors are vibrant when streaming video or viewing images, and glare is relatively minimal. Manufacturer specs indicate the Laser can achieve 72 percent of the NTSC color gamut. Its 267 pixels per inch are well below the flagship rivals, which top 500, but in line with phones in its class. The bottom line here is that even budget smartphones have excellent displays, so users won’t be disappointed. Scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass 4 adds additional display protection.

According to Asus, their proprietary TruVivid technology imbues the phone with not only added brightness, but also increased touch responsiveness. This is accomplished by shifting from a traditional four-layer display design to a two-layer design that brings the display closer to your eyes and fingertips – but it’s also nothing revolutionary, as this is something that Apple has also accomplished, most recently with the iPad Mini 4.

As we mentioned before, the smartphone’s speaker grille is positioned on the bottom of the back panel, which revealed itself as a problematic design decision after we discovered a substantial muting effect occurs when you set the unit down on any surface that doesn’t reflect sound back – such as your lap or your palm. Speaker volume is also poor, even when cranked to 100 percent, and volume performance was not improved when listening via earbuds.

Performance

The ZenFone 2 Laser is powered by a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor (1.2GHz quad-core), which is a shift from previous ZenFones that came equipped with Intel chips. This is not the most powerful Qualcomm money can buy, and Geekbench 3 benchmark test results prove this out: the phone’s single-core score is 649, which is significantly lower than Android flagships like the new Moto X Pure Edition and Galaxy S6 edge+, which topped 1,200. Its multi-core score is 2491, which is about half the score of the best of the bunch.

Asus ZenFone 2 Laser 2 Geekbench 3 Multi-Core score.

Asus ZenFone 2 Laser Geekbench 3 Single-Core score.

None of this means that it’s necessarily a poorly performing handset incapable of multi-tasking or functioning well on a daily basis. In fact, the 2015 Moto G scored 498 and 1494, respectively, and we praised that handset. The difference really comes down to how far you can strain your smartphone with intensive apps, and you can simply push the flagships further. You’ll be hard pressed to find more than a minor difference comparing day-to-day usage.  

It includes a 450 MHz Adreno 306 graphics processor and 2GB of RAM. The ZenFone 2 Laser does offer expandable storage support up to 128GB via microSD, which is a definite plus. The smartphone is also set up for dual SIM and dual standby, a popular feature among travelers who want to ensure they’ve got adequate coverage wherever they roam. Both SIM slots support 2G, 3G, and 4G. The MicroSD slot and the dual SIM slots are accessed by removing the back cover and lifting the battery. The back takes a bit of finagling to remove, but is aided by the presence of a fingernail groove for better leverage.

Software

Asus ZenFone 2 Laser ZenUI looks familiar, but has too much bloatware.

The ZenFone 2 Laser comes preloaded with Android 5.0 Lollipop and Asus’s proprietary ZenUI touch interface. ZenUI includes a number of apps and widgets, customizable live wallpapers, colorful themes that you can download for free, and various scroll effects that can be personalized to accommodate your tastes. One neat feature lets you double-tap the screen to wake it or put it to sleep again, but beyond that there’s not much remarkable about the UI. ZenMotion lets you launch apps by assigning specific touchscreen gestures, and SnapView adds increased privacy protection. It also includes a file transfer protocol called Share Link that allows you to send and receive even in the absence of an internet connection, and PC Link enables smartphone screen mirroring to your computer.

All of this essentially gives you a uniquely different (but not altogether unfamiliar or unpleasant) platform on which to operate your smartphone. The downside is that many of the inclusions can’t be uninstalled and are therefore fall into the undesirable “bloatware” category which, when added to a host of installed third-party apps, could serve to bog down system performance over the long haul.

The ZenFone 2 Laser supports all major carriers and comes with LTE Category 4 for maximum download speeds of 150Mbps. Other standards inclusions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and 3-satellite GPS are also supported. Built-in sensors include proximity, compass and an accelerometer.

Battery

Among the shining features of the ZenFone 2 Laser is its removable 3,000 mAh battery, which performed exceedingly well in testing, especially for a phone in its class. It lasted 6 hours and 30 minutes on continuous Netflix streaming and still had 10 percent battery power remaining. Recent flagships just topped 7 hours on the same test. Battery heat was barely registrable by the end of said X-Files marathon streaming session.  In regular everyday usage, you can expect the battery to last at least a full day.

Possibly as a result of its ability to burn long and hard, the battery took an inordinately long time to recharge from zero: just over 3.5 hours when plugged into a wall socket via the included cable and adapter. This barely passes muster when compared against some of the faster charging batteries we’ve tested. 

Camera

One of the principal selling points of the ZenFone 2 Laser can be found right in its name. Equipped with a rear-facing 13MP camera with an f/2.0 aperture lens and LED flash, it uses a laser to perform near-instant autofocus (roughly 0.2 seconds), which is similar to the technology that comes with the LG G4.

The Asus ZenFone 2 Laser has robust camera controls.

The camera laser seems to perform better on close-up subjects and not so well on distant subjects, which depending on how you intend to use it may be a wasted bit of bonus tech.

Daylight performance of snapshots aren’t quite as impressive as those taken in low-light settings. To add balance to potentially washed-out images, the camera includes a Super HDR mode capable of capturing images with improved color contrast. Low light mode captures up to 400 percent brighter photos and proved to be among the better capabilities of the camera.

Diving into settings enables more camera-savvy users to adjust things like white balance, ISO, and exposure value. Also included is anti-shake enhancement, timer, and burst mode settings ranging from slow to turbo speed. There are a handful of different focus modes – including manual focus – and a built-in gallery of filters adds a nice touch you’d typically have to access through a third-party application. Some of the supported capabilities of the camera include depth of field, super resolution, GIF animation, panorama, live effects, and smart remove which eliminates moving objects from groups of five or more snapshots. The camera can also be set to launch automatically with a double-tap of the volume rocker button.

Video recording quality ranges from 640 x 480 to 1280 x 720 HD, and tops out at 1920 x 1080 Full HD. Oddly, there is an option to also shoot video in 1080p at 30fps, which is exactly the same as 1920 x 1080 Full HD. Video recording effects include slow-motion, time lapse, and stabilization, which just might come in handy if you ever encounter Bigfoot while on a family camping expedition.

The front camera is 5MP, also with an f/2.0-aperture lens. Selfie settings include standards like beautification mode and the aforementioned slow-mo for selfie video, time lapse, and GIF 

animation. An added feature for the selfie king or queen who’s seen it all is a selfie panorama mode, which is useful when snapping self-taken group photos.

Apple iPhone 6S It's a Big-big Deal Performance

It’s iPhone season, which means it is time for a new phone from Apple, with the iPhone 6s being this year’s offering.

Although this isn’t a complete redesign of last year’s iPhone 6, there are some improvements. It is the first model to debut running iOS 9, but the two most important new features are 3D Touch and Live Photos, which Apple hopes will help convince millions of people to upgrade to this new version. A faster processor and more RAM will help as well.

The iPhone 6s is available now, starting at $649 for a version with 16GB of storage.

The iPhone 6s is close to the same size as its predecessor, but not exactly.

Build & Design

The iPhone 6s is close to the same size as its predecessor, but not exactly. It’s 5.44 x 2.64 x 0.28 (138 x 67 x 7 mm) and 5 ounces (143 g), which makes it 0.01 inch thicker and half an ounce heavier. Those really looking for it will be able to tell that the new device weighs a smidgen more, but it certainly won’t affect day to day use.

After the release of last year’s iPhone models, there were scattered complaints from users that these devices were too flimsy and easy to bend. Apple used a stronger type of aluminum for the iPhone 6s and tweaked the design to make the casing sturdier. The unit we’re testing isn’t easily flexed, and comes across as sturdy as such a slim product can be.

The edges are all very curved, and the all-metal casing is quite slick, which makes the iPhone 6s comfortable to hold, but raises the possibility that it might be too easy to drop. A case that adds a rubberized texture might be appropriate.

Display

The standout feature of the iPhone 6s’ screen is 3D Touch, which is Apple’s way of indicating that it is pressure sensitive, with it able to detect if it is being touched, pushed on lightly, or pushed with more force. This feature is integrated into the iOS in a way that’s reminiscent of right clicking on something with a mouse — it can bring up a convenient menu of options.

The best example of how this works is in Mail: pressing lightly on a message brings up a preview of it, then pressing harder opens the message. In addition, icons for a number of apps on the homescreen can be pressed on to bring up an option menu. Pressing on the Camera icon gives the user the option to quickly take a selfie, take a regular photo, record a regular  video, or record a video in Slo-mo.

Although 3D Touch could come across as a gimmick, there are places where it feels genuinely useful.

Although 3D Touch could come across as a gimmick, there are places where it feels genuinely useful. Our favorite is tapping and holding on a link to a website to get a peek at the page that would open, with a harder press going ahead and opening the page. Drawing software will be able to take advantage of it too, but with just three levels of sensitivity its usefulness to real artists will be limited.

3D Touch is an definite improvement, if not a radical one, and it can make using this phone quicker and easier. But it’s not required, and can even be turned off.

Aside from this new feature, the screen on the iPhone 6s is identical it its predecessor: it is 4.7 inches and has a 1334 by 750 resolution, with a pixel density of 326 ppi. Each pixel is so small that text and images look clear and smooth. Some rival devices have gone for even higher pixel densities though, like the Samsung Galaxy S6 which is at 576 ppi. There’s reason to doubt whether having that many pixels per inch is actually an improvement, however.

A 4.7-inch display is a good compromise: it’s large enough that’s it’s not impractical for ebooks, casual games, and even video, but a screen this size isn’t so big that it makes the whole phone unwieldy. And using the on-screen keyboard is easier than on Apple’s old 4-inch displays, and it’s dramatically better than a 3.5-inch one. Those who want a somewhat larger iOS model can opt for the new 5.5-inch iPhone 6s Plus.

Buttons, Ports, and Speakers

In our tests, the iPhone 6S scanner worked 100% of the time, always recognizing fingerprints.

Apple has stuck with the same design standard since the first iPhone, so the Home button remains, and it continues to play a major role in controlling this latest device.

Like the last few Apple models, this button does double duty as a fingerprint scanner for the Touch ID security system. This gives users the benefits of secure access to their phone without the hassle of typing in a password every time they want to use it. In our tests, the scanner worked 100% of the time, always recognizing the fingerprints it was trained for and never giving false positives.

Some things never change, so the iPhone 6s has Apple’s proprietary Lightning charging/data port, and it doesn’t have a microSD memory card slot. That said, there are a number of flash drives that can be plugged into this device’s Lightning port, like the SanDisk iXpand and the Leef iBridge, to add additional storage capacity.

The volume up and down buttons are on the left side of this model, along with a mute switch.

There’s a single speaker on the bottom edge. This is capable of putting out a considerable amount of sound, loud enough for the device to be used in moderately noisy environments. But much of the volume is wasted because the speaker doesn’t  point toward the user.

Performance

The iPhone 6s has a 64-bit, 1.84 GHz, dual-core Apple A9 processor. This chip is capable of giving the device world class performance, even though many of its rivals have far more cores; Samsung uses an octa-core processor in its flagship models, for example.

According to the developer of Geekbench 3 benchmarking app, the iPhone 6s scored a 4330. For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S6 pulled in a 4145, theHTC One (M9) had a 2926, and last year’s iPhone 6 had a 2878 score. The only model that outscored Apple’s was the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge with a 4406.

This is the first phone from Apple with 2GB of RAM; last year’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus had half that much.

Apple sells a version with 16GB of built in storage, one with 64GB, and one with 128GB.

iOS 9 Siri Suggestions

Software

This model debuted running iOS 9, which we covered in-depth in a separate review. Naturally, the iPhone 6s can take full advantage of all the new features designed for phones, like Siri Suggestions and the News app.

Unlike makers of other phones, Apple doesn’t allow its devices to be filled up with bloatware, like links to games and carrier-specific software that can’t be uninstalled. Which isn’t to say that this company isn’t a bit over enthusiastic about the number applications it thinks are necessary, with the app for communicating with an Apple Watch at the top of the list of items that should be optional rather than required on every device.

Camera

The hot new camera feature, available only with the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, is Live Photos, in which images act like short videos. When snapping a picture, the camera records a second of video with sound before and after the still image. This makes pictures feel a bit Harry Potter, and can be a fun feature, and useful for photographing children and animals that won’t stand still. Taking real advantage of this feature requires practice, however.

The downside of Live Photos is that they require large amounts of storage capacity. A test image we took takes up 4.6 MB, while a regular picture taken with the iPhone 6s’ camera needs 2.2 MB. Also, the front facing camera can’t take Live Photos, so no moving selfies. 

In addition to this new feature, Apple significantly increased the resolution of the iPhone 6s’ rear-facing camera, going from 8 megapixels to 12 MP.  It’s doubtful anyone will be able to see any differences between pictures made with a new iPhone 6s and last year’s iPhone 6, but the increase in resolution does allow this device to record 4K video. Again, this takes up large amounts of storage, so anyone planning on on recording lots of high-resolution video should invest in the 64GB version of this phone.

The front camera also moved from 1.2 MP to 5 MP, so selfies look even better than they did before. Just as importantly, Apple has included a trick to turn the display on when taking pictures with this camera so selfies can be taken in low light conditions.  In our tests, this feature works surprisingly well, able to light up a dimly lit area just enough that faces can be seen.

The iPhone 6s does not have a large battery.

Battery Life

Apple has never made battery life a priority and the iPhone 6s is no exception.  On the Geekbench 3 battery benchmark, a demanding test that shows how long the device will last with heavy use, the iPhone 6s pulled in 5:16. On the same test, the Samsung Galaxy S6 lasted 6:49, but the HTC One (M8) lasted 4:59.

Apple favors slim devices over long battery lives. The company’s attitude seems to be “If the device will last a day of moderate use, that’s good enough.”

"A Machine Selfies for you" HTC Desire Eye

HTC’s crafted one of the best midrange phones on the market with its new Desire Eye, a playful device that’s just as, if not more technically advanced than its flagship One (M8). Its potent Snapdragon 801 chipset, gorgeous 5.2-inch 1080p display, and stylish water- and dust-resistant body would be big draws on their own, but are actually secondary to the Desire Eye’s most compelling feature – a big and powerful 13-megapixel front-facing camera. And that’s not to mention the above-average shooter on its back.

There are still enough flaws here to remind you why this is a midrange device in the first place, but the Desire Eye is a hard handset to ignore if you love snapping selfies. Let’s dig deeper into the AT&T exclusive, which is now available for $450 unlocked or $70 with a two-year contract.

Build and Design

The Desire Eye is entirely made of plastic outside of its front, which is fully coated in Gorilla Glass 3. It comes in several color schemes, with the rim always contrasting with the back, giving the phone a playful and youthful look. This kind of color may be off-putting to some, but since this is a midrange device, it’s understandable that HTC is willing be a little more outlandish here than it’d be with a hero device like the One.

That’s not to say the Desire Eye feels cheap, though. Like the One, it features a unibody construction, which is rare for a phone with this much plastic. The negative here is that this makes the phone’s battery impossible to remove, but the sturdiness of the build makes that sacrifice easier to swallow. That, and the fact that it allows the phone to be dunked underwater without harm for up to 30 minutes. It’s clear that HTC went into this with the idea of making a plastic phone that’s more aesthetically pleasing than pragmatic, and it’s mostly succeeded in that regard.

Still, you’ll need big hands for this to feel fully comfortable. With a 5.2-inch display, dimensions of 151 x 74 x 8.5 mm (9.97 x 2.91 x 0.33 in), and a weight of 154 grams (5.43 oz.), you likely won’t be able to use the device with one hand. We can’t knock HTC too hard for this given that almost every phone feels supersized nowadays, but a phone made for taking selfies should be more accessible.

HTC Desire Eye back

The front of the phone, just above the screen, includes the front-facing 13-megapixel camera, the phone’s titular “eye” and most immediately striking feature. It also has a dual-LED flash with a set of the usual sensors. As with most recent HTC phones, there’s an unfortunately huge bezel below the display, which features the infamous HTC logo bar. The capacitive Back, Home, and Tasks keys take up space on the actual display on top of that – a design choice dictated by Android, sure, but a nuisance on this particular device nonetheless.  Other 5.2-inch phones like the Moto X has been less wasteful with their real estate, so it’s becoming harder to justify HTC’s insistence on chewing up so much room around its displays.

The back side includes the phone’s second eye, the 13-megapixel rear camera, along with another dual-LED flash and a secondary microphone for reducing ambient noise. One noteworthy design plus here is that both cameras have been physically fused with the front and back, which further protects them from possible damage caused by dragging the phone across a table or other hard surfaces.

The top of the phone includes a 3.5 mm audio jack, while the bottom houses the microUSB slot and primary microphone. The left side features covered microSD and nanoSIM card slots, while the right includes the Power key, volume rocker, and a dedicated camera key, which turns the camera on from standby in impressive time. These keys are a little too shallow to press, but they never become too much of an annoyance in practice.

Display

HTC Desire Eye top

The Desire Eye comes with a 5.2-inch Full HD IPS display, resulting in a respectable pixel density of 424 ppi. The panel is very much similar to that of the One (M8), so it shouldn’t be surprising to hear that it’s generally excellent. It’s consistently sharp and exceptionally bright, with lively colors and enduring quality in direct sunlight. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this a flagship-level screen, which is refreshing to see in a phone of this price.

If there’s any shortcoming here, it’s that darker colors could stand to be a bit fuller.  This is an IPS screen, not an OLED one, so while whites here are wonderfully bright and clean, black tones are rather light, sometimes looking closer to grey than anything else. Photos or video clips taken in darker rooms and games with darker designs will seem paler than they actually are, which doesn’t ruin things but could understandably be problem for perfectionists.

Lenovo Yoga 900 Hands-On Performance Preview

Lenovo pioneered the 360-degree hinge design with the company’s first Yoga laptop. Since then the company has been refining its design, and its newest premier laptop — the Lenovo Yoga 900 – may just be their best yet. With a clean and sleek design, a powerful 6th Generation Intel Core processor and a revamped hinge design, Lenovo takes the best aspects of the Yoga line and improves upon them.

The premium 13.3-inch convertible certainly looks the part with smooth rounded edges and a premium metallic finish that’s available in Platinum Silver, Champagne Gold and Clementine Orange. The protective display lid showcases “Lenovo” lettering along the bottom right-hand corner and silver “Yoga” lettering along the top left-hand corner. The Yoga’s deck is comprised of a soft textured material that provides a comfortable wrist rest when typing. The bottom of the chassis is made of the same protective metal alloy casing as the screen lid.

The Lenovo Yoga 900 is incredibly thin; measuring 0.58-inches thick and weighing 2.8 pounds, making it the lightest convertible with Intel Core i Processors on the market. While the lightweight design certainly adds to the laptop’s appeal, the real crown jewel of the 900’s design is it’s revamped 360 degree watchband hinge design. The hinge is tinted to match each color option and is made up of more than 800 individual pieces. The noticeable change, is that the 900 offers a smoother rotation, making it even easier to switch between tablet, and clamshell mode and everything in between. The best part is while it offers a smoother transition, the hinge still provides enough restraint to ensure that the display doesn’t move, when using the screen’s touch controls.

Speaking of the screen, the Yoga 900 houses a 13.3-inch QHD+ (3200 x 1800).The glossy panel offers excellent readability and vibrant color contrast. Unfortunately NBR didn’t get a chance to look at any media on the device, but the blues and reds looked particularly crisp on the panel. The only downside with the display was that there was a noticeable glare when the sunlight directly hit the display, causing noticeable color loss and background reflections to appear on the screen.

The Yoga 900 features an Island style keyboard. The black rounded keys are smooth to the touch and slightly are slightly curved inward, making it easy to grip with your fingertips. The keys offer excellent travel given the laptops incredibly thin profile and consistent reliable feedback. Perhaps the best feature of the 900’s keyboard is the added sixth row. The Previous iteration of Yoga’s did away with the function keys, but the 900 brings them back and still manages to offer solid spacing between keys. Located below the keyboard is a modest sized touchpad. The pad is devoid of mouse buttons and is outlined by a thin metallic strip. The soft rubber pad provides excellent travel and consistent readability.

The Yoga 900 not only looks the part, but has the performance to back it up. The laptop features Intel’s 6th Generation Skylake processors (with Intel Core i5 and i7 options), with up to 16GB of LPDDR3 memory and up to 512GB SSD storage. The 900 runs on Windows 10 operating system, and overs two times the battery density of previous models for upwards of 9 hours of battery life according to Lenovo.

The Lenovo Yoga 900 seems like a solid package offering a thinner form factor, with a clean aesthetic, improved design elements and stronger performance. The Yoga 900 is currently available from Best Buy retailers and online at Lenovo’s website starting for $1,200

"Performance Conclution" Huawei Watch

QUICK TAKE

The Huawei Watch looks great and has a superb display. It's missing some features, though, and Android Wear is still too limited.

Smartwatches basically suffer the same fundamental limitations across the board, especially Android Wear devices. There is not much more the most expensive Android Wear watch can do that the cheapest cannot thanks to Google’s wearable OS. This leaves smartwatch makers with only hardware options for differentiation, which Huawei took to the heart with its latest, the Huawei Watch.

“Inspired by the classic design of luxury watches,” the Huawei Watch is built for “smart, stylish people,” according to the company. Its price tag, ranging from $350 to $800, matches this pitch, as the Huawei Watch is one of the more expensive Android Wear watches available.

Huawei hopes this focus on quality watch hardware will be enough to pull potential buyers away from competing devices, including the LG Watch Urbane, which is going after the same upscale demographic.

Is it enough? Read on to find out.

Build & Design

This is a well-built watch. We’ve dinged Huawei in the past for its wearable design choices, but there is nothing to complain about here. The 42mm watch face consists of cold-forged 316L stainless steel, and juts out about 11.3mm from the wrist. It feels solid, and a bit heavier than expected, which suggests a quality build.

Our review unit felt great when worn, both well balanced and snug. To be fair, we tested the black stainless steel link band, and can’t speak to the comfort of the steel mesh or leather bands. Given those are typically the more comfortable than metal links with traditional watches, we’re confident that all Huawei Watch options wear well.

While it’s obvious Huawei is marketing the Huawei Watch to men, it’s still too bad it’s only available in this size. It’s large enough that we suggest anyone looking to buy try it on first.

The Huawei Watch sports a crown on the upper-left side of its round display, which only functions as a button, toggling the display and apps/settings access. It presses well and serves its purpose.

It’s IP67 rated, meaning it can deal with dust and water splashes, and even an accidental submersion. Just to be safe, don’t take it in the shower or pool, but if you wear it while washing your hands or get caught in the rain, it will be fine.

The Huawei Watch charges via a magnetic sphere that attaches to the bottom. But unlike the Apple Watch charger, this one has four pins that align to receptacles on the back. Overall, it’s not a bad charger design, but it’s not as good as the Apple Watch or Moto 360, given the pins require specific placement.

Display

The Huawei Watch AMOLED display is excellent.

The Huawei Watch display is fully round, unlike theMoto 360 smartwatches that have the “flat tire” look owing to a small section on the display bottom. It’s a 1.4-inch full-circle AMOLED display with a 400 x 400 resolution, resulting in 286 pixels per inch.

It looks great and further proves AMOLED is the only smartwatch display tech worth conisdering. Colors pop, contrast is deep, and it’s sufficiently bright at the highest setting.

The display glass is sapphire crystal, making it extremely tough. That, coupled with a display bezel that slight extends above the watch, add a sense of security in knowing this watch face won’t nick or scratch easily.

Unfortunately, it’s also a reflective display, and here’s where the display praise ends. The Huawei Watch can be really hard to see outdoors in bright light. Max brightness offers a passable experience, but the Android smartwatch does not have an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust. Users have to manually boost the brightness in order to cut through any glare. Android Wear offers shortcuts to the setting, but it’s extremely difficult to access when you can’t see anything. There should be a voice command for this, but we couldn’t find one.

To be fair, this has been a constant problem with many smartwatches we’ve tested, and it’s illustrative of the limits. In fact, only high-end tablets and smartphones have been able to reasonably address glare.

Performance

The Huawei Watch has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, along with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage for apps and content. These do a fine job running Android Wear and keeps things swift and relatively responsive (we have yet to test a smartwatch that didn’t have some lag).

Sensors include a gyroscope, accelerometer, hear rate, and barometer. Barometer is an odd choice, and there is not much use for it. Some watch faces include the atmospheric pressure information, but what are you supposed to do with that?

The Huawei Watch supports Wi-Fi, with limitations.

Voice dictation works great and is accurate, which is key for any wearable. The heart rate monitor and steps counter measurements are consistent with other activity trackers, though the Huawei Watch is not a good fitness device. It’s too big, and the bands don’t lend themselves to exercise.

There is no GPS, which is a curious omission for an expensive smartwatch. It’s not a deal breaker as the Android Wear smartwatches that have it don’t do much with it independent of an Android phone (which will have GPS), but if we are buying one of the more expensive Android smartwatches, we want it to have everything.

The Huawei smartwatch supports Bluetooth 4.1 and Wi-Fi, though not in the way you might think. The Watch, like other Android Wear wearables, can connect to 2.4GHz networks, but only through a smartphone and the Android Wear app, and only on networks that don’t require a separate login, like hotel or secure corporate Wi-Fi. The Huawei Watch cannot connect independently. Once connected, the Huawei Watch loses its Bluetooth tether. So long as the smartwatch and Android smartphone are connected to a network (the 2.4GHz network for the Huawei Watch, and any network — Wi-Fi or otherwise — for the smartphone), the Huawei Watch will retain all its functionality. This works great when you’re wearing it at home, but it’s far from the killer feature “Wi-Fi support” suggests.

Like other Android Wear smartwatches, the Huawei Watch can store downloaded Google Music tracks for offline playing. This requires Bluetooth headphones, and the process of loading songs onto the watch is slow and cumbersome. But it works, and it’s a genuinely useful feature.

Android Wear

In the year and a half since Google launched it, Android Wear has gone from limited but promising to, well, limited but promising.

Do we really need random stock updates?

At its core is Google’s desire to proactively deliver necessary and contextual information to the Android smartwatch wearer, be it an email, message, traffic info, weather alert, or whatever, ultimately saving the wearer the “hassle” of whipping out a phone and staring the display.

We can buy into that, but the problem is that the alerts are delivered through Google Now, which hasn’t proven reliable enough in delivering the information users need.

In regards to Android Wear, yes, it pushes out the occasional traffic delay and calendar alerts, but it also randomly delivers all kinds of things it thinks we like, like sports scores and stock prices. Sure, we like to know how our parent company is doing on the NASDAQ, but we don’t need TechTarget’s stock price delivered throughout the day.

This can all be managed easily enough through a Google account, but it requires upkeep, and Google is quick to think users are interested in something because they Google it a few times or visit a website periodically.

To top it all off, Google Now is just not reliable. We hit traffic many times during testing, but rarely did Android Wear warn us in advance. We experienced the first morning frost of the season without any kind of alert. Shouldn’t Google push that information out knowing we live in the northeast, where many AC units still rest in windows and plants sit on porches outdoors?

Android Wear is great for basic info, like math problems.

It’s also still buggy. We couldn’t turn off wrist gestures (display powers on when watch is rotated, under the assumption the user is looking at it), which are annoying at best. This could be a hardware issue, but given our experience with other Android Wear devices, we blame the software.

Google Maps navigation, an Android Wear strength, also doesn’t fare so well on the Huawei Watch. Other Android wearables will vibrate to alert upcoming turns (great for motorcyclists and bicyclists), but this watch did not. The Huawei Watch vibrates for other alerts, so we suspect a future software fix should/will address this.

Many have also complained about the lack of Android Wear apps. Last May, just short of a year on the market, Google claimed there were 4,000 Android Wear apps. Three months after launch, the Apple Watch had 8,500.

We’d complain as well, if we knew of any must-have smartwatch apps. It would be befuddling that no third-party apps have shown the potential of smartwatches as mass-market devices, but we think that’s overstated. Smartwatches will ultimately succeed not as scaled back smartphones worn on the wrist enabled by apps, but rather central to the Internet of Things. Smartwatches should serve to open smartlocks, start smart cars, check in at smart restaurants and hotels, make mobile payments, and generally facilitate everyday task automation. 

But that’s looking forward and we digress. There are still some things that Android Wear does very well, like Google’s own apps. As we mentioned, messaging is great, Sending emojis is particularly fun as Android Wear lets users scribble a drawing, which Android Wear then matches to available icons. Setting reminders and appointments is a breeze, and travelers will get plenty of use out of Google Translate. We also like having access to info on our wrists, like “when is daylight saving’s time,” and answers to basic math problems.

iOS Compatibility

The Huawei Watch is one of the few Android Wear watches (as of this writing) that work with the iPhone 5 or newer running at least iOS 8.2. Given iOS is a generally closed system, this seems like a major coup, but the experience is so limited it serves more as a curiosity than anything else. Some Google apps, like Google Now and Gmail, work exactly as they would when paired with an Android smartphone, but just everything else is stuck sending notifications with little to no interaction.

As long as Apple is selling the Apple Watch, this won’t change. There is no reason for iPhone owners to buy any Android Wear smartwatch over Apple’s own.

Battery

The Huawei Watch has a 300 mAh battery, which Huawei claims is good for up to two days of power. We found that to be accurate in testing, provided the display is kept at medium brightness. Of course, smartwatch battery life can vary greater than just about any product depending on usage.

It also charges fast, going from near dead to full in little more than an hour.