[Asus ZenWatch] thoots:
Folks,

I just moved from a 360 to the Zenwatch, and I'm pretty darn happy with it so far. To be fair, I had the Moto 360 for just a few days, and now the Zenwatch for just a few hours. But, that's about all I needed. My thoughts:

I don't really want all of the notifications and so on -- I really just want a watch! And what I want is a DIGITAL face that I can see well -- even the big sports watches with big numbers are still very difficult to see in most situations. Compare that to a watch face I made myself, which I can see very well -- that's what I'm looking for.

I actually edited a Facer face I found, and short of uploading a picture, let me just describe it -- from top to bottom:

Battery Life %

Day, spelled out in full

Time, including seconds

AM/PM indicator

Date in mm/dd/yyyy format

The face I edited had a typical blockish digital watch font, which I replaced with an easier-to read "normal" font. Made the background a gradient dark blue, made the text a bright cyan, and bingo -- a very nice, easy-to-read digital face. I can see it a thousand times better than any digital watch I've ever had before.

The problem with the Moto 360 is that it was VERY difficult to just get the dang face to display -- I was waving my arm around, trying to flick it so the dang thing would come on, and it probably showed up about ten percent of the time. And then, in its "ambient" mode, if I used that, it was IMPOSSIBLY dim -- it was absolutely worthless.

Really, it's that dim "ambient mode" that totally ruined the 360 for me -- with the Zenwatch in its "always on" mode, the dim display is plenty good enough for me, even if I don't actually get the full face to show up. And with Facer, I can control whatever elements I want to show on the "always on" display. WONDERFUL!

That's pretty much the difference that's important to me, in a nutshell. Yes, the square screen is more useful than the round one. Though, if you like to try hundreds of round faces, man, they're out there. But, I really just want the face I made.

Yes, the 360's inductive charger is a million times better. But, there are people who want the plug-in-attached kind of cradle that the Zen uses. I sure don't miss the 360's "hockey puck on your wrist" look, and since I had a black one and the screen was almost always black, that's exactly what mine looked like. And if you haven't seen the hundreds of posts about it, the 360 has an enormous design flaw, with its inset strap attachments -- chances are excellent that you will crack the back, because to wear it is to put pressure on that back to the point that it'll crack. And if you want to put a metal band on it, well, you're almost guaranteed to crack it. Which is why people have developed ugly-ish extenders that supposedly will relieve that pressure. Ick.

So, I figured that it would just be a matter of a month or two before my 360's back would probably crack, even though I had a leather band and didn't intend to change it. That plus the "I can only rarely actually see the watch face" nature of the thing was enough for me. I'm already immensely happier with the Zenwatch. And I probably WILL go ahead and put a band of my own choice on it, in relatively short order.

Finally, the Zenwatch's "always-on" mode, now being actually useful, has sure made me think differently about the watch -- gosh, I sure don't need the dimmed display to be showing all night long. So, I could switch the always-on mode off when I'm not actually out and about, but the more I think about it, I think I'll just turn the dang thing off when I'm not using it. Come home, plug it into the charger until it reaches 100%, then just turn the thing off. And then turn it on a few minutes before I head out the door. That's a bit of extra work, but it sure is starting to make good sense to me -- I'm definitely going to start doing that.

So, Moto 360 bad, Zenwatch good. I'm happy.

thoots