ASUS has announced the VivoWatch 6 today, and it’s the company’s new flagship smartwatch for “staying in touch with your wellness”. The VivoWatch 6 is in line with ASUS’ previous smartwatch offerings in the Vivo line, focusing less on general smartwatch features and more on health management.
While much of the watch is pretty standard for what you would expect a smartwatch to have, it does come with one unique feature that no other smartwatch on the market offers. The VivoWatch 6 isn’t running on Wear OS either. Instead, ASUS has opted to continue using its own OS and UI. The watch works with both Android and iOS too, so if you aren’t fond of the Apple Watch, you can pair this to your iPhone instead.
Again this is more of a health and fitness watch than a smartwatch. It’ll certainly show you smartphone notifications and you can use the VivoWatch 6 as an alarm clock, a stopwatch, or even a remote camera button for your phone. But the major focus is on health. “Leveraging cutting-edge innovations and years of medical expertise, ASUS VivoWatch 6 is designed to help users keep track of their long-term health goals easily, allowing them to monitor vital health stats anytime, anywhere to truly achieve preventive healthcare,” said Sharon Pan, senior director of Smart Health Product Planning at ASUS.
The VivoWatch 6 is the world’s first smartwatch announced with finger-based measurement sensors
This is what really sets the VivoWatch 6 apart from other smartwatches on the market right now. ASUS has equipped the watch with two medical-grade ECG and PPG sensors that use your fingertips. Two sensors placed on the sides of the watch face allow you to measure things like body fat and skeletal muscle percentages. In addition to water content and basal metabolic rate. At any point, you can place your index finger and thumb on the sensors (one on each side) and measure any of these metrics.
ASUS says this is a more accurate way of taking those measurements due to the higher microvascular density in your fingertips. There’s a set of sensors on the back of the watch as well. These measure things like your body’s vitals, including during sleep, and are used for things like heart rate and sleep tracking.
Battery life for days
There’s always one main issue that most people have with their smartwatches. Battery life. Or in some cases, lack thereof. The VivoWatch 6 shouldn’t present that issue to its wearers. In its regular mode, it offers up to 9 days of battery life on a single charge, and that’s a significant amount of days more than what you’ll get with anything that runs on Wear OS. And if you put it into battery-saving mode, ASUS says it’ll last up to 14 days.
In terms of other specs, the VivoWatch 6 has a 1.39-inch AMOLED display protected by Gorilla Glass 3. The display also has a peak brightness of 350 nits. Additionally, it has a 5ATM rating for water resistance. The battery meanwhile, is 290mAh. It comes with dual-frequency GPS as well. Overall, on paper, it’s a capable smartwatch that has a lot to offer the health-conscious user.
ASUS doesn’t have pricing or availability listed on the website. However, previous VivoWatch models are available in the US both from ASUS directly and from retailers like Amazon. So this should make it to the US as well. That being said, PhoneArena does mention that ASUS has stated the VivoWatch 6 would cost £110 / €130 / $140.
