Conclusion

MediaTek’s Aster platform is a very interesting concept that could find its way into a lot of wearables and IoT devices. The company is also about to roll out an Android Wear smartwatch platform, based on the MT2601 processor, but that’s a different story.

The Aster is going after an entirely different market and in terms of hardware it can deliver a lot on a very tight budget. Our biggest concern is user experience – it all depends on how vendors decide to implement it. We feel MediaTek would have been better off with a closed reference platform that would force manufacturers to standardise software and hardware, effectively forcing them to enable certain functions and carry pre-approved UIs and watch faces on standardised hardware (standard screen resolution, aspect ratio).

We like the idea of very affordable wearables – there is really no need for smartwatches to cost as much as a decent mid-range phone, or more. Cheap alternatives could be good sellers in emerging markets, and they could cover some niches in developed markets as well (kids’ watches, fitness watches with good battery life and so on). In addition to smartwatches, the platform could be used to make other similar devices “smart” – cycling computers, diving computers and other similar gadgets come to mind. The platform is affordable enough to be used for such devices. This particular product is already on sale for $64, but you can use the GBX1 coupon and bring the price down to $52, so it should be possible to develop even cheaper, niche products. 

As for the X1 smartwatch, the software feels very much like a work-in-progress. This is unfortunate, because the hardware is good enough. Bottom line, MediaTek Aster watches feel like feature phones, but the hardware has quite a bit more potential.

X1 MediaTek Aster smartwatch pros and cons

Pros:

• Very inexpensive
• Good battery life compared to Android Wear devices
• Decent level of functionality out of the box

Cons:

• Unpolished software (media player remote functionality)
• Watch face design
• Lack of audio remote functionality