Asus has officially announced their first wearable smartwatch, known as the ZenWatch. The ZenWatch is powered by the Android Wear OS, and consumers can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $250. Featuring a customized user interface designed to match the ZenWatch's capabilities, the device is also able to sync up with smartphones running Android (News - Alert) 4.3 or later.

Smartwatches go hand-in-hand with Smartphones as a convenient notification platform to announce new texts, calls and emails without having to pull the phone out to check it. In fact, checking one's watch could soon replace checking the smartphone, since the smartwatch can display all of this information and more.

The ZenWatch also packs 512 MB of ram and 4GB of internal storage on a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400 SoC. A 1.4Wh battery ensures that the smartwatch will operate on its own battery for a good amount of time, while Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity allows for the connection to a wide range of other devices. Factor in the fact that the ZenWatch will measure activity with the onboard bio sensor and microphone and the device's potential unfolds rapidly.

Health apps are one of the projected major selling points of future wearable devices, and the ZenUI Wellnes app will serve as the smartwatch's fitness hub. This allows the watch to monitor several statistics including heart rate, calories burned, activity duration and more. Users can even set personal fitness goals for themselves, which will encourage them to monitor their own progress since they can view their results with only a glance. The durable watch is even water-resistant enough to operate equally well in the rain and in the shower.

Smartwatches have yet to make a big change on the personal device climate, but the Asus ZenWatch has many of the telltale signs of being a successful product immediately upon release. It will still be some time before the final product is available however, which will give Asus plenty of time to work on perfecting the product.