I really should have done this review a long time ago, but today's review is on the Pebble Smartwatch. The Pebble Smartwatch is one of the most well-known Kickstarter campaign success stories which met it's $100,000 goal within 2 hours. There was (and still is) a high demand for smart watches.
What's unique about this little smart watch is it's e-ink display which requires less power to run than a smart watch with a full color LCD display. The battery's life is advertised to last for "7+ days." When it first came out, it retailed for $249, but as of the time of the review is now $99. Let's take a look at what this little smart watch has to offer.
Features and Specs
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let's take a look at the features and specs of the pebble watch.
- Screen - 1.26" e-Ink display at 144 x 168 px
- Other Hardware: backlight, accelerometer, magnetometer, ambient light sensors, and vibrating motor for feed back and notifications.
- Pebble SDK for third party apps and clock faces
- Water resistant
Software
Pebble connects with both Apple and Android phones (sorry Windows) with a corresponding Pebble app. For this review, we'll be using the iOS app for iPhone. This is where you manage everything with your pebble from notifications, clock faces and apps. Actually the software is extremely intuitive, easy to use, and looks really nice.
Once you've paired Pebble with your phone, you're all set up to receive notifications from SMS, e-mail, and phone calls. The watch does not have a speaker, but you're able to accept and deny calls quickly, something I didn't realize would be as handy as it actually is.
With advanced notifications, you can setup any app that does notifications to show up on your watch. You have to have a second bluetooth connection (which get's setup automatically from the app) which requires the App to be open to use. I found this to be hit or miss with connections dropping occasionally on the advanced notifications, not to mention that I would inadvertently close the app when I am closing all my apps or restarting my phone.
Sometimes I'm surprised at what actually shows up, for instance, the Amazon iPhone app sends a notification when a package has been delivered and shows up on my watch. Pretty cool.
The software updates are handled through the app which will automatically check and update your phones software. The process is pretty painless.
Pebble Store
One of the big selling points is third party apps and custom watch faces. There are eight storage slots which can be filled with watch faces and/or apps. As far as I could tell, all apps and watch faces are free. I did notice that there were come direct links to PayPal to essentially tip the developer.
There are a lot of third party app options including fitness trackers, games, remotes, notes, stocks, store gift cards with QR, scores, news, and more. Though I found that really any of the useful apps would require a companion app on the phone which is kind of inconvenient, but it's understandable given the Pebble's limitations, especially for fitness tracking.
Selecting new watch faces is half the fun of the Pebble. There are thousands of watch faces to choose from. Some of them also show weather, date, and other useful (or not) information. I found that some watch faces drain the battery much quicker than other apps, especially the ones with animations or changes every second. The way e-Ink works is that when the screen is idle, there is minimal power draw and en the screen transitions is where most of the power draw occurs. If you want longer lasting charges, opt for the ones that change on the minute.
Day-to-Day Use
The Pebble has been an overall very positive experience. I love the customizations to make it feel more personal. I have found the seven day charge to be mostly true (depending on your watch face) and that charging once a week to not be that big of a deal. It would be cool if we could eventually hit the one month mark with it, though batteries still have a ways to go still for that to happen.
The notifications are extremely handy. Yes, you could read all of these on your phone, but there are situations where it is nice to just take a quick glance at your watch to decide if it's urgent enough to deal with from the phone. Again, it falls into the #FWP category, but I found it to be less rude checking the notification on my watch than it would be to pull my phone out of my pocket in a meeting at work.
Really, the Pebble is a great value, especially now at $99 at the time of this writing. It's simple, it's fun to use, easy to see, and useful.
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