Pebble Time Round reviewed: You can judge this book by its cover

Pebble's newest smartwatch is mostly different in design—and that's the point.

Read the whole story

 

[neil_w]

The music app icon sure does look angry. >:-(

 

[Deleted member 174040]

I think video is a really good medium for watch reviews. Thanks for including it!

I think Valentina cued right in on it's reason for existence:

Some may not understand why Pebble would waste time making a smartwatch that is smaller, has less battery life, and can support fewer apps and watchfaces than its predecessors...

...with other companies diversifying in style, Pebble is just working to catch up with them.

...for those more style-conscious, you now have your own smartwatch in the Pebble family with the capable Time Round.

 

[Fiendish]

If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

 

[mscha]

You can't filter smartphone notifications to the watch—it will vibrate and light up with every alert that the phone receives.

That's only true if you're a member of the Church of Steve.
If you have a real, i.e. Android, smartphone, you can select which apps' notifications should be sent to your Pebble.

 

[isparavanje]

Fiendish[/url]":2ykm2f8n]If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

It looks alright for the models which have numbers on the bezel.

 

[Runt8]

Fiendish[/url]":vvmor9z3]If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

I've always hated the look of the pebble smart watches, due to the combination of gigantic bezels and e-ink screens. The one upside I could see is the long battery life (upside for some, I don't mind charging my watch every night alongside my phone). Now I'm not sure what this watch has going for it (I guess "style" would be the nebulous response but with that hideous screen what's the point?).

 

[Hadrien01]

Still no Windows Phone compatibility?

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Fiendish[/url]"8uak9e5]If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

Look at the watch on the reviewers wrist in the video.

At a distance, with the right color, face, and band selection and contrasts it looks like a relatively elegant watch. She says this in her review: "$250 will get you the most basic, 14mm version, which is beautiful to say the least,"

No one is going to spend a lot of time staring at it as closeup as is depicted in the pictures accompanying the article. That's why video is an excellent medium for watch reviews. The pictures in reviews can give off a rather distorted view of how it will appear in every day life.

edit:

 

[iOSecure]

The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

 

[Deleted member 174040]

iOSecure[/url]":2uur73d4]The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

Not if it looks better.

That increases the value of this in the eyes of some.

 

[ropo153]

The reviewer should have at least done due diligence and tried using the watch with an Android phone. Pebbles have a lot more functionality with Android, including app notification filtering and voice transcription text replies. Proclaiming that a feature doesn't exist at all just because it doesn't work your phone is misleading. I suspect that Apple is more responsible for the omission of these features on iOS devices.

 

[foxyshadis]

Fiendish[/url]":3rxfjxjb]If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

Because you buy this watch for style, not functionality. It's not meant to please everyone and it won't, but there are some people who will absolutely love the way it looks.

 

[isparavanje]

RockDaMan[/url]":6gwe18w8]

iOSecure[/url]":6gwe18w8]The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

Not if it looks better.

That increases the value of this in the eyes of some.

It definitely does in my eyes, and I'm considering getting one with my next paycheck. It seems like a nice tradeoff between the extreme lack of functionality of the Fossil Q and the extreme lack of design of the other pebbles, and has a always-on reflective screen which is makes it actually look like a watch when not under scrutiny.

Honestly, I have nothing against smartwatches which don't pretend to be normal watches, I just do not wish to be labeled as a geek, and I think that's perfectly understandable.

 

[ethd]

RockDaMan[/url]":2y0ehdnu]

Fiendish[/url]":2y0ehdnu]If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

Look at the watch on the reviewers wrist in the video.

At a distance, with the right color, face, and band selection and contrasts it looks like a relatively elegant watch. She says this in her review: "$250 will get you the most basic, 14mm version, which is beautiful to say the least,"

No one is going to spend a lot of time staring at it as closeup as is depicted in the pictures accompanying the article. That's why video is an excellent medium for watch reviews. The pictures in reviews can give off a rather distorted view of how it will appear in every day life.

edit:
(snipped images)

I was about to jump on the "these bezels are gigantic" train, but damn if they both don't look just beautiful on actual wrists.

 

[Deleted member 174040]

So, Ars, less techo-shots of smart-watches, and more fashion-sense photos would be helpful.

 

[cosmicjesus]

ethd[/url]":1f5ztmn3]

RockDaMan[/url]":1f5ztmn3]

Fiendish[/url]":1f5ztmn3]If only the bezel weren't comically large. Eyeballing those pictures, it really looks like the surface area of the bezel might be greater than the surface area of the actual screen. How is that not in the Ugly section?

Look at the watch on the reviewers wrist in the video.

At a distance, with the right color, face, and band selection and contrasts it looks like a relatively elegant watch. She says this in her review: "$250 will get you the most basic, 14mm version, which is beautiful to say the least,"

No one is going to spend a lot of time staring at it as closeup as is depicted in the pictures accompanying the article. That's why video is an excellent medium for watch reviews. The pictures in reviews can give off a rather distorted view of how it will appear in every day life.

edit:
(snipped images)

I was about to jump on the "these bezels are gigantic" train, but damn if they both don't look just beautiful on actual wrists.

Yeah. The knee jerk reaction now days seems to be BEZELS OMG!!ARRAGRARHA!! But in some cases, bezels can be an aesthetic or functional design choice. In this case, it seems to be intentional to minimize the "smart watch" aesthetic, and it's effective in doing that.

 

[Benson2175]

Some in accuracies in this review:
1. The Button on the left side of the watch is not a "Power" button - The e-ink display is always on; it's what makes the pebble more of a watch and less of a gadget, the left side button can be used to activate the back-light so the display can be seen in the dark and as a "back" button when navigating menus and apps.

2. As others have mentioned you can filter which notifications you get, at least with Android. You can even download free 3rd party notification apps that give you even more options; you can choose a vibrate pattern for specific notifications, how notifications are dismissed, with a shake of the wrist or do you have to press a button. The watch is very customizable, at least with Android.

I've owned my classic pebble for almost a year and when I bought it I didn't think I was going to like it or use this much. I'm thinking of getting the pebble round for my wife but I do have some reservations about the short battery life and no waterproof capability. It's like pebble removed its best features. This might be a case of having to wait for a gen 2.

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Benson2175[/url]":2ugfvjel]I do have some reservations about the short battery life

It lasts more than twice as long as her smartphone.

 

[paulduv]

mscha[/url]":1xk8nl5t]

You can't filter smartphone notifications to the watch—it will vibrate and light up with every alert that the phone receives.

That's only true if you're a member of the Church of Steve.

And if you're an Apple basher, every feature that an Android device has and that an Apple device doesn't, is the most genius, innovative, and life-saving feature ever devised.

 

[Deleted member 174040]

paulduv[/url]":2yxagco2]

mscha[/url]":2yxagco2]

You can't filter smartphone notifications to the watch—it will vibrate and light up with every alert that the phone receives.

That's only true if you're a member of the Church of Steve.

And if you're an Apple basher, every feature that an Android device has and that an Apple device doesn't, is the most genius, innovative, and life-saving feature ever devised.

I was confused as to where that comment came from, then I realized my blocked list had saved me from having to read it...

Might want to save yourself some future grief as well.

 

[gullible skeptic]

paulduv[/url]":281opjii]

mscha[/url]":281opjii]

You can't filter smartphone notifications to the watch—it will vibrate and light up with every alert that the phone receives.

That's only true if you're a member of the Church of Steve.

And if you're an Apple basher, every feature that an Android device has and that an Apple device doesn't, is the most genius, innovative, and life-saving feature ever devised.

Red alert! Full power to irony shields!

 

[dnivie]

mscha[/url]":2t54brg9]

You can't filter smartphone notifications to the watch—it will vibrate and light up with every alert that the phone receives.

That's only true if you're a member of the Church of Steve.
If you have a real, i.e. Android, smartphone, you can select which apps' notifications should be sent to your Pebble.

This is only true if you are a strict adherent to the Church of Steve. You can jailbreak and install Pebble Profiles to supress notifications from specific apps (http://www.idownloadblog.com/2014/01/21 ... -profiles/).

 

[lewax00]

You can also opt to reply with an emoji or a voice message.

You can't reply with a voice message, you can dictate a text reply (i.e. speech-to-text).

You cannot reply to any notifications from the watch.

I can also do this with my Pebble, so perhaps this is Android only.

You can't filter smartphone notifications to the watch—it will vibrate and light up with every alert that the phone receives.

I can also do this...

Perhaps you should try it with Android before completing a review like this? All three of these are factually incorrect without making an assumption about the user's phone.

 

[Carewolf]

iOSecure[/url]":3jgws44t]The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

It is still more than 2x the battery time of a normal smartwatch, it is only short compared to the regular pebble.

 

[wobbleworks]

cosmicjesus[/url]":1jqv47g6]In this case, it seems to be intentional to minimize the "smart watch" aesthetic, and it's effective in doing that.

I disagree and think this bezel size is to mask a rectangular LCD so that it can appear round.

 

[bb-15]

Pebble watches have a devoted following. (I used to own one, OG, before it died.)
Some things that point to the profile of a happy Pebble watch customer imo.

1. The screen is most visible in bright light outside. It's reflective.
But it is accepted that in medium to dark conditions the backlight washes out colors on the Time (TS) and Round.
2. Long battery life except for the Round (which is average).
3. Good water protection except of the Round.
4. It's OK that Pebble Time (TS) and Round have the biggest smartwatch bezel ratios.
5. Accepting that customer service is e-mail only. And CS response times can easily take a week +.
6. Pebble watches are cheaper.
7. It's OK that Pebble watches have more limited functionality compared with the Gear S2, Android Wear or the Apple Watch (no answering phone calls just using the watch paired with the phone, no NFS pay system, no assistant like Google Now).

The only thing on this list that I couldn't deal with was the week+ lag in the e-mail only customer service.
Otherwise I'd probably still be a Pebble watch owner.

edit; clarity

 

[fellow human]

rupucis[/url]":2h52t76v]Maybe with more wearables coming out, people who buy electronics based on appearance will spend their disposable income on a category of device that was meant to be a fashion accessory first and they'll have less money to spend on ruining the laptop/desktop market.

People spending less harms a market. Companies that make good laptops that people who care about appearance will buy are doing well.

 

[_fluffy]

I was one of the Time Steel backers, and ended up going in on the "preorder TIme Round, get $50 off, risk-free" deal.

I love the fashion of the watch, and the battery life doesn't bother me, but there's one reason I'm probably going to return it: the damn thing just will not stay connected to my iPhone. I've contacted support and completely redone the pairing many many times and yet it'll just connect for a few hours and then disconnect.

This is supremely annoying and completely negates any benefit of having a smartwatch, so back in the mail it goes.

 

[zdanee]

You can filter from the app, you can select what messages you want to receive. You can also select the action "Mute" to any notification, and you won't receive anything from that app until you unmute it.

 

[bb-15]

_fluffy[/url]":30mdb0bg]I was one of the Time Steel backers, and ended up going in on the "preorder TIme Round, get $50 off, risk-free" deal.

I love the fashion of the watch, and the battery life doesn't bother me, but there's one reason I'm probably going to return it: the damn thing just will not stay connected to my iPhone. I've contacted support and completely redone the pairing many many times and yet it'll just connect for a few hours and then disconnect.

This is supremely annoying and completely negates any benefit of having a smartwatch, so back in the mail it goes.

That's the kind of thing which turned me off to Pebble. Your watch seems to be defective.
Your problem could be fixed with a quick exchange if there was store or phone customer service.
But dealing with Pebble has to go through their e-mail only customer service. The owner has to provide pictures of the problem and often wait over a week.
If there is no response, then some customers go on the Pebble forums asking for faster support.
I find that annoying.
Still some people don't mind waiting weeks getting their malfunctioning watch replaced.

 

[bigstrat2003]

RockDaMan[/url]":33v3n1rh]

iOSecure[/url]":33v3n1rh]The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

Not if it looks better.

That increases the value of this in the eyes of some.

To be honest, I wouldn't agree with the assessment in the review that it looks better. It's too honking big to be considered good-looking in my book. If they had cut the diameter to, say, 75% of what it is, I think the watch would look much better for it.

 

[death_to_novell]

bigstrat2003[/url]":3n0py7b3]

RockDaMan[/url]":3n0py7b3]

iOSecure[/url]":3n0py7b3]The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

Not if it looks better.

That increases the value of this in the eyes of some.

To be honest, I wouldn't agree with the assessment in the review that it looks better. It's too honking big to be considered good-looking in my book. If they had cut the diameter to, say, 75% of what it is, I think the watch would look much better for it.

Agreed.

When I see that, I don't think "ohhh, how fashionable." I think "oh, it's an ugly piece of cheaply made e-junk with a giant ridiculous bezel."

 

[SiberX]

Of course, this wasn't hard to do. Previous Pebble watches, aside from maybe the Steel and the Time Steel, were blocky and primitive, and their e-ink displays only made them feel more like toys.

Normally I wouldn't bother being pedantic about this, but Pebble has played fast and loose with terminology like this to try and bank on the success of Kindle-like displays, when their display technology isn't nearly as readable.

Dedicated e-readers like Kindles/Kobos/Nooks use what's called on electrophoretic display, with E-Ink being the foremost manufacturer of such displays. They're pretty slow to refresh, but consume zero power when their content isn't changing and have best-in-class reflectivity (~45%).

By comparison, all of Pebble's products instead use transflective memory LCDs - these are a standard-issue LCD paired with some built-in memory so that the controller doesn't need to constantly refresh the display (saving power) if the image doesn't change. This makes them cheap and quick to refresh, but the tradeoff is that their power consumption is reduced but nonzero even for static imagery, and they typically achieve reflectivity in the 10%-20% region (14% for example in the original Pebble).

Why does this matter? Transflective LCDs, owing to their lower reflectivity, appear substantially dimmer when viewed in a real-world setting. Put a Pebble display beside an actual E-ink display and the difference is obvious. Pebble benefits from confusion arising here, because anybody who has been wowed by how good an E-Ink display looks will assume a Pebble looks brighter/better in given lighting than it actually does. They never specifically use the term "E-Ink" (because it's trademarked) but frequently will describe their displays as "E-Paper", which can mean just about whatever you want it to mean in terms of low-power displays. In actuality, there's nothing separating a Pebble's display from an old transflective palm pilot (the kind that were pretty hard to read with the backlight off) except for a chunk of memory sitting in the display itself.

The fact that the article itself and a number of commenters have conflated the two by calling the display E-Ink indicates that the above is actually working; Pebble makes pretty decent devices (and it's fantastic they make smartwatches that can actually last more than a day or two, Round aside) but I wish they would be more honest about the display technology powering their devices.

tl;dr: Pebble displays are not E-Ink, nor do they use the same tech that E-ink is based on. They instead use low-power memory LCDs, and call it (despite its weaknesses) a form of "E-Paper" (although I honestly wouldn't use that name myself specifically because it's intended to be confused with E-Ink).

 

[Tsur]

Fiendish[/url]":14ruha9m]If only the bezel weren't comically large.

Doughnuts to dollars that the bezel hides a square display.

 

[rupucis]

Graham J[/url]":1bejcick]
People spending less harms a market. Companies that make good laptops that people who care about appearance will buy are doing well.

I mean in terms of direction, not financial health. I know companies that make laptops that sell based on looks are doing well. They're doing so well, companies that used to make laptops with utility in mind are emulating them.
I have a Haswell powered Dell Latitude for example. If I wanted to get its Broadwell powered successor, I'd have to deal with not having an easily swappable battery, all because someone finds the seams ugly or it results in a marginally thicker device.

 

[melgross]

It does look pretty, but still, even on the wrists, that display is tiny.

 

[melgross]

Carewolf[/url]":1v7jz7f4]

iOSecure[/url]":1v7jz7f4]The only reason to buy this was outdoor visibility and long battery... if the battery is shorter that reduces the value of this over a typical smartwatch.

It is still more than 2x the battery time of a normal smartwatch, it is only short compared to the regular pebble.

But it also does much less. The small display with poor color and no touch, as well as the lesser memory and weaker processor, and lack of any monitoring sensors for the heart rare allows the battery to last longer. Those are sacrifices people have to choose to make for better battery life. It's not as though you're getting better battery life for an equal watch, you're not. Everyone could have better battery life if they cut most of the features out of the product.

 

[aleph_nought]

Find me a watch with an accurate heart rate monitor that also lasts a week on battery and boasts a hi res touch screen. It doesn't exist. I'll happily stick with a Pebble Time; the color screen is good enough to read in bright sunlight and I won't be reading books on it anyway.