Review: Pebble Steel Smartwatch

The Smartwatch so far has been pretty much a niche market and what’s been available currently has been more or less a letdown. Complaints usually have to do with design, performance, battery life and practicality which just about all of them suffer from. Consumers and critics have been let down by Android Wear watches and Samsung Gear watches have been laughed it.

With Apple promising something revolutionary in early 2015 with their Watch, the Pebble has continued to sell since 2013. Now with a recent price reduction of the original watch down to $99, and the Steel to $199 on top of several software upgrades since the beginning, how does it compete today and how far will it go as OEMs continue to gear up on smart watches?

Design

The Pebble Steel is a good looking watch. Why? Because it looks like a good looking watch vs something that came out of an old sci-fi movie. Unlike the first Pebble Watch, the Steel looks much closer to a high end watch made with a Gorilla Glass display with of course, an all steel body which feels solid. The watch body itself is squared sized at 39 x 36.8 x 10.25 weighing at 59g (with the steel band) which fares well with standard sized watches. It’s not too thick nor is it oversized for the average sized man. I would have liked a round face watch but don’t mind the Steel.

Like most conventional watches, the Pebble Steel is 5 ATM water resistant so you wear it in the shower without too much worry or if you wash your hands with your watch on. I don’t recommend swimming with it so take it off!

You also have a selection of leather and matte black or brushed stainless steel watch bands. I personally prefer the steel watch bands which gives it a much more unified look, but that’s just my taste and I am glad choices are offered. My only gripe with the steel watchband is that it creaks quite a bit and feels a little thin and somewhat flimsy at times. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to wearing my Rado and Armani watch so I’m somewhat of a watch snob.

The buttons on the watch are well placed and make navigation through the Pebble really intuitive, unlike any Android Wear device which is a mess. On the left you have a single “home / power on” button that also activates the backlight. On the right side you have a site of 3 navigation buttons. The middle button takes you to the menu and the top and bottom buttons are to scroll up and down. The middle button is also used to make a selection. It’s really simple and I had it figured out in a minute.

The watch charges magnetically via USB cable and takes a cue from Apple’s MagSafe charger, but it does take some fiddling to find that sweet spot to get it to charge correctly. Thankfully, there is a charging indicator on the face of the watch that let’s you know if it’s charging.

Display

Like the original Pebble Watch, the Steel features an LCD 1.26-inch e-paper display which is really easy to read. Not only that, Pebble made’s reasoning for going with an e-ink display is to extend the battery life with the current battery technology it comes equipped with. The display also comes with a backlight, which I mentioned earlier that can be activated with the press of a button or simply flicking your wrist. With the competition out there with colored screens such as the Moto 360, Samsung Gear, and even the upcoming Apple Watch, Pebble has to figure out how it’s going to keep up with the competition.

Performance and Interface

Setting the watch up was quite simple on both my HTC One (M8) running Android 4.4.3 and iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1. All you need to do is download the Pebble Watch app from the Google Play or Apple App Store, launch the application and then follow the instructions to pair your devices. It might be tricky for some but it literally takes a matter of minutes. Afterwards you can test to see if you get notifications onto your watch.

The Pebble application itself is an App Store that has that has a wide selection of watch faces, games, fitness trackers, and utilities. Keep in mind that the Pebble is limited to only up to 8 applications at a time so you may need to store them in the Pebble Locker on the smartphone app if you need immediate access to it. Personally, I think 8 apps is plenty. I have a few watch faces installed, Leaf (let’s me control my Nest Thermostat from my wrist) and Misfit to track my steps. I mainly use the watch to tell time (duh) and to view and dismiss my phone’s notifications which is the watch’s key feature.

So how do the notifications work? Someone sends me a next message and boom, the Pebble Watch vibrates and you can read the text and then dismiss it. Use WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger? Those will work on the watch as well. Simply put, whatever notifications that pop up on your phone will pop up on your watch. For instance, I have My Ford Mobile notify me when my Ford Fusion Energi is done charging which I can get on the watch or if someone on my VIP list on my iPhone sends me an e-mail such as my boss will also show up. It’s quite simple but surprisingly the Pebble is the only device so far that can handle notifications very well.

One big plus about the Pebble is that it has a lot of developer support, from Pebble themselves and 3rd party. Pebble has continues to update the device’s software which has evolved in the past few years. At the time of this writing, I am on version 2.7 on the watch’s firmware which fixes a lot of bugs and now has the ability to track steps and sleep activity without having to have the app open at all times. Pebble has also opened up partnerships with Jawbone and Swim.com expending the capabilities of the watch which is now a legitimate contender to other fitness watches.

Battery life, compared to it’s current competition is unrivaled. I am able to go about 5 days with the Pebble without having to charge the watch. The Moto 360 doesn’t even last a day and Apple has not revealed how long their watch will last, but a lot of tech journalist are betting an “all day battery life” which is laughable for a watch.

The watch does lose connectivity and the notifications stop from time to time and this happens mostly when you leave your phone in the room and you walk far enough to lose the Bluetooth connection and the the devices don’t re-establish connection. This can easily be fixed by restarting the watch. It’s sort of a pain but I’m sure this will be fixed in an upcoming update.

Conclusion (TL;DR)

Pebble has come a long way in both hardware and software aspects of their watch. I have no doubt that the next generation watch will be one of the top competitors as they have had a really good head start in this niche market and have been running with it. As of now the Pebble Steel is the best smart watch to buy and with the price reduction of the Steel down to $199 and the classic Pebble to $99, it’s a really great value if you are in the market for one and you will not be disappointed.

Pros:

• Elegant and lightweight Design
• Price drop to $199 is much more reasonable
• OS and Apps continues to improve
• Works well in both iOS and Android

Cons:

• This needs to be in color
• Wristbands can be a pain to change
• Occasional loss in bluetooth connectivity

Total Rating: 4/5

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