In wearable tech years, the Pebble
smartwatch is fast heading into old age. Kickstarted back in 2012, the Pebble
has enjoyed immense success and huge popularity, and its time isn’t up quite
yet.
Hands on: Pebble Time Steel review
Wareable launched long after the Pebble was
released, but since a proper UK release, an aggressive price cut to just £99
and activity tracking features were all slated in the last month, we felt it
was a good time to revisit this wearable legend.
Is it still a sensible purchase for those
looking for the best smartwatch? And can it better Android Wear? Read on to
find out.
Pebble
smartwatch: Features and design
Back when the Pebble was released it looked
like a vision of a smartwatch feature, but thanks to the frenetic pace of the
wearable tech snowball, it’s now looking pretty dated.
Anyone looking for a more professional looking smartwatch should immediately head to our Pebble Steel review, which packs all
the same features into a sleek, metallic case.
The release of new Pebble colours this year
shows that the older smartwatch still has a market for younger consumers, but
we have our doubts whether they’d be impressed.
The build itself is plasticky with four
giant buttons protruding from the side. We had the white version, which
bordered on looking ostentatious, wheras the black and red version is a little
more discreet. The Pebble no longer looks futuristic and interesting, just
dated and plasticky, and the industry’s concerted efforts to align itself with
fashion brands seem to have left the Pebble looking a little dorky.
The screen doesn’t help. Like the Pebble
Steel, there’s an LCD e-paper display that’s much kinder on battery life, but
resembles a prehistoric Casio, or Game Boy watch, which left some curious
friends aghast.
Hardened Pebble fans will point to the
impressive battery longevity and that fact that the pared back features simply
don’t need an OLED screen to be effective, but it’s simply not enjoyable to use
– whatever the technical benefits.
Finally, the added activity tracking does
bring the Pebble up-to-date, however, we did find it a little temperamental. We
used the Misfit app, and it perfectly mirrored steps and activity monitored by
other trackers, showing that the tech was sound – until it stopped tracking
altogether.
We had to reset the device multiple times
when tracking froze, which wasn’t an ideal experience.
Pebble smartwatch: Usability
One of Pebble’s greatest traits is that it
doesn’t attempt to do too much. Yes there’s a host of Pebble apps to choose
from, but it’s far from a smartphone replacement. It’s a wrist-based companion
to your phone, and in case you weren’t aware, it requires a permanent
connection to your handset.
Its main function is to provide an
at-a-glance summary of your notifications, and it’s compatible with early every
communication app we owned. Call, text, Facebook, WhatsApp and Facebook
Messenger alerts were all shown on the device, and you can look back through
correspondence by heading to the notifications menu on the device.
Our only issue was that often we seemed to
miss notifications, and it seemed somewhat haphazard. Often the alert wouldn’t
buzz and we’d later find it displayed on the homepage, and other times we’d get
nothing.
Pebble smartwatch: Battery life
If there’s one reason to buy the Pebble
over the current crop of Android watches it’s the battery life. While you’d be
lucky to get a couple of days from the LG G Watch R or Moto 360, you should
easily manage five or six from the Pebble. It means you don’t need to pack your
charger for a weekend break, which is handy given that it uses a proprietary
connector, like most wearable devices.
Pebble smartwatch: Apps
There’s a huge selection of apps, many of
which work from the watch directly and others that require a companion app
installed on your phone. Many apps don’t really do what you’d hope, and the
poor display renders others useless.
There are maps as clear as ancient Roman
scrolls, a Foursquare check-in app called Swarm that never worked, and the
Misfit app that regularly stopped working. It’ a hit and miss process, better
suited to those who like to get their hands dirty when it comes to tech, rather
than people who enjoy that blissful “it just works” mentality.
The Pebble companion app itself is very
easy to use, enabling you to search and add apps with extreme easy. There’s a
limited amount of customization, and you can tinker with the watchfaces (hardly
pleasing given the screen quality) but it’s not possible to shut off types of
notification, for example.
Pebble
By Pebble
While it’s still a decent entry point into smartwatches for techies, the Pebble is dating hard. Pebble’s excellent battery life and simplicity should be applauded, but the smartwatch world is moving at 100mph and it’s starting to feel extremely irrelevant, and in a straight shoot out with Android Wear, we’d go for the flawed beauty of Google’s OS every time.
Hit
- Great battery life
- Keeps things simple
- Good price
- Early adopter points
Miss
- Screen is horrible
- Apps fairly rubbish
- Missed a lot of notifications
- Early adopter woes
SOURCE:http://www.wareable.com/Pebble/back-to-the-future-pebble-smartwatch-review
