After a phenomenally successful Kickstarter campaign (Pebble wanted $500,000 and has currently raised over $12 million) the Pebble Time smartwatch is coming to market in May. Pebble has also just announced a fancier Steel edition, with an all-metal case and bracelet.
The original Pebble and Pebble Steel watches have legions of fans, thanks to their simple operation, slim body and, most importantly 5-day battery life. The Time improves on the original, with a colour e-paper screen and voice control.
The Time is much more compact than other smartwatches we've seen, from the likes of LG and Huawei. It's both smaller in footprint and shallower, so is unobtrusive on your wrist; it feels just like wearing a normal watch, while with the Android Wear models we've seen you're very much aware you're wearing a portable computer. The plastic Pebble Time feels very light, and the Steel significantly heavier. However, the Steel has a bigger battery, which should let you have up to 10 days of battery life compared to around 7 for the Time.
The main reason Pebble smartwatches last so much longer than the (normally Android Wear-powered) competition is due to their screen technology. The Pebble Time has a colour e-paper screen, which uses very little power. Not to be confused with an e-ink screen, as found on the Kindle, the Pebble Time's e-paper screen is actually a high-reflectance LCD model. This is designed to use very little power when little is changing on screen, such as when the watch is showing the time, as well as reflecting a high proportion of ambient light back to the user to make it easy to see in bright conditions.
As with the Pebble, the Pebble Time doesn't use a touchscreen; instead, you control it with one button on the left to go back and three on the right. For the Time, Pebble has changed the way the watch's interface works. Notifications, news, reminders and events are now split into past, present and future, and you control the timeline with the three buttons on the right of the watch: top for the past, middle for the present and the bottom button for the future.
This means you can view all upcoming appointments, for example, or go back in time to see an email you haven't read yet, without having to hunt through individual apps. The colour screen really comes into its own here, as you can assign different colours to each of the three time categories so you always know where you are. We found the interface ran smoothly; the watch's screen is apparently able to refresh at up to 30fps, which leads to smooth animations.
One of the criticisms we levelled at the original Pebble Steel was how fiddly it was to change its strap, due to the non-standard fitting. The Pebble Time rectifies this with a new quick-release strap, and is compatible with standard 22mm watch straps. We didn't get a chance to try on the Pebble Time Steel, but were fans of the standard Time's soft rubber strap, which was easy to fit and comfortable.
First impressions of the Pebble Time are certainly favourable; it's slimmer and even more watch-like than the original Pebble, and the timeline interface is an interesting way to get at important notifications without having to wade through screens of apps. That, and the killer battery life, may be enough to make the Pebble Time the ultimate smartwatch, but we'll have to get a final unit in for review before we can come to any definite conclusions.