HTG Reviews the Pebble: Top Smartwatch Choice
The Allure of Smartwatches: A Convenient Connection
Many individuals desire the ability to engage with their mobile devices, review alerts, and remain informed with a simple, natural gesture – much like checking the time on a traditional wristwatch. If this resonates with you, a smartwatch may be an ideal technological addition to your lifestyle.
This article provides an overview of the Pebble smartwatch, detailing how it effectively delivers notifications and a range of other functionalities directly to your wrist.
Pebble Smartwatch: An Overview
The Pebble smartwatch offers a streamlined method for staying connected without constantly needing to access your phone. It’s designed for users who value convenience and immediate access to information.
By bringing notifications to your wrist, the Pebble minimizes disruptions while ensuring you don’t miss important updates.
Key Features and Functionality
The core benefit of the Pebble smartwatch lies in its ability to mirror notifications from your smartphone. This includes alerts for calls, texts, emails, and app updates.
Beyond notifications, Pebble offers a variety of features, enhancing its utility and appeal. These can include fitness tracking, music control, and customizable watch faces.
- Notifications: Receive instant alerts for calls, messages, and app updates.
- Fitness Tracking: Monitor your activity levels and progress towards fitness goals.
- Music Control: Manage your music playback directly from your wrist.
- Customization: Personalize your watch face to match your style and preferences.
The Pebble smartwatch aims to provide a seamless and intuitive user experience, integrating effortlessly into your daily routine.
Its design prioritizes ease of use and accessibility, making it a practical choice for a wide range of users.
Smartwatches and the Rise of the Pebble
As 2013 nears its conclusion, it will undoubtedly be recognized as the year smartwatches transitioned from conceptual designs to tangible products. What defines a smartwatch? While certain models aim for complete independence – functioning almost as miniaturized PDAs or smartphones – most operate as companion devices.
These watches connect via Bluetooth to Android or iOS smartphones, serving as a convenient remote display. This allows users to stay informed about texts, emails, and other notifications without constantly retrieving their phones.
The Pebble distinguishes itself within the current smartwatch landscape due to its user-friendliness, broad platform compatibility, and attractive price. Compared to many smartwatches exceeding $300 in cost, the $150 Pebble represents significant value.
However, regardless of its affordability, a key question remains: is a smartwatch genuinely worthwhile at this point in its development? And does the Pebble truly merit the acclaim it has garnered under everyday conditions?
Fortunately, we acquired a Pebble in October and subjected it to extensive real-world testing over several weeks to provide a comprehensive evaluation.
Pebble: A Closer Look at the Hardware
Prior to configuration, let's examine the Pebble’s physical design. The device features a compact 144 x 168 pixel digital screen and four buttons. Internally, it incorporates a 3-axis accelerometer and a light sensor.
These sensors enable useful functionalities, such as dismissing notifications with a wrist shake and automatically adjusting screen brightness. The only externally visible connection point is a set of metal contacts on the left side of the watch.
These contacts accommodate the USB-charging cable, which utilizes a unique magnetic connector for recharging. With typical usage, the Pebble can operate for approximately 7 days on a single charge.
Furthermore, reduced notification frequency can extend battery life to an impressive 2-3 weeks.
Now, let’s proceed to discuss the initial setup process.
Getting Started with the Pebble
Upon unboxing, activating any of the buttons immediately initiates the Pebble’s setup sequence. Visiting go.getpebble.com, as displayed on the device, prompts you to identify your phone’s operating system – either Android or iOS – and then provides detailed instructions for downloading and installing the necessary software.
While the overall Pebble software experience was positive, the initial setup wizard presented some challenges. It encountered difficulties at multiple stages, and the automated Bluetooth pairing process failed to complete. A manual connection through the phone’s Bluetooth settings, however, proved successful (indicating the issue wasn’t with the Bluetooth hardware itself).
Manual Pairing Instructions
We recommend bypassing the software wizard and initiating pairing manually. Access your phone’s Bluetooth menu, then on the Pebble, press the middle right-hand button to access the system menu. Navigate to Settings -> Bluetooth -> Pairing. Confirm the pairing on your phone by selecting the Pebble from the Bluetooth device list, and then, crucially, confirm the connection on the Pebble itself. It’s easy to mistakenly believe pairing is complete before confirming on the watch display.
After successful pairing, configuring the Pebble through its companion app is the next step. The device offers three core functionalities without requiring additional applications, a level of extensibility that will be discussed further. The most fundamental function is, naturally, timekeeping.
The Pebble excels in providing notifications and smartwatch features, but it remains a watch at its core. Customizing the watch display is remarkably simple. This can be done directly on the device by using the upper and lower buttons on the right side to cycle through installed watch faces (three are pre-loaded). Alternatively, within the Pebble app, navigate to My Pebble -> Watch Apps -> Get Watch Apps to discover and add a selection of additional watch faces.
Beyond the watch face, managing notifications is paramount. Given the device’s proximity and potential for alerts, controlling which information is relayed is essential. Access the settings within the Pebble app by tapping the gear icon in the upper right corner. This provides access to comprehensive settings for all watch functions, including notifications.
Notification Customization
Review the notification lists within the app. You can configure settings for incoming calls, text messages, calendar reminders, and emails (specifying which email accounts to monitor). Control over third-party app notifications is also available. We suggest initially enabling all notifications, then refining the settings after a few days of use.
For instance, receiving caller ID and text messages on your wrist proved valuable, but a constant stream of email alerts became distracting and less useful.
Finally, from the same menu where notifications are managed, select Music. The Pebble also functions as a wrist-based media controller. It allows you to change tracks, fast forward, pause music, and more. Select Music and choose your preferred media player (including video apps like Netflix) to enable control via the device.
Enhancing the Capabilities of the Pebble Smartwatch
The Pebble smartwatch offers considerable functionality immediately upon unboxing, including customizable watch faces, comprehensive notifications, and convenient media controls accessible directly from your wrist. However, it is the extensive extensibility of the Pebble, through a diverse range of supporting applications, that truly establishes it as a leading smartwatch option.
Many initial concerns regarding the watch’s functionality can be readily addressed by utilizing freely available apps developed by third-party developers.
Expanding Visual Customization with Watch Faces
On a purely aesthetic level, the Pebble’s appearance can be dramatically altered with access to a vast library of watch faces beyond those officially provided. Platforms like My Pebble Faces (previously available) hosted approximately 2,500 faces, while Watchface Generator indexed around 80,000 user-created designs for the Pebble.
Creative Applications and Functionality
Beyond simply changing the watch face, numerous innovative add-on applications significantly broaden the Pebble’s capabilities. To effectively manage and utilize these apps, a dedicated Pebble app manager, such as the free Pebble Apps, is highly recommended.
Within Pebble Apps, applications are organized for easy browsing. Glance is a particularly useful app, providing features like weather updates, counters for missed calls, emails, and texts. It also incorporates two exceptionally practical functions:
- Predefined quick responses for replying to text messages directly from the watch.
- The ability to review text messages – a feature notably missing from the Pebble’s standard notification system.
Comprehensive Notification Management
To further extend the Pebble’s notification capabilities, Pebble Notifier is an essential application. It enables the forwarding of all notifications – not limited to default SMS and email alerts – to your smartwatch.
This includes notifications from platforms like Facebook, Google+, and eBay auction updates, allowing for a truly comprehensive information stream on your wrist.
Pebble Smartwatch: A Comprehensive Review
Following extensive testing, including notification handling and everyday use, our assessment of the Pebble smartwatch is now complete.
Key Strengths:
- The Pebble is positioned as the most accessible smartwatch currently available, with a price point of $150, often reduced to $120-$130 during promotions.
- Despite initial concerns regarding screen quality – and questioning the choice of LCD over e-ink – the display performs effectively in all lighting environments.
- Its water resistance, rated to 160 feet, ensures durability and eliminates concerns about damage from exposure to water during activities like showering or swimming.
- The integrated media controls are intuitive and compatible with a broad spectrum of music and video applications.
- Rather than attempting extensive functionality, the Pebble prioritizes the reliable delivery of notifications, a task it accomplishes successfully.
- The availability of add-on applications significantly enhances the watch’s core capabilities, expanding its utility.
Areas for Improvement:
- A significant limitation is the inability to revisit notifications after they have been displayed and subsequently disappeared from the screen.
- To review a recently missed text message, for instance, users must access their smartphone’s messaging application, as the Pebble lacks a notification history feature. This is a notable omission that we hope will be addressed. Fortunately, third-party apps, such as Glance, provide a workaround.
- While not excessively large, the Pebble’s dimensions – 50mm x 32mm – may appear substantial on smaller wrists, particularly for women.
- The requirement for a proprietary magnetic charging cable, while necessary for maintaining water resistance, adds to the collection of specialized charging accessories.
Final Assessment:
As 2013 draws to a close, the smartwatch market is characterized by a number of expensive and underwhelming products. Many attempt to offer too much functionality at a high cost, resulting in negative consumer feedback – exemplified by Samsung’s Gear smartwatch, which has a return rate exceeding 40%.
In contrast, the Pebble distinguishes itself through its ease of use and extensibility via companion applications. It seamlessly integrates into daily life, becoming a natural extension of one’s smartphone.
Is the Pebble suitable for all users? Not necessarily. Despite our positive experience, it remains primarily a device for technology enthusiasts. It appeals to those who actively desire smartwatch functionality, including the delivery of smartphone notifications to their wrist.
However, for individuals seeking a dependable, long-lasting smartwatch with a wide range of features and seamless smartphone integration, the Pebble represents a solid and reliable choice.