A change of strategy sees Pebble design its best-looking smartwatch yet. But is it style over substance?
Rewind back a few years ago and smartwatches were the stuff of James Bond movies and pipe dreams. Then along came a recordbreaking Kickstarter project by a little known US start-up called Pebble. A few years later, almost every manufacturer, from Apple and Samsung right through to Alcatel, has launched a smartwatch, but the design and functionalities of wearables has come on leaps and bounds. No longer are they big, lumpy square behemoths that feel like you’ve strapped anchor to your wrist – now smartwatches are beginning to actually look like watches. It is this idea, a watch that does smart things, that serves as a starting point for the Pebble Time Round.
Design
Unlike previous Pebble smartwatches such as the Classic and Time Steel, the Time Round is the US manufacturer’s first circular device. That seems to be the direction most smartwatches are taking – Samsung, Motorola and LG have all brought out round timepieces – and it is a direction we really like.
The Time Round is no different – it is one of the most comfortable smartwatches we have tried, in part because it is one of the most lightweight devices on the market at just 28g. It also comes in at just 7.5mm thickness. To put that in perspective Samsung’s Gear S2 is 11.4mm – and you can definitely feel the difference.
At times, the watch is so light, you’ll forget that you’re wearing it, which is a real compliment to Pebble’s designers.
The strap also helps with that. If you look at pictures of the Time Round, you could easily mistake the basic strap for a plastic one, but it is actually a very lightweight leather and is surprisingly comfortable.
The size and design, plus the leather strap, makes the Time Round feel like a truly gender-neutral smartwatch. Unlike rival devices such as the Moto 360 or Gear S2, the Pebble doesn’t look out of place on smaller wrists.
One of our few criticisms of the Time Round’s design is to do with the screen. Rather than having a full circular screen, there is a large bezel around the e-ink display, which makes the screen appear a lot smaller. Kind of like a porthole. This is fine when the device is just on a normal watch face but switch over to something that needs more display, such as mapping or messaging, and it becomes a bit of a pain.
Screen
Inside the stainless steel casing, we have circular e-paper display with a 180 x 180 resolution. To get an impression of what this looks like in person, think of an Amazon Kindle display – the colours are slightly dull but text is clear. It lacks the vibrancy of an LED screen but doesn’t sap the power in the same way either.
If you compare this screen to smartwatches, the Pebble is going to come off worse. The display is far too blocky and simplistic to compete with the Apple Watch or Gear S2, and the colour palette – 64 colours – is extremely limited. But that comparison is not entirely fair. For one thing, you get an always-on display you are unlikely to find on rival devices. If you had a normal watch, it would always be on and Pebble has achieved that here. Also, it is a lot clearer in sunlight than an LED display would be.
If it’s dark and you flick your wrist, a backing light comes on. Well, it is supposed to and works about 80 per cent of the time but the sensor is not particularly responsive, meaning you have to flick your wrist quite violently.
The lovely circular design does come with one major downside though. Anyone who has previously used a Pebble Watch will be used to a device that lasts you for almost a week on a single charge. By reducing the size of the watch and, subsequently, the battery so dramatically, this falls to two days at most, Pebble claims.
We found that claim a bit generous. For the most part we saw about a day and a half worth of average usage before the battery ran out entirely, and even less if we used battery-intensive apps such as Runkeeper.
The reason for this is obvious. The Pebble Time has a 150mAh battery, while the one found on the Pebble Steel is even larger. But on the Time Round? Just 56mAh. While this does allow the device to be much slimmer and more lightweight, the battery life can be frustrating when compared with other Pebble products.
Also, Pebble is positioning this product as a watch that does smart things, as opposed to a smartwatch, but watch batteries last years.
To counter this, Pebble has included a quick charge function and that is superb. Attach the Time Round to the magnetised charger and it will charge three quarters of the battery within 15 minutes. Perfect for when you take it off to go for a shower (it’s splash proof but not fully waterproof).
Performance
One of the key things to remember with the Pebble Time Round is that it is meant to be a low-tech alternative to smartwatches. That means it comes with some fairly basic functionality and is missing a lot of other sensors and tech you’d find on rival smartwatches.
It has Bluetooth, which seemed to work perfectly, a step counter and a microphone for note-taking and sending texts. The step counter was one of the most useful functions but wasn’t entirely free of problems. For one thing, it didn’t seem to recognise the difference between walking and running. The step counter estimates what distance you’ve covered but when we used in on a run, and had the Runkeeper app going in the background, it seemed to detect a different distance to that app, even though Runkeeper was paired with the Time Round. It also failed to take information from Runkeeper about calories burned – a simple thing, sure, but one which would make it feel a lot more interactive.
The Time Round doesn’t have GPS or a heart rate monitor, although Pebble assured us that it would be bringing out bands that could be bought which offer both types of functionality. It also doesn’t have a touchscreen – those unfamiliar with Pebble may find it odd that the screen is just a screen – instead using soft buttons on the sides of the watch.
These buttons may at first feel a bit strange to tech users used to touchscreens but actually become fairly intuitive within hours of use. The three buttons on the right of the Time Round navigate the menus (up, enter, down) while the button on the left serves as a back/cancel button. The up and down buttons can also be assigned as quick buttons to access certain apps – we had one set as the Google Health app and the other to control our music player.
Software
The interface itself is fairly basic – an up and down menu with some simple animations and all of your apps lined up, including ones you have downloaded. IT also has an in-built notifications/calendar called “Timeline” which lets you look back through all your past notifications for the day, or through your appointments for the rest of it. This can be brilliant, but only if you’re an avid user of the calendar app on your phone.
Though Pebble recommends you install Android Wear on your smartphone to use the Time Round, most apps are downloaded through the Pebble Time app.
The selection of apps is limited but there are a few very basic games plus a selection of notification apps for sports or weather, health tracking apps from Misfit and Runkeeper and a few that use the inbuilt mic.
The Time Round works with both iOS and Android but has no support for Windows 10. The main function, and arguably its best performing feature, is notifications. You get notifications from almost anything – texts, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, emails and your calendar. One of the nice features is that the watch vibrates gently to let you know something has come through to your phone but then keeps the alert on the screen until you cancel it. This means that, if you are too busy, you can revisit it later with ease.
Conclusion
It is difficult to compare the Pebble Time Round to any other smartwatches on the market. In terms of functionality, it does not come near the Gear S2 or Apple Watch but then that is not what Pebble is aiming for. Design wise, it is as nice as either of those, barring the far-too-large bezel around the slightly too small screen.
But it can’t be compared to other Pebble’s, either, because it feels almost like an experiment – a move away from what Pebble has always done best (long battery life, solid performance, slightly childish design) to a more elegant, adult product that eschews those benefits in favour of an elegant form.
It isn’t the cheapest smartwatch on the market, either, but then it is still a very pretty watch and seemed to catch a lot of people’s eye when we were testing it out.
Verdict
A change of strategy sees Pebble design its best-looking smartwatch yet, but at the expense of battery life and performance. It feels great on the wrist, to the point where you’ll almost forget it is there, and handles notifications flawlessly. If you can get over the fact that you’ll need to charge it every other day, and you’re not too bothered about having all the whirring gadgets like a heart rate monitor or GPS, then it is a nice smartwatch to have.
Spec Sheet
OS Compatibility Android 4.0+, iOS 7+
Screen 0.73-inches e-ink display
Sensors Sleep, Pedometer, Running