Pebble introduced their first smartwatch to the market through a kickstarter campaign which was a massive success, collecting around $10 million for development of the smartwatch. This was the most money raised for any product on Kickstarter at that time. Since then Pebble has introduced few models and the Time Round is the latest smartwatch from the company. This smartwatch is super light and thin. The company claims this model to be world’s lightest. To be honest, I can’t think of any other smartwatch which is this thin and most importantly, comfortable on hands. Let us look at the Pebble Time Round Review in this article. The Time Round is available for USD 249 in the US, and on Amazon.in for a price of INR 13599 in India.
Hardware, Look and Feel:
The Pebble Time Round is made up of stainless steel and looks beautiful. The all-metal chassis and smooth beveled edges adds to the looks. Its thin and feels super premium. The construction of the body feels very strong and sturdy. The glass on the top blends very well with the edges. The side buttons has an excellent feel and are spaced well. The Pebble Time Round is easily the best wearable the company has brought to market, not only in the looks; but to the quality of construction, materials used and the well-designed body.
The bezel is slightly a turn-off though. The Display is certainly not as rich or colorful as brighter OLED panels, but it’s still works perfectly. Time Round is much more legible under bright sunlight. Thanks to the e-paper display. This also means, that the display remains on at all times. The display is slightly dim when you compare it with other smartwatches. However, that affects the battery life.
The company has sacrificed a lot of battery life to make the watch as small and thin as possible. This isn’t a great deal breaker. I get about 2 days of battery life. The Time Round also charges super quick. With just 15 minutes, the watch gets about a 60% charge.
Software, User Experience:
Pebble’s software is simple. Its efficient and delivers what it promises. The Pebble Time Round can display notifications from a phone paired over Bluetooth, iOS and Android devices only.
The OS has a feature called Timeline that lets you scroll through past or upcoming information, such as weather, sports, calendar appointments, messages, or missed calls. The OS has another feature called ‘Quiet time’ which gives you an option to turn off notifications on certain days or time when you don’t want to get notified.
The device supports step counting and sleep tracking through 3rd party apps. The watch also has support for Alarms and alerts. Further, Pebble’s app store has a lot of apps to choose from, mostly free. The store currently has over 150 apps and 400 watch faces.
I have an iPhone; Can I buy the Pebble Time Round?
Well to be honest, There is no smartwatch worth buying other than the Apple Watch for you. Android Wear does support, notifications and other actions on your iPhone, but it isn’t as powerful.
The Pebble software gives you support for call alerts and app notifications on your iPhone. However, it isn’t as powerful as on Android phones. You get much finer control and many more useful features when paired with an Android phone. You will be able to view and dismiss notifications, trigger voice commands on supported apps; however, the notifications are non-actionable – you won’t be able to delete an email, like a FB post or even replying back to a message by voice, which is possible on the Android phones. I heard Pebble is working on better iOS integration. Let’s wait and watch.
Pros and Cons, Value for Money:
At INR 13599 ($249 in the US), the Time Round is more expensive than it looks; which may feel a bummer. However, this is the first smartwatch I’ve loved using. I’ve tried a number of smartwatches in the past. My most favorite was the Moto 360. I can say that with the Pebble Time Round I didn’t feel like I was actually wearing a smartwatch, it pretty much looked like a standard one and I like the simplistic approach.
The Battery on the Pebble Time Round easily lasts two days, and charges super quick as well. The OS is simple, fast and even the community of developers and users is growing. The watch is Thin, light and very comfortable on hands.
Touchscreen, Lack of GPS and Heart Rate sensor does look like a negative points, when you compare this with other Android Wear watches available in the market. We would’ve loved the watch to be water proof (Its just SplashProof). The round display lacks some support from existing developers who had developed apps for other variants of Pebble. A better iOS support would’ve been great as well.
The Time Round will definitely impress quite a few people. If you want a simple smartwatch that’s great for notifications and, serves the purpose to show you the time, the Pebble Time Round is a worthy option. If fits smaller wrists as well. Also, If you are wary about smartwatches to be too geeky, this is probably one watch you should try. It looks subtle and very impressive.