Pebble Steel Review: A Smartwatch With a Week-Long Battery

Advertisement

Hype over wearable technology — and smartwatches in particular — hit a fever pitch this year, but sales haven eluded most manufacturers.

Pebble Steel Review Intro
Source: Photo by Brad Moon

There are multiple reasons for the reluctance of consumers to jump on the smartwatch bandwagon in great numbers.

Everyone was waiting for Apple (AAPL) to unveil the Apple Watch, afraid that it might instantly render their $350 Android smartwatch obsolete. The habit of tying a smartwatch to only your own brand of smartphone — as Samsung (SSNLF) has done — discouraged many. What happens if you buy a different smartphone next time?

Then there’s battery life. In most cases, you have a day at best before you have to fumble with cables, plug in and recharge.

Pebble has been an exception. The smartwatch launched as a Kickstarter success story, securing $10 million in pledges. According to The Verge’s Dante D’Orazio, as of March the company had sold more than 400,000 smartwatches.

Pebble has pulled this off by addressing many concerns of smartwatch early adopters: The price is reasonable, the Pebble and new Pebble Steel work with both Android and iOS smartphones, and battery life lasts a week instead of a day.

Our Pebble Steel review looks at the latest model from Pebble to find out if it’s the closest thing yet to the perfect smartwatch.

Pebble Steel Review: First Impressions and Battery Life

Pebble Steel review unboxing
Source: Photo by Brad Moon

The original Pebble was plastic and a combination of high-tech and funky. Early Pebble review posts often mentioned that this wasn’t the smartwatch to choose if your were going for a professional look.

The Pebble Steel was released to address this concern, to general success. Available in a Matte Black or Stainless Steel finish (my Pebble review unit was Stainless Steel), the new version is much more discrete.

With customized watch faces pre-loaded (and more available as downloads), you can choose to have an analog look, complete with animated sweeping hands.

Which brings me to the display.

The Pebble Steel uses a black and white e-paper display. That choice pays off in class-leading battery life of 5-7 days between charges. But the tradeoff is that you miss out on colors like you’d get with Google’s (GOOG) Moto 360, and the screen is slightly pixelated, especially on fine detail like the second hand.

Pebble Steel Review: How Smart Is It?

Pebble Steel review, app store
Source: Pebble

One of the promises of a smart watch is that it’s “smart.” The Pebble Steel lacks the fancy heart rate sensors of many current generation models, but it does have an accelerometer for tracking fitness data along the lines of what a Fitbit Flex or Nike (NKE) Fuelband can manage.

The Pebble Steel connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and handles all the notification duties expected of a smartwatch as well as alarms and music control.

But while some manufacturers (I’m looking at you Samsung and Apple) only support their own device and there’s a barrier between using most Apple iPhones with Android smartwatches, the Pebble Steel is platform agnostic.

In other words, iPhone or Android, it doesn’t care. However, you’re out of luck if you have a Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Phone.

Pebble also operates its own app store, with a growing selection of watch faces, fitness apps and even simple games.

Pebble Steel Review: Specs

Pebble Steel review battery
Source: Photo by Brad Moon
  • Marine grade stainless steel case (Black Matte finish available)
  • Lithium-ion ploymer battery rated at 5-7 days
  • 144 x 168 pixel e-paper display with LED backlight
  • Bluetooth 4.0
  • Weighs 1.97 ounces
  • Water resistant
  • Runs Pebble OS
  • $249

Pebble Steel Review: Conclusion

Pebble Steel review matte black
Source: Pebble

If what you want in a smartwatch is a reasonably compact device that does notifications, tracks basic fitness stats, doesn’t cost a fortune, plays nicely with both Android and iOS and doesn’t require you to plug it in every day or two to charge the battery — the Pebble Steel may be just what you’re looking for.

It lacks the flash of the upcoming Apple Watch and doesn’t offer the colorful display or the ability to respond to “OK Google” the way Android Wear smartwatches do.

But at $249 for a proven smartwatch that looks pretty nice, offers a healthy app assortment, works with a huge range of smartphones and just keeps ticking … the Pebble Steel is tough to beat.

As of this writing, Brad Moon did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

Brad Moon has been writing for InvestorPlace.com since 2012. He also writes about stocks for Kiplinger and has been a senior contributor focusing on consumer technology for Forbes since 2015.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2014/09/pebble-steel-review/.

©2024 InvestorPlace Media, LLC