Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`-——
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`pebble review herxo 1020
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`=
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`& Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast.
`
`The Pebble smartwatch is a lot more than just a watch — it’s the latest attempt to
`turn your wrist into the launchpad for a wearable computing revolution. It’s also
`the preeminent symbol of the Kickstarter hardware revolution. After 85,000
`orders, 10 million crowdfunded dollars, and one or two slipped ship dates, the
`Pebble is finally here, ready to pipe emails and texts directly to your wrist.
`
`So is the Pebble a gimmick or the start of a bold new platform? Has an indie
`hardware startup managed to produce the first smartwatch for regular people, or
`is this just another toy for nerds to eventually discard like almost every other
`smartwatch before it? What did our 10 million dollars actually buy us? Let’s find
`out.
`
`Video Review
`Video Review
`
`Design and hardware
`Design and hardware
`The Pebble stands out by not standing out
`
`The Pebble stands out by not standing out — almost every other smart watch is a bulky,
`chunky affair, but chances are most people won't even realize you're wearing the Pebble until
`you tell them. It's slim and sleek, and when the backlight is off the screen blends in
`seamlessly with the borders of my black review unit. On the right side you'll find up / down
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`and select buttons, while the left side has a back button and a set of contacts for the Pebble's
`magnetic power connector, which aligns and latches on like Apple’s familiar MagSafe system.
`It's a clever way to keep the Pebble waterproof without resorting to clunky port covers or
`flaps.
`
`As for the screen itself, | would call it just okay: Pebble calls it "e-paper," but it's really a 114 x
`168 "transflective" LCD that's designed for watches. It's functional, but ultimately it's a low-
`resolution black and white LCD, and low-resolution black and white LCDs are not renowned
`for their beauty. It's also covered by a curved plastic lens that can reflect light in weird ways —
`it's not a huge problem at all, but you'll notice it from time to time.
`
`Let's hope Pebble finds a better screen next time
`
`The screen itself always has content on it, whether it's the time, the music player, or a
`notification, and it's fairly readable in daylight without the backlight on. But the backlight
`makes a big difference: when it's off, the screen is roughly black and white, in the same way a
`Nook or Kindle screen is roughly black and white. But incoming notifications and particularly
`fast movements trigger the backlight, which adds an unexpected bluish tint to the screen. It
`works fine, but there's no way for it to feel super-premium if the screen looks cheap — the
`experience here is fundamentally all about the display, after all. | hope Pebble finds a better
`part the next time around.
`
`The Pebble's polyurethane watchband is entirely unremarkable. It's there, and it holds the
`thing to your wrist comfortably. But it's tremendously boring and even somewhat cheap
`feeling, and I'm already shopping for a replacement — you can fit any standard 22mm band,
`so your options are basically unlimited.
`
`But overall, the Pebble is a very nice piece of hardware — it's comfortable and small, and it
`works. You could put it in the designer watch case at a department store and it would blend
`right in, which is a big accomplishment. Holding it in your hand, it's amazing to think that it
`was designed and assembled by an independent hardware startup funded by Kickstarter. But
`we've known the Pebble looks cool for months now. The big question is — does it work?
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`Using Pebble
`Using Pebble
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`e
`4 /‘ 7
`‘ v
`
`Out of the box, the Pebble is basically useless — it's designed to be used as a secondary
`display for your phone, and that means the experience of using a Pebble starts with setting up
`the Pebble app. And that's where things get interesting: Pebble supports both iOS and
`Android, but how that support works is wildly different on each platform.
`
`iPhone
`
`The Pebble app for iOS is basically a placeholder — you can download new watchfaces and
`troubleshoot connection problems, but that's about it. Everything else happens at the iOS
`system level: you pair the Pebble and select "show notifications," and you're theoretically off
`to the races. Well, sort of. iOS has the necessary underlying frameworks for supporting
`devices like the Pebble, but there's virtually no interface for managing any of it — you can't
`selectively send some app notifications to the Pebble but not others, or only get pings from
`one email account, or tweak any other settings. It's a little messy, and there's some real
`weirdness in the mix.
`
`For example, getting third-party apps like Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail to send notifications
`requires a strange dance: you open each app’s Notification Center preferences, select a
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`different notification style, and then reselect whatever one you actually wanted. That seems
`to link the notifications to the Pebble, and from there everything works just fine. But be
`warned: if the Bluetooth connection disconnects for any reason, you'll have to re-re-select all
`your notifications all over again. It's irritating, but it's clearly not Pebble’s fault; Apple just
`hasn’t built the right management tools into iOS yet.
`
`A- Status
`
`Get the most out of your Pebble.
`Tap an issue to resolve it.
`
`0 Pebble 26C7 Connected
`
`Need Help?
`
`Contact Support
`
`Show Help
`
`And there are other places where it seems like iOS just doesn’t know how to deal with Pebble:
`at first my phone seemed convinced that Pebble was actually a Bluetooth headset, and tried
`to route call audio and Siri to it. The music player controls worked fine with every app | tried,
`
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`including Music, Spotify, and Rdio, but sometimes the track info displayed on the Pebble
`didn't update.
`
`These are all fairly minor irritations, though: once you get the Pebble up and running with your
`iPhone, it works perfectly, assuming the two don't disconnect often. And leveraging Apple's
`Notification Center frameworks might involve some funky setup, but it means that every app'’s
`notifications work with Pebble out of the box, which isn't the case with Android. I'm assuming
`Apple will continue to build and improve these tools in future version of iOS (perhaps for its
`own watch), and that should make the Pebble better as well.
`
`Android
`
`Unlike the iPhone and iOS, which offer skeletal native support for devices like the Pebble at
`the system level, Pebble on Android is all about the app. That's where you manage everything,
`and at first glance it makes far more sense: all the settings are in one place, and you can
`quickly and easily make tweaks like having the watch show alerts for one email account but
`not another.
`
`But there are some drawbacks to having an all-powerful app take the place of system-level
`support: Pebble's Android app needs broad permissions to your phone, including your Gmail
`account passwords. (Android users see more of each email on the Pebble than iPhone users
`because the app is actually checking your email over IMAP, not just seeing notifications.) You
`also need to turn on Android'’s accessibility features so the app can read your notifications
`and send them along to the phone, which pops up a scary warning about the app reading all
`your text input. | trust Pebble to behave itself, but that's a lot of leeway with my data and
`personal information.
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`a Pebble Settings
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`CONNECTION SETTINGS
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`Automatically reconnect
`
`Attempt to reconnect upon losing a
`connection to Pebble
`
`Bluetooth Settings
`
`System-wide Bluetooth settings
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`PHONE NOTIFICATIONS
`
`Incoming Calls 7
`Forward incoming call alerts
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`SMS Messages 7
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`Forward SMS messages
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`CALENDAR NOTIFICATIONS
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`Calendar reminders 7
`Forward calendar reminders
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`EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS
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`Default Email App
`
`Default email client
`
`L BN !
`
`And because everything on Android happens within the Pebble app, you're also limited to
`getting notifications from only the apps Pebble’s had time to support. That means you can get
`Facebook notifications but not Twitter, for example. WhatsApp is supported but not GroupMe.
`| assume the company is feverishly working to support more apps, but if your favorite isn’t on
`the list, you could be waiting for a while.
`
`As with Pebble's iPhone support, these are minor irritations, and once you've got Pebble up
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`and running, it works perfectly as intended. But it's an interesting tradeoff: in many ways the
`Pebble experience on Android is better than the iPhone today, but it feels a little hackier.
`
`| particularly enjoy screening calls from my wrist
`
`Once you've got Pebble set up with your phone, you just pick whatever watch face you like
`and go about your day. As a watch, the Pebble is completely unobtrusive — it's so small that
`most people won't ever think it's anything but a regular watch. Pebble’s watch faces range
`from the classic to the incredibly cryptic; | personally left it on the classic analog display.
`Oddly, there's no classic digital watch face, but | assume some enterprising developer will
`solve that problem soon enough.
`Any incoming notification will quietly buzz the Pebble and light up the screen. Frankly, it's
`great — being able to see who's texting, emailing, or calling you without looking at your phone
`changes the entire dynamic of being connected. The upside is obvious: only reaching for your
`phone when it's something important means you reach for your phone much less often. (I
`particularly enjoy screening calls from my wrist.) The downside is that it's harder to simply
`ignore your phone and let messages stack up while you focus on something else; having the
`Pebble buzz your wrist for every email and text means you're hyper-aware of your inbox at all
`times. Some filters and priority settings would go a long way — having a Pebble changes the
`contours of distraction, but doesn't reduce it. But once you're used to having notifications on
`your wrist, it's hard to live without them.
`Once you've seen a notification, you simply hit the select or back buttons to dismiss it.
`(Pebble's web site claims you can shake the watch to dismiss a notification, but | never got
`that to work.) I'm curious to know how the forthcoming Pebble apps will eventually make use
`of all three buttons, but for now everything is very straightforward, and the Ul moves along
`smoothly and quickly.
`
`It changes the entire dynamic of being connected
`The Pebble also offers basic control of music on your phone: it'll display song titles and let
`you pause and skip tracks. It works with every music app | tried on iOS, but it's limited to apps
`that support the Bluetooth AVRCP protocol on Android — meaning Spotify doesn’t work. But
`getting to the music controls from the watchface involves a number of button pushes; | found
`it faster to just pull out my phone and rarely used the feature.
`Pebble promises that more apps will come in the future. The company has an SDK for
`developers, and the idea is that you'll be able to download and install watch apps directly
`from within the Pebble phone app. It's easy to imagine everything else a Pebble might do: the
`company has already shown mockups of a golf rangefinder, a biking app, a running app, and
`
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`more. They're all clever ideas, but it's just promises right now — and there's no timeline for
`app support just yet.
`
`Battery life
`Battery life
`
`Kickstarter
`Edition
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`20R0115826C7
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`FCC 1D: RGO-PEBBLE-WAT(C)
`
`Pebble claims the watch will run for about a week on a single charge, and while | didn’t have
`enough time to test that, | never once worried about the battery. Part of that was simply that
`there's no battery indicator on the device — you'll get a low battery warning, but otherwise
`you simply don’t know. It's liberating, in the sense that being ignorant of death frees you from
`fear. Will you see a clock the next time you look at your wrist, or will you see the dead plastic
`talisman of a society shattered into pieces by information overload? Chances are you'll see a
`clock.
`
`Using the Pebble will also impact your smartphone battery by somewhere between five and
`ten percent — running that Bluetooth radio all the time isn’t free. | found that power usage on
`my iPhone seemed a hair better than on Android, possibly because the Android app was
`always running in the background. The Pebble supports the lower-power Bluetooth 4.0
`standard but doesn't use it just yet, so there's a chance power consumption will improve with
`an update.
`
`Being ignorant of death frees you from fear
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`8.2
`
`\erge
`Score
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`Pebble smartwatch review | The Verge 7/21/25, 6:54 PM
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`Pebble Pebble
`
`THE GOOD THE BAD
`
`Looks like a regular watch iPhone support limited by iOS itself
`
`Works well with iPhone and Android Android support limited by app development
`Solid battery life Screen is just okay
`
`How we rate and review products
`
`The Pebble’s charming simplicity and fundamental
`competence inspires confidence
`
`After using the Pebble for a few days, I realized that I was daydreaming about it: I
`wanted it to do more. That’s unusual — I rarely trust new products to work
`correctly, especially new products from unproven companies. But the Pebble’s
`charming simplicity and fundamental competence inspires confidence. It’s so
`good at what it does now that it’s easy to imagine all other things it might do in
`the future. There’s no reason it can’t replace a Fitbit or Nike Fuelband, for
`example, and I'd love to be able to send replies to emails and text directly from
`the device. And Pebble’s promised app support means we’ll eventually see even
`more uses for it.
`
`At $150, the Pebble isn’'t cheap, and it’s definitely not yet a must-have device. But
`it’'s close — if the Pebble team can deliver on the rest of their promises, they’ll
`have created the first mainstream wearable computing platform. And even if
`they don't, the Pebble as it exists right now will make a lot of people very happy.
`
`O COMMENTS
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`SEE MORE: APPLE APPS GOOGLE MOBILE REVIEWS SMARTWATCH SMARTWATCH REVIEWS TECH
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`Pebble has sold over 400,000 smartwatches
`
`DANTE D'ORAZIO MAR 20, 2014
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`Pebble update finally adds Do Not Disturb mode and improved
`alarms
`SAM BYFORD DEC 13, 2013
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`The Verge at work: using the Pebble smartwatch to never miss a
`thing
`
`DAN SEIFERT NOV 29, 2013
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`Moxre in Apple
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