Pebble Time Steel is a color e-paper smartwatch with up to 10 days of battery life, capable to connect to iOS and Android devices. It can run apps, custom watch face and quickly display new timeline interface that highlights what’s important in our day. With more than $10.2 million funding, the original Pebble smartwatch was the most successful Kickstarter project back in 2012. Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel were launched as a new Kickstarter project in early 2015, scored $22.3 million funding and became the new highest crowdfunding project until today.
I backed the original Pebble in 2012 and very satisfied with the product. Therefore, I was excited to hear about new models and decided to choose Pebble Time Steel over the over-hyped Apple Watch released in the same year. My reason? Primarily about the price, battery and always on display. As much as I usually won’t mind paying the price of Apple products, I found it really hard to justify such premium price for a first-gen product that will soon become obsolete in 2-3 years. Pebble Time Steel promises up to 10 days of battery life, compared to Apple Watch’s up to 18 hours, the winner is very clear. Yes, Apple Watch can do a lot more, with more beautiful display. However, having used first gen Pebble for more than 2 years, I already know my usage pattern with smart watch. All those fancy apps will probably feel exciting in the first few weeks, but I know I won’t use them often in real everyday usage. Finally, Apple Watch automatically turn off the display to save battery power. We need to make some movement to turn it on. Thanks to its e-paper technology, Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel offer always-on display, which I think is how a “watch” is supposed to be.
After few months of waiting, I finally received my Pebble Time Steel this morning. The initial promise was to ship the product in July 2015, and I receive the product in August. Only 1 month delay, this is extremely impressive for a Kickstarter project of this scale (crowdfunding projects are kinda famous for their tendency to miss their timeline).
Hardware
Pebble Time Steel came in a nicely packaged box. Took me few seconds to figure out how to open the box, I think somehow they need to make it more obvious. The smartwatch looks really great and I instantly feel I am going to enjoy using this gadget. The weight feels somewhat heavier than what I anticipated, but once I put it on my wrist, I do not have any issue with the watch’s weight, at all. The overall design looks very slick, and the build quality looks really good.
My pledge level in Kickstarter promises Pebble Time Steel with leather band and metal band. Due to some delay in their production, they decided to ship the watch with leather band first (and the metal band will be shipped separately).
The color display looks nice, but it looks slightly too dim for my liking. A little hand movement or button press is needed to turn on the backlight. It is still a very attractive display and my first test this afternoon confirmed that I can see the display nicely under direct sunlight.
There are 4 buttons in Pebble Time Steel, one on the left side (back button) and three on the right side (up, select and down buttons). One of the small issues I had with first gen Pebble was tough-to-press buttons. I usually need to hold the watch with 2 fingers from both sides to be able to press a button. Pebble Time Steel no longer has this issue. The buttons feel solid, but easy to press. There is a built-in mic on the bottom right side. The charging port is located at the back, equipped with magnet to allow easy snap. Kickstarter reward units has special engraving at the back. While I generally like the stainless steel casing, I discovered that the back side of this watch collects smudges too easily.
Software
Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel need an app to be installed in our iPhones or Android phones. Pebble has build a separate app for the “Time” series, so I can’t use the old app I already had in my iPhone for my first-gen Pebble.
After installing the Pebble Time app, connecting the watch to our phone is very easy. Just follow the on-screen instructions and the connection will be established within few seconds. The long waiting part, was when it downloaded the latest software update and upgraded the watch’s operating system. That took a while to complete.
Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel are compatible with all watchfaces and apps for the first-gen Pebble and Pebble Steel. Of course, when the watchface or app is not updated for color display, what we will get is simply black-and-white display. I personally would like to see some colors in my brand new smart watch with color e-paper display, so I quickly downloaded some color watchfaces and apps.
The menu structure is slightly different from my first-gen Pebble. When displaying time, the up and down buttons now has new function to show the past and future events in our day (connected to our phone’s calendar). This is certainly a welcome change. In fact, this is one of Pebble Time’s main selling points. This does make changing watchface needs more button presses, but I can easily change the watchface from iPhone’s app, so it’s not a big deal.
The most annoying limitation in first-gen Pebble is the limitation of 8 watchfaces/apps. We can load as many watchfaces and apps as we want into phone’s app, but only 8 of them can be transferred into the watch. Pebble Time (and Pebble Time Steel) eliminate this limitation. We can download many watchfaces and apps, and the phone’s app will automatically push them into the watch as needed. Technically, I think the watch still have limited capacity and only store the last few items in its local storage. I can see this from the fact that sometimes Pebble Time Steel shows a loading progress bar when I choose a new watchface to be displayed, but this progress bar does not always appear during every change. Having said that, I think the seamless experience is a welcomed improvement. I no longer have to think which 8 watchfaces I need to keep in the watch’s local storage as the phone app will manage everything automatically.
Temporary Conclusion
In short, I like my new smart watch so far. The design is nice and does not feel geeky. The weight is just right and the wearing the watch feels comfortable. Color e-paper display does make things look a lot better. I am really interested to know the actual battery life of this watch, but there is no way to confirm this with just few hours of usage so far. I will write a separate post after using Pebble Time Steel for several days.
Di tunggu review lebih dalamnya tentang produk ini ko, barang yang sangat cukup menarik baik dari segi harga dan fungsionalitas ^.^