I received my Pebble Time Steel last month (20 Aug) and wrote a first impression post on the same day. After using it for more than 5 weeks, I decide it’s time to finally write a more complete review on this smart watch. This review is written based on Pebble Time app version 3.2 (released on 1 Sep 2015) and watch firmware version 3.4 running in iPhone 6 with iOS 9.0.1.
First, some technical specs as usual. 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, display custom watchface and quickly show new timeline interface that highlights what’s important in our day. 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). A built-in microphone is located below the 2 buttons on the right side. The charger is magnetic-based and located at the back. This watch is rated 20 M water resistant. It has solid metal body and supposedly comes with leather strap and metal strap. However, due to production issues, I haven’t received the metal strap and currently there is no estimation date on when it will be delivered.
Design and Build Quality
I really like the build quality of Pebble Time Steel. It feels strong and solid. It’s a bit heavy, but not to the point of causing any discomfort. The overall design looks clean, simple and elegant. The bezel around the display is a bit too big for my liking. The material for the back side of the watch is rather easy to collect smudges. All buttons work fine, easy to press (unlike the buttons in original Pebble). Since the metal strap from Pebble does not even have an estimated shipping date, I decided to get a third party metal strap from Truffol. It looks sleek and sturdy, comes with tools to adjust the length, has built-in quick-release pins for easy installation. Thanks to its spring-loaded clasp, we can release the strap with simple squeeze. For screen protection, I installed wet-install protector from GadgetWraps.
Basic Settings
Basic settings menu is accessed by pressing the middle button on the right (will show list of menu), then go up one time. There are settings to disable/enable Bluetooth connection, notification selection (allow all, allow phone calls only, mute all), vibration (disabled, low, medium, high), text size (smaller, medium, larger), quiet time (will not display notifications during night time, adjustable time for weekdays and weekends), manual quiet time, calendar-aware quiet time (will not display notifications during meetings scheduled in calendars), quick launch apps, date & time setting, backlight (on, off), motion enabled (on, off), ambient sensor (on, off), display intensity (low, medium, high, blinding), timeout (3, 5, 8 seconds), language selection and a system option to shutdown the watch.
Display
Pebble Time Steel has color display, but it’s not LCD-based. To achieve its amazing battery life, Pebble Time uses e-paper technology, capable to display 64 colors. In my opinion, 64 colors is surprisingly sufficient for a tiny device with the main purpose of telling time and showing notifications. Unless someone plans to spend hours to play around with a tiny watch display every day, not having millions of colors is actually not a big deal.
The display of Pebble Time Steel is a bit too dim for my liking. It’s certainly readable both indoor and outdoor under direct sunlight. A little hand movement or button press is needed to turn on the backlight. It is a very attractive display, but obviously will not produce the vibrant display of a high-resolution LCD.
Color precision is probably the next issue I would like to mention. When choosing watch faces from Pebble Time app, the color I see in iPhone screen and the color I end up getting in Pebble Time Steel is not always the same. Some colors are close, some others are rather far different. This becomes a bit more complicated because user can choose different intensity level of the display.
Battery
The strongest selling point of Pebble Time Steel is the battery life. The promise is 10 days, and it delivers. In more than 5 weeks of usage, one full charge lasted between 9 days 18 hours to 10 days 6 hours. I consider my usage as “normal”, my watch showing time, date and weather (updated every 30 minutes), lots of notifications during the day, occasional usage to access the menu to open and use apps. Quiet time was not activated during my first 2 charges, meaning my Time Steel continued to display notifications during night time (including backlight and vibration, which require battery power). After the third charge, I activated the quiet time from 8pm to 7am in weekdays and 7pm to 9am in weekends. My notification filter allows all notifications. Display settings are: backlight on, motion enabled on, ambient sensor on, intensity high and timeout 5 seconds.
To make it even better, even when the battery reaches 0%, the watch did not die immediately. Instead, it was entering low-power mode, showing time in a basic black-white display without any “smart” feature or connectivity. This low-power mode survived more than 48 hours. I am not really sure how many hours it lasted because I was asleep when it finally died. Somewhere between 55 to 62 hours, I suppose.
Watchface and Apps
All watchfaces and apps for original Pebble are automatically compatible with the new Pebble Time (and Pebble Time Steel). Of course, it will not show any color other than black and white unless the creators updated their watchfaces and apps with the new SDK to support color display. I quickly realised that watchfaces that looked good in my original Pebble does not look as good in my new Pebble Time Steel, even for some that are already updated with colors. I guess black-white screen and color screen require different design, not just simple translation by adding colors. After testing many watchfaces, my favorites are Kiezel’s Essential, DaWoJnA’s Timewatch, Chris Lewis’ Thin, Dan Sherbeck’s Implode and PebbUp’s Block Time.
It’s worth to note that I can easily install as many watchfaces and apps as I like in Pebble Time Steel. There is no annoying limitation of 8 watchfaces/apps that was quite irritating in the original Pebble. I think they managed to do this “unlimited” options by not actually storing all watchfaces and apps in the watch. Instead, it will transfer some watchfaces and/or apps as needed, automatically without user needs to think about it. Sometimes, when a watchface was not used for quite a while, selecting it from Pebble Time app would show a loading progress bar in the Pebble Time Steel screen.
As usual I choose not to install too many apps in my smartwatch. After all, I want it to stay as a watch, not as my new plaything. From Pebble developers itself we have some useful apps: music control, alarms, stopwatch and timer.
Timeline
One of the main selling point of Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel is timeline view. Our smartwatch is integrated to our phone’s calendar, allowing us to quickly see our next appointment or past activities during the day. I found this quite useful especially when I am in situations where even opening a phone is considered improper. It is also useful when having a lot of outdoor activities. Most importantly, it managed to reduce my screen time duration playing with my phone on the “excuse” of checking email.
Quiet Time
I really love this new feature. I was really annoyed when my original Pebble kept vibrating at night because my phone received some promo emails from random online stores.
Conclusion
Pebble Time Steel is a really nice upgrade from the original Pebble. It’s not perfect as a product and there are many areas of possible improvements. However, I would like to crown this watch as the best smartwatch available in the market today. It has the largest list of compatible phones because it can connect to iPhones and Android phones. It has always-on display without sacrificing battery life. Ultimately, it manages to stay simple and be a true smart watch that remains a watch without going too far trying to do things that doesn’t make much sense in a tiny display.
Leave A Comment