The Pebble Steel was one of the best-looking smartwatches around back in 2014. The Pebble Time isn't one of the best-looking smartwatches right now. Compared to the aspirational super-styled Apple Watch, the Pebble Time comes across as cutesy. Its rounded-edge square looks and bright colors give it the look of a toy. It looks and feels a lot better in person. It's nicer than the original Pebble, which had a plastic-covered scratch-prone display, but looks less striking than the squared-off Pebble Steel. The Pebble Time has a plastic body, but a steel bezel framing a Gorilla Glass-covered color display.

The Pebble Time comes in black, white or red, all with the same gunmetal steel rim, It's thinner than previous Pebbles, the olixar flexishield iphone xs gel case - jet black Apple Watch, and nearly any other smartwatch I've ever worn, It hugs my wrist nicely, There's a full steel version of the Pebble Time coming this summer for an extra $100, offering better battery life and a slightly thicker body, If you care about all-steel, you might want to wait, Its reflective color display takes getting used to, It shows 64 colors, not millions, and has backlighting that turns on for a few seconds when you need it, It's nothing like the screens you're used to: it's more like an ancient Game Boy Color than the phone in your pocket, But, it looks great in direct sunlight, and always stays on, Built-in backlighting turns on at the shake of a wrist or press of a button, but makes the colors look even more washed out, It gets the job done, and has its charms, but isn't perfect for everything..

It isn't touch-enabled, either: like previous Pebbles, you need to use four buttons (three on the right, one on the left) to navigate menus, load apps and watch faces, and set timers and alarms. It's like a regular digital watch. But that lack of touch means many apps are hard to interact with. There is a microphone, but its uses are limited. If you've paired to an Android phone, you can use it to dictate responses to messages, which the watch translates to text just like on Android Wear and Apple Watch. You can also respond with a canned message or a list of emoji, too. In the future, iPhone owners will be able to use it with notifications coming from Google's Gmail app.

The Pebble Time feels great on my wrist with the included silicone strap, The slightly curved watch body is comfy, the band easy to attach, and it feels light, The straps are easily removable and swappable, olixar flexishield iphone xs gel case - jet black either with Pebble's own, or with any 22mm watch strap, The Pebble Time buzzes when it gets notifications, like your phone, The buzz is strong but not overpowering: I felt it more easily than that of the Apple Watch, It can be used for alarms, for silent but effective wake-up calls, I never missed a message..

Pebble Time has changed its software and user interface since the older Pebbles: now, there are big animated transitions between apps, instead of tiny menus of text. It's cute, but a bit clunky. After living with the fast, slick main interface of the Apple Watch for a few weeks, it felt like a big letdown. But as I settled in with it, the Pebble Time's quirky-cute design won me over. The biggest software addition is the timeline: press up or down on the right-side buttons, and you get a calendar-like rundown of everything coming up in future, or that's happened in the past. It's like a day planner for your immediate life.