so while the Smartwatch Wars have definitely heated up a fair bit with
heavyweight Apple allegedly selling more of the first generation Apple watch
within days of its launch than every other Smartwatch maker combined ever
pebble's original concept of offering notifications on your wrist at a
reasonable price with crossplatform compatibility is something that nothing
else addresses in quite the same way which is why the original Pebble
continues to be available in spite of its lackluster hardware specs and
decidedly lesser build quality especially when you hold it next to
something like an Apple Watch or a Moto 360 but that doesn't mean pebble's been
sitting on ass and today's video is about the Next Generation Pebble the
pebble time by the way we're mostly back on track as far as production scheduling
goes so throw a like below the video if you're stoked to finally see our
Skylight coverage John is hard at work on that as we speak
drop is offering a killer deal on a DJI Phantom 3 so if you're into Jones scroll
down and check out that link in the video description to get yours now so
let's start with what Pebble hasn't changed since the original the pebble
time is still water resistant to 30 m only this time but it works for reals
I've gone swimming with mine lots of times although I did that with the Apple
Watch 2 and had no issues it features multi-day battery life with an all
always on display always showing you the time they say seven days but in practice
I get closer to four or five since I'm a bit of a heavier user it features
backwards compatibility with the rich third-party app ecosystem for the
original Pebble with everything from GoPro remote control to ringing your
phone remotely to find it to fitness trackers that use the onboard sensors to
pretty advanced music Control usable whether the app has been updated for the
new color display or not pretty cool now
let's get into the things that are different the big one as I just alluded
to is the display the original Pebble used a 144 by 168 resolution eaper
display which because eaper requires no backlight to function and only needs to
be powered when the image is changing is what made it readable in direct sunlight
and allowed it to achieve such monstrous battery life compared to its competitors
at the time of which there weren't really any and in fact compared to its
competitors now but being low resolution and monoch in the year 2015 is just not
as cool as it was in the 1980s so the pebble time features a color eaper
display unfortunately from my experience with the pebble time the viewing angles
are so poor sometimes and the color is so washed out that it feels a little bit
more like a novelty not to mention that the resolution itself has not been
upgraded meaning that text is just plain not very sharp although this was done to
preserve that backwards app comp compatibility that I praised like a
minute and a half ago so I guess I could
live with that if they could at least fix the viewing angle issues there are
more improvements though the pebble time features a super easy to ous band
swapping system that will even allow custom add-on bands to enhance
functionality in the future with ideas like extended battery packs that could
last for like a month and additional sensors like GPS being available for
upgrading the pebble time after the fact the next big one for me is the
microphone unlike Android Wear you can't just gesture and start talking at your
watch to or start a navigation to wherever I want to go and you definitely
can't hold a conversation just through your watch like the Apple watch thanks
to its surprisingly good mic and speaker
but honestly what I mostly use the mic on my watch for is for quickly
responding to texts or emails something that the pebble time handles really
really well I find that for the most efficiency it does require the use of
both of my hands since it waits quite a while to stop listening if you don't
press the button again to indicate that you're finished talking but voice
detection was quick and accurate compared to other devices that I've used
which leads us to some general analysis of my experience with the pebble time
versus its competitors being platform agnostic is great I had no difficulty
controlling my Google Play music connected to Sono speakers right out of
the box something I couldn't do with the Apple watch Facebook authenticator was
was Flawless out of the box it popped up a notification gave me the context
appropriate option of opening on my phone and popped the number right after
the lock screen and all of my Google junk worked flawlessly with even fairly
deep options for actions that I could perform on things like my Gmail messages
I also absolutely love tactile buttons I
mean I cannot say this enough this is a huge thing that's missing with other
SmartWatches for me which require you to be looking at them to do something as
simple as change a song something I do with my watch a lot if you can memorize
a couple of button presses then you can actually perform certain controls
without ever even looking at it which you might argue doesn't matter I mean
lonus how much time are you really saving by not looking at your watch to
press next track to which I would respond this thing is made for people
who bought it to save the 4 seconds it takes to get their phone out of their
pocket of course it matters the pebble time isn't perfect though the animations
between menus are actually kind of annoying remember Pebble this is a
product for impatient people and some of them are so long it just feels like
they're kind of stalling so as you scroll through your timeline it's quick
but as you move between days it's like this little
Sun pops up or something it's like they're stalling to get more time also I
really don't like the way that the time gets really tiny or even disappears
outright when you're looking at different screens the calendar being one
of them that did irritate me although the good news is that Pebble has been
updating it actively I got an update even while I was reviewing it that
significantly improved it so maybe they'll see this video and maybe change
that but uh the last thing though is that this might just be my unit or it
might be a power saving measure to allow for that fancy color screen but I really
need to flick my wrist to illuminate the back light for viewing in the dark
something that I didn't really have to do on my original Pebble so the bottom
line then am I switching to the pebble time no it
was so close it was so close but I just
can't get over the screen I could live with the kind of washed out colors and
the hard to activate backlight I could even live with the low resolution but I
will take the tradeoff of extra bulk and charging every night with the gatch r in
exchange for being able to read it from any angle I think if Pebble could figure
out how to get their panel closer to the front plastic this issue would go away
for me and I think they could convert me back but for now I'm an Android Wear
user really for now although if I was on
the iPhone I'd probably go for the pebble time to be perfectly honest poor
Apple watch and it's kind of a shame that I
won't be switching to the pebble time permanently because it means I won't get to wear this super sick debrand skinned
orange Pebble time anymore the guys over there did me up an orange one because
they knew I loved my original orange Pebble so much and uh the pebble time is
not available in that particular color but of course that's what dbrand exists
to deal with although it's good for other stuff too because having a skin
means that even careless people like me are less likely to scratch their
sensitive Electronics I whacked my watch so hard at one point that I got a bunch
of paint and drywall bits embedded in the orange skin but I guess the fact
that I was able to clean it off is a testament to the durability of dbrand
skins and to the functionality thanks to the vinyl wrap the watch housing wasn't
damaged at all so check out dbrand.com
oh crap what is it Pebble lus Pebble
Linus Pebble thank you for that Nick to check out all the different devices they
support and to see the colors they have that aren't orange I know not everyone
is into that don't mind the man behind the
curtain thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if
it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider supporting
us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon you can find
instruction for in the little eye buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with a
direct monthly contribution through the community Forum now that you're done
doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right to
check out our moving Vlog which actually ended up being surprisingly entertaining
thanks guys and I'll see you again next time