Pebble Smartwatch Unboxing & Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,912 words · ~9 min read
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the fractal designed toine R4 case gets featured on the wow build logs of the
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week section more than any other case click now to learn more about it I've
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been curious about the pebble since launch and very recently I bit the
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bullet I bought one and it arrived in this eco-friendly packaging that is
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completely recyclable and really doesn't contain a whole lot so once you open it
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up all you're going to find is the Pebble smart watch and in my case I
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chose regrettably the orange color so coupled with the sort of cheap feeling
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rubber strap and the uh bright color and plastic construction it really does feel
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kind of like a child's toy as opposed to a serious tool that I spent $150 on uh
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but don't worry it's available in six different colors of which orange is
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probably the most ridiculous and then it comes with a magnetic charging cable it
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does not come with an AC adapter though so you'll have to plug it into one that
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you already own pick one up at the store or plug it into a computer now the
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magnetic charging cable I'll show you guys how it works here so it just Clips
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onto the to the Smartwatch like that boom not too strong not too weak um is a
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bit of a double-edged sword so as much as I hate micro USB and it can just go
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eat a turd because I hate it and it's fragile um this is not necessarily
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optimal either because it comes with one uh if you ever need a replacement one
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you're probably going to have to order it online and as we discovered when we
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tried to do the unboxing the other day if you don't have it you can't just run
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around and find a replacement one very very easily you have to go and actually
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find that cable so I recommend not losing it however I do love that it's
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magnetic and it's not going to break so with that out of the way let's get into
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the physicality of the pebble so I did mention it's a little bit cheesy don't
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worry there are things you can do so you could order a different color you can
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get aftermarket watch faces for it you can get aftermarket watch straps from
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any store that carries standard replaceable watch straps so you can
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actually customize it to your heart's content but you don't have to out of the
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box on the left hand side there is one button this turns the backl on and also
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serves as a back button when you're navigating through the menus on the
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right hand side you've got up and down within the menus as well as confirm
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these up and down ones if you're not inside the menus will rotate through your different clock faces that are
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available it comes with three ones by default but you can totally download all
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the different clock faces you want and take advantage of that awesome
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upgradeable functionality that it has I do want to very briefly show you guys
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the kinds of options that are in the menu so music control is a big one
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forward back and play pause this is one that I find myself using a ton because
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when you have your headphones connected to your phone and it's in your pocket
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what's more convenient bloop bloop on your wrist or pulling out your phone and
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manually selecting a track do undoing your lock screen absolutely fantastic
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I'd say it's worth the cost of admission just for that set alarms watches you've
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got some settings in here Bluetooth display yeah nothing else in here that's
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really that interesting the music Control is awesome however there's a
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great deal of customizability and we'll get into that more in just a moment here
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so the first thing you're going to download when you get a pebble is the pebble app which has one button one
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button only so you press connect and as long as Bluetooth is enabled on your
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phone it is going to walk you through a very simple menu it was easy to set up
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the pebble also offers excellent compatibility so there's a few issues
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with some Samsung smartphones but unlike the Galaxy Gear it is pretty much
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universally compatible with any Android phone rather than being locked down to
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particular vendor aside from Twitter notifications showing up on the
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Smartwatch I had everything going within about five or 10 minutes um more on that
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in a moment you've also got settings up here so this allows you to configure
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what you want it to notify you about so calls SMS mess messages calendar it
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supports Facebook as well as Google Hangouts the one thing that I'd say oh
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emails of course the one thing I'd say is really essential and it doesn't support is Twitter but don't worry
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there's a way around that music you can actually tell it which of your music
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apps you want it to control so not just locked into something like a default
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music app and that is pretty much it guys so that's where we get into other
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apps so you can get like free caddy which tells you how far away you are
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from the hole on like thousands of different golf courses run keeper which
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keeps track of your runs no not in your pants like out out on the street you go
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for runs it tells you like how fast you went and cool stuff like that and then
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Pebble Notifier this is an essential app so what you can do is you can tell it
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okay exclude the selected ones include only the selected ones and this is how I
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was able to get t Twitter working and there's a bunch of settings in there for that as well it's really well documented
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not only pebble's own software but also the third party stuff that's available
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so kudos to them for making that happen so let's get into my actual experience
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with the Smartwatch first of all charge is supposed to last anywhere from 5 to 7
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Days by torture testing it and using it a ton I was able to wear it down in 2
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days which is still better than the day that Samsung estimates for something
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like the Galaxy Gear the Galaxy Gear doesn't even have its display on most of
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the time because it's no le display and that is a huge advantage of pebble's
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implementation of an e in display because that means even if you don't go
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through the complicated gesture of going exactly like this to check the time
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you'll be able to check the time from any angle and from any place as long as
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you can see physically your wrist next up is the backlight the way that that's
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implemented is actually really smart you can either press the backlight button here the ergonomics of which are
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terrible because there's a bunch of buttons over here so it's hard to brace
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yourself or you can just give a little flick of your wrist and the backl is
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illuminated allowing you to easily see the display in the dark it only stays on
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for about a second though now let's talk about the time savings because you know
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what it's not that much on a on an individual by individual basis so I just
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sent myself a text message and let's wait for that to come through and
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basically what it does is it doesn't so much um you know save me 10 minutes
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every time I get a text but it allows me to read this message and go okay well
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Brandon's just like sending me random text messages I can scroll through it
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and then I can just decide no I'm not going to deal with that now I can deal with it in a batch later I find it makes
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me get disrupted and distracted less
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more than anything else so I'm not constantly bringing out my phone to
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check things which can burn time I can bring it out once in a while do
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everything and then put it away it's also great for when you don't have
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access to your phone like when you're at work for example you could leave it in
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your pants pocket if you change into a lab code or something and then you could
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know if there's something urgent that you have to deal with without carrying
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your phone around if your work has a policy against it or when you're playing
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sports or whatever else so I was on a badminton court my parents called to say
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that they didn't have the car seat we had to come get the baby before he went
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to bed I would not have gotten that message in time if I hadn't been wearing
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the Pebbles so I do find it enhances my life it does make it better is it $150
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worth um I guess it's entirely up to you the functionality of it isn't perfect
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like it doesn't have as much functionality as the gear for example
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once these not ifications go away they're they're gone they're just gone
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longer messages you can't scroll through them all you can't scroll through them
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all the way like emails will get will get cut off whereas text messages and
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tweets are generally speaking okay you obviously can't reply in any way whereas
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Galaxy Gear you can use S Voice to do a reply if you really want to but of
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course Galaxy Gear costs more than twice as much at least here in Canada so in
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conclusion guys I am with Kane from Tech
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Syndicate who is the one who convinced me to pick up a pebble is it worth $150
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$ for me I would say so yes it enhances
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my life it makes it better in a way that quite frankly a phone upgrade probably
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wouldn't even do because we're actually adding functionality instead of just
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making it a little bit faster or a little bit higher resolution or whatever the case may be is the pebble the best
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implementation ever up until now probably not in the future definitely
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not there'll be better stuff but for now I really like it you're probably going
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to see this living on my wrist for the next little while leave a like on this
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