My Pebble watch arrived a week ago. It’s a programmable wristwatch that talks to your Android phone or iPhone. When it arrived, I was a little disappointed. I’m happier with it now.

I didn’t make it into the Kickstarter in time, but I was in the first wave of buyers after that. Pebble has done an outstanding job of blogging about the process by which it has gone from concept to shipping product, and I’ve generally liked the choices they’ve made. Ever since my Casio AE-20, I’ve wanted a digital representation of analog hands. Plus I very much like the idea of being able to download watch faces that are open source and designed by, well, anyone. Plus, there can be and will be apps.

But I was disappointed because it’s ugly. It’s too big on my wrist. Not exactly sleek. Plus, I hate the band it ships with: resin (or some other type of plastic), plain, and irritating to my skin. (Of course this is a personal reaction. It’s a blog, people!) But I replaced the band with a blue leather band — I got the black version of the watch — and I think it looks much better, In fact, now I like the way it looks.

Also, I began by downloading a set of fake analog faces, and I like them ok, but I’ve started using a default face that spells out the time in words. It’s a little harder to parse than a set of hands, and it doesn’t have the date on it, but if Project Runway has taught me anything, it is that one must make sacrifices for fashion. (PLus now I found a variant with the date on it.)

There are not a lot of apps yet, an I haven’t even found a stopwatch/countdown timer that I like. But I will. Also, I was surprised that after I’d downloaded about six watch faces, it told me that it was out of memory. (To delete a face, you use the Pebble app on your smart phone.)

So, I haven’t gotten to the basics yet. It’s got a readable display that’s more like e-paper than the usual LCD; it’s fine in bright light and the night light works well. A charged battery is supposed to last a week, and mine has so far. You need a special cable to charge it; it plugs into any normal USB charger on the wall side, but the watch side holds itself to the watch via the magic of magnetism. I know Pebble considered using a normal USB socket, but then it wouldn’t be waterproof, so it seems like a reasonable trade-off, although I’m pretty sure I’ve already lost the cable. I hope they sell them by the dozen.

The watch sync’ed incredibly easily via Bluetooth with my Android phone. By default it sends the text of emails and SMS texts to your watch. Since it buzzes every time, and since I get maybe 150 emails a day, I turned off the email syncing. But since I get very few texts, and they’re almost always from my family, I’ve left that notification on. It buzzes your wrist, and you can use the watch buttons to scroll through the message. You can’t compose text on your watch.

It also comes ready to pause or skip forward or backward your phone’s music. I’ve found this useful while listening to podcasts; a click of a watch button and I can hear the bus driver telling me us to duck. (The ol’ 66 is a pretty tough bus route.)

This is definitely a 1.0 release. It’s fully functional, and with a new band it looks pretty snappy. If I were you, I’d wait for the next release, by which time it may have some strong competition. It’s also a little expensive at $150. Still, I like the watch, I like the integration with Android, and I like the company’s transparency. It’s bringing me pleasure.

Categories: culture, reviews dw