You may think that me doing a review of a smartwatch may be a little strange, however as some of you will be aware I do love a gadget. I especially love a gadget that a) makes my life easier and b) helps with my training. I was definitley hoping for both from the pebble.
Why?
So, what drew me to the pebble instead of waiting for the much anticipated iWatch? A couple of things really -
- Compatibility - the pebble works across all mobile platforms, meaning if I ever move away from iphone again the watch will still work.
- Battery Life - due to the e-ink display I get a good 3-5 days of battery out of it, unlike the estimated 1 day expected from an iWatch.
- Price - Although the price of the iWatch hasn't yet been announced it is widely ecpected to be around the £300 mark. The pebble cost me just £100 (£90 if you include the £10 voucher i got back from Argos for spending £100).
Initial Thoughts
After opening the box the watch came in I was instantly surprised at how light the watch is, which with some things is a bad thing, however in theis case the quality still feels like it's there. I bought the black pebble, but others including white and red are available. Although most watches these days seem to be round faced, this is a rectanguar faced watch but in my humble opinion it still looks modern and good enough to wear all day long. The watch comes with enough charge to switch on and hook your phone up to it, which was a really simple and quick process. To setup the watch you need the Pebble app which was pretty easy to setup, however I have to say it looks and feels a little basic!
Watch Faces
The main function of any watch should be to tell the time and with the pebble, unlike most other smartwtahces, you can do this without having to wake the display. There are a couple of analogue and digital faces that come with the watch, however via the app there are hundreds of others to choose from. Some of these have dynamic screens with changing weather forecasts and even rss feeds, however the more dynamic the display the more battery power it uses. My personal favourite is the Words Date Day face, clean to the point with minimal battery power. Another favourite, which is probably not safe for work or schools is the Drunk O'Clock face which tells you the time through a variety of profanities!
Apps
One of the main reasons to get a smart watch is to use it for functions other than a watch! In the case of the Pebble you shouldn't be disappointed. There are apps for most things you could imagine, including things like a paypal app to pay for things and a dominos app to see the progress of your pizza! These are all available through the pebble app store which to be honest is better populated than i expected! I do continue, however, to find that the app store is a little buggy. Sometimes the search function freezes and scrolling through the apps is a little jumpy but nothing to stop you using it.
Fitness Tracker - One of the main things that intrigued me about the pebble was the introduction of activity trackers, through 2nd party apps. I was wearing both my fitbit flex and a watch, this gave me the opportunity to combine the two. The app I decided to use is called misfit, which has its own app you need to download in order to use. The misfit app is really nice and professional looking, much more so than the pebble app, which is good to see. You can link your account to some of the major fitness accounts like myfitnesspal but not to all of them. You can however, use the apple healthkit, unlike fitbit. I decided to wear the pebble with my fitbit for a few days to get an idea for the accuracy and im pleased to report i found it compared pretty well with the results gained from my flex. Each day it was within 300 steps which I thought was pretty consistant. The misfit app also measures sleep, like most other fitness trackers, however I found this to be a little disappointing. It automatically detects when you are asleep, but I found the accuracy terrible! According to the app I very rarely had more than 4 hours sleep, when I had infact had 6-8 hours. All I can think is that I am a pretty active sleeper and it doesn't know when I am asleeo or awake!!
Running - Unfortunately the pebble doesn't have a built in GPS, but if you are like me and you use yourphone for music whilst running this isn't really a problem. The watch links with Runkeeper to allow you to track distances using your phones GPS whilst being able to look at speed, distance, average pace and so on through your pebble. I have had a garmin and the TomTom watch before and I have to say that the pebble is the most comfortbale watch I have ran in. If, like me, you use your phone anyway for music then it definitely ticks all the boxes.
Timers - there are hundreds of different timing apps available on the pebble app store to help you to time your workouts, or whatever you feel the need to time! Some good, some not so good! For stopwatch purposes I have found the best app is called RaceTime. It has all of the functions you would expect - start, stop, lap timer - and they all work pretty well and don't seem to drain the battery too much. Another timer I have found really useful especially when training myself is Tabata Timer, which does exactly what it says on the tin!! It is set to 8 rounds of 20sec work 10sec rest, but each of these can be changed. The thing that I found worked best was that the watch vibrated at the end of each round, meaning I wasn't having to constantly look at the watch, I could train right up to the buzzer!
Conclusion
Pros
- Great battery life
- Compatibilty
- Clear visible screen
- Comfortable
- Cheap(ish)
- Good 3rd party apps
- Most functions work!!
Cons
- Pebble app looks outdated and is quite buggy
- No touch screen (con for some people)
- No colour screen
- Can only have 8 apps on the watch at any one time - including watch faces
No comments:
Post a Comment