Welcome to the Pebble 2.

Meet the Pebble 2, Pebble’s newest wearable. Although Pebble is one of the original manufacturers of smart watches, there’s a number of things that Pebble lacks which causes them to be seen as less-than-usable watch makers.

The numbers alone can show you this fact: as of November 2015, Pebble had sold 1.5 million watches (they originally started their company in 2012 so that’s approximately 500, 000 watches per year). Apple has managed to sell 12 million units of its watch in the 1 year that is has been around. That means Pebble’s watches have been approximately 4% as popular as the Apple Watch (we have no idea how many Moto 360s have been sold to date but 720, 000 shipped in 2014 alone).

These details certainly draw a great deal of suspicion towards Pebble watches and typically make you want to think twice before you put your money on it. However, I am proud to say that I have recently preordered the Pebble 2 from BestBuy. This post isn’t about how much I am enjoying the watch because the watch doesn’t actually ship till October 15th. What I would like to talk about is the reasons why I preordered this watch and what trade-offs it brings.

My journey with wearables hasn’t been very long. In fact, the Pebble 2 is going to be my first official wearable that I am going to incorporate into my ecosystem. Before the Pebble, I have had the chance to play with the Moto 360, the Apple Watch, and use the Nabu Smartband for about a week. But when it was time to put the chips down, my chips are on the Pebble.

I had a few main requirements that I need my wearable to meet:

1. I want a wearable with a clear display. This seems pretty basic but it’s actually not a requirement for all users. For instance, some Fitbit models do not have a display, the Nabu X does not have a display, and quite a few others.
2. I need a well established SDK. As a developer and a hacker, I absolutely need my devices to be customizable. The easier it is to customize my device, the more I am going to love it. This goes double for wearables because with wearables, I want to be able to automate basic parts of my life without trying to figure out what is causing the Segmentation Fault.
3. I need my device to last. I am a student on a budget. I can’t afford to shell out $200–500 every year or so. And even if I was unbelievably wealthy, I’m not even sure it makes sense to do so. My device needs to last not only so I can make good financial decisions but so that I’m not wasting my time regularly on trying to bring my new device up to the configuration that my old device was at.
4. I need a strong battery. Battery life is of growing importance in all sorts of devices nowadays but even more so in wearables. I run quite a busy life and it’s difficult for me to be every where at once. I need my wearable to be on my side no matter how long I’ve been away from home and I need it to do that again tomorrow since I’ll be too dead tonight to charge it.
5. I really want it to be waterproof. Most people consider waterproofing watches to be a pointless endeavour. I am not one of those people. I consider a watch to be “waterproof” as long as it’s water resistance goes up to the depth of an average swimming pool (typically I do not swim in pools deeper than ~2m so that means most water resistant watches). I do not consider a watch to be protected against water if its water resistance rating is trying to impress me by telling me that a few splashes won’t damage it.

With all of these things in mind, the Pebble 2 was a perfect fit for me. It features a high contrast black-and-white OLED display (black-and-white could be improved but the high contrast makes up for it) along with accelerometer and gyroscope for advanced wearable gestures. The Pebble 2 is supposed to be water resistant for up to 30m depth (which is 15 times the depth of the pools I go into which means HELL TO THE YES). The battery life is a whopping seven days — meaning I have an entire week to recuperate and find the charger.

And finally, the moment that we’ve all been waiting for, it has full* support for Pebble.js — a framework that allows you to program watch apps and faces entirely in JavaScript.

Me standing on top of the world.

*Pebble.js is still in beta so a few features are missing. So not really full. But it felt nice to say.

Feel free to pause at this time to catch your breath. I already did so while writing this.

For those of you that don’t know me, I breathe JavaScript. Literally. I actually had a special ventilator made that generates random strings of JavaScript and injects me with it at the rate that I breathe. It’s great.

Alright, maybe I don’t. But I could. I love JavaScript. I think it’s an incredible language and one of its greatest characteristics is that it is perfect for prototyping. This means that I can whip up apps for my watch in a matter of a few hours. Heck, after ordering my Pebble 2, I proceeded to build an app that acts as an interface to my Netflix running on an Raspberry Pi (great for turning my TV into a Netflix TV).

Here is a screenshot of the controller running on a Pebble simulator.

Awesome, right?

One of my favourite parts about the Pebble is also the fact that I was able to get all of these features within a budget that was right for me. I know if I bought an Apple Watch, the dent in my credit card would be echoing to me in my sleep. With the Pebble, I was able to get the whole package for within $200.

To sum up, I am really super excited for the new Pebble 2 to be shipped and I think you should be too. However, I realize that the trade-offs are not worth it for everyone and so I want to say that I’m not saying the Pebble 2 is the best smartwatch ever — I don’t think any of them are. I think that everyone who wants a wearable should go through the process of asking yourselves: what do I need and what devices offer it? With the number of wearables on the market, and the rate at which it is increasing, I’m sure you can find a wearable within your needs and a price you like.