My first week with Pebble.
..Or how I learned to stop worrying about the Apple Watch and love Pebble.
Previously, I’d written about what I wanted in a screen-less Apple wearable. That eventually became the $350 Apple Watch.
Shelling out $350 for a watch that needs to be charged every night! You can draw hearts to your friends that have Apple Watches, too! I wanted one, obviously. But who knows when it will actually ship/if I could actually talk my wife into me buying one for such a price.
Last week, the Pebble team dropped the price of their original watch model to $99. I hopped at the chance to buy one. (Rather, I hopped at the chance to return a Bluetooth watch that sync’d with RunKeeper that I bought the day before on Amazon but hadn’t gotten yet ha ha shhhh.)
The Pebble isn’t really a smartwatch, per se. It’s kind of how the Kindle Paperwhite isn’t really a tablet. It does one or two things really well, and doesn’t try to do much else.
The main things I wanted an Apple Wearable to do were: “Nike+, use as ID, credit card replacement, health tracking, Find a Friend(Family). Watch not needed.”
Apple kinda told me to F off with that last part, but whatever. My iPhone 6 will have Apple Pay so I guess that’s OK.
Fitness
Since writing that original post, I’d switched from running to biking, and moved from Nike + to RunKeeper. I searched high and low for bands, and to a lesser extent watches, that intergrated with RunKeeper. Anything that connected with their iOS but on my wrist. Pebble was one of them.
Pebble integration with RunKeeper is more of a second display in addition to the app running on your phone. When going for a ride, I hit Start on the RunKeeper app on my iPhone, place it(gently) in my backpack, and I’m on my way. I can see the time, distance, and pace of my ride on my watch. I can pause/resume the ride from the watch, too. Woo! Many folks want a total replacement for their phone on runs/rides. Maybe one of those Garmin watches that track everything under the sun. I’m not really into doing much outside the house without a phone(heaven forbid), so this works out great.
On top of outdoors activities, there is also a Misfit Pebble app that tracks daily steps and how well you sleep. I recently got into the Sleep Cycle iOS app to help me get out of bed in the morning, so I’m super interested in tracking how I do. However, the iOS Misfit app hasn’t been updated to sync that data to its own app from the Pebble app, so it’s a one-way street right now.
Notifications
Notifications on your watch, who wants that!? Sounds like you’ve been talking to my wife, friend. Please stop. If you get email and text message notifications on your phone, you can have those also go to your Pebble. You can have those vibrate, show up silently, or you can shut those off entirely. I’ve decided to shut those off entirely for two reasons.
- My wife saw it happen once and was horrified.
- It seemed to negatively affect battery life.
Battery life
On that topic, Pebble states that you can get about 5–7 days on one single charge of the battery. In my experience, it’s closer to 4–5 days. Maybe that’s better with Notifications disabled. Still, 4 days is pretty great. It also charges pretty quickly.
Having this thing last almost 5 days on a charge makes me shudder a bit when thinking I would need to charge the Apple Watch/Android Wear every night. Does that mean tracking sleep isn’t possible since I’d need to take it off and charge when I go to bed? Barfing on myself right now.
I’m loving the Pebble so far, and am looking forward towards improvements they make going forward. (those Steel watches look dreamy as all get-out.) You can do all sorts of other stuff like download custom watchfaces, download different Weather, ESPN, or MLB apps if you’re into that. Since it connects to devices via Bluetooth, you can also control your music from your watch(pushes up nerd glasses).
If you run or bike with your phone, the Pebble is a no-brainer, bro.
