In the face of modern smart watches, Pebble is making a comeback with its new wearables for 2016. Sticking to its core of making simple, functional and long lasting smartwatches, they have just introduced its new Pebble 2 and Time 2. These are the successors of the original Pebble smartwatch and their current Pebble Time.
In addition, they have also announced the Pebble Core, which is a tiny keychain device that does a lot more than just activity tracking.
The current Pebble smartwatches are already capable of activity and sleep tracking. To take fitness up to the next level, the new Pebble 2 and Time 2 now comes with heart rate monitoring along with its new updated health tools.
This includes a new Adaptive Goals feature that creates actionable goals to keep you motivated. Pebble Health also syncs with your calendar and will automatically reschedule your fitness activities if there are sudden changes to your schedule. Also new is a revamped mobile graph that displays your activity, sleep and heart rate throughout the day.
Pebble 2
The Pebble 2 is their base smartwatch model that’s priced from US$99 (about RM406.50). Like the original, it gets a black and white e-paper display with an awesome battery life up to 7 days. It’s also water resistant up to 30 metres and there’s also a built-in mic for voice replies.
In terms of design, it still features a plastic body with a rubber strap. If you’ve used a Pebble before, the usability appears to be unchanged with a left mounted back button along with the typical up/down and select buttons on the right. Colour wise, the Pebble 2 comes in Flame, Aqua, Black, White and Lime. If you pledge the Pebble 2 now, it is expected to ship sometime in September this year.
Pebble Time 2
If you’re looking for something better, the Pebble Time 2 gets a colour E-paper display and it’s 53% larger than its predecessor giving you twice the amount of text viewable on-screen. The Pebble Time 2 is more premium with marine grade stainless steel and it comes with a longer 10-day battery life on a single charge.
In terms of features, the Time 2 also gets the same fitness and sleep tracking, 24/7 heart rate monitoring, 30M water resistance and a built-in microphone. Available in Gold, Black and Silver, the Pebble Time 2 can be yours from US$169 (about RM693.92) and it will start shipping in November 2016.
Pebble Core
The Core is probably the most interesting device announced by Pebble today. In a nutshell, this is a tiny smart device that tracks your activity, plays streaming music and it even gets GPS and 3G connectivity.
So if you’re going for a jog, not only it tracks your pace but you can also stream Spotify music from the internet without carrying a smartphone with you. You can also store offline music onto its built-in 4GB of storage. In case of an emergency, the Pebble Core can send out an SMS with your current GPS location at a push of a button.
The Core connects via WiFi and 3G via a microSIM slot. For music playback, you can either plug in a wired headphone or pair it with a bluetooth headset. Despite its small size, the Core can last up to a week and you can charge it via USB or with a wireless charging that’s sold separately.
For the adventurous, the Core is also a hackable tiny computer that you can customise to your heart’s desire. Since it has GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G and a microphone, you can possibly turn it into a pet tracker, a walkie-talkie, a remote switch or even program one of its buttons to request an Uber with a single tap. All these will be made possible with an SDK that Pebble is releasing soon.
The Pebble Core is scheduled to be shipped by January 2017 and you can back this device from $69 (about RM283.32).
At time of writing, Pebble has already smashed its US$1,000,000 goal target by almost 200%. Want to support these new wearables? You can start pledging over at Kickstarter. They do ship to Malaysia but you’ll need to pay for international shipping.
