There are many reasons to drool over a Pebble. For me, these ePaper watches look like a good companion to minimalist phones, and that makes me want to strap one on my wrist.
A Lot of the Features, Without the Flash
The original Pebble watch came out at a time when smartwatches were more an idea than a reality. The watch hit Kickstarter in 2012, shattering its funding goal of $100,000 to raise a staggering $10 million instead—becoming the most-funded project in the history of Kickstarter. The first Android Wear watches, the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live, weren’t unveiled until the summer of 2014. The Apple Watch wouldn’t arrive until 2015.
This means there was plenty of room to explore and discover what a smartwatch could be. Some of the features have since become standard. The Pebble had swappable watch faces, so it could look different each day. It could display notifications from your home. You could track your steps. The watch could be a remote control for your phone, TV, or camera. It even had a flourishing app ecosystem, with community members creating thousands of apps.
If you didn’t live through the era yourself, you can read our reviews of the original Pebble and the Pebble Time.
Related
HTG Reviews The Pebble Time: A Worthy Successor to the Original Pebble
Two years ago Pebble injected the idea of the smartwatch into the public consciousness; now they’re back with a totally updated model.
It’s the ePaper display that continues to set the Pebble apart. The Pebble may have most of the features we’ve come to expect from smartwatches, but its monochromatic screen made the watch feel simpler. There’s something about a slow, black and white display that makes a device feel less flashy.
Pebble was eventually acquired, and new watches stopped coming in 2016. A lot has happened since, but Pebble successors are now expected later this year. These newer watches now have a certain aesthetic they didn’t quite have a decade ago.
Pebble’s Vibe Mirrors Minimalist Phones
The Pebble was not sold as a minimalist smartwatch. After all, there were no smartwatches at the time. But the design of the Pebble doesn’t feel that far from the minimalist phones that would arrive half a decade later.
The Punkt MP01, a privacy-focused modern take on the feature phone, arrived in 2017 with a small white-on-black LCD (today you can order the Punkt MP02). When the explicitly minimalist Light Phone 2 hit the scene in 2018, it offered a similarly limited set of features along with a black-and-white E-Ink display.
Newer options include the E-Ink Mudita Kompakt, which launched toward the end of 2024. 2025 is seeing the Minimal Phone launch with a complete E-Ink version of Android, along with the more austere Light Phone 3 sporting a primarily monochrome OLED display.
Related
The Light Phone 3 Wants to Free You From Modern Distractions
You’ll have to pay a lot for this digital detox, though.
I carried around a Light Phone 2 for years. I pre-ordered a Light Phone 3, even though I have reservations about whether it will still be a viable option for me now that I’ve replaced my PC with my Galaxy Z Fold 6. I get the appeal of these phones. Thing is, they don’t vibe well with many existing smartwatches.
Pebble Isn’t Part of a Giant Brand
If I do make the switch, even if only to test the phone out, my existing Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 suddenly becomes a lot less useful. While it isn’t locked down to only work with Galaxy phones the way the Apple Watch only works with iPhones, it integrates quite a bit with my Galaxy Z Fold 6.
Pebble, by contrast, isn’t designed for a specific brand. It’s its own thing, and Pebble isn’t trying to sell you myriad other things. This is a perk people aspiring for digital minimalism can appreciate.
Related
The watches from big brands also keep us tethered to a charger. My Galaxy Watch offers a couple days of battery life. By contrast, the original Pebble’s battery lasted for around a week. The new Pebble watches are promising to last a full month. That kind of battery life makes your watch something you don’t have to babysit nearly as much, resorting to life hacks to keep everything charged. You’re free to focus on other things.
A Private, Open Platform That Respects You
This time around, the Pebble software running on the watch is free and open source. That makes this an effort open for community members to get even more involved in.
Pebble watches can’t pair with most minimalist phones (the Minimal Phone is an exception). You need an Android phone or iPhone to both set up and configure the watch. But if you’re buying a paired-down phone, there’s a good chance you won’t be all that concerned if phone notifications don’t arrive on your wrist. You still get to enjoy the watch faces and whichever apps provide useful utility for you, assuming you have a spare smartphone or a tablet lying around you can use to set things up.
Some of these apps can fill in gaps in your phone’s feature set, like a compass, a timer, or a 7-minute workout app. None of this requires an ongoing internet connection, either. Pebble is a platform people can make their own, without the ads and tracking that make most app stores feel so overwhelming.
I don’t know if I will go back to using a minimalist phone, but if I do, there’s a good chance I’ll follow up that decision with an order for a Pebble. This is especially the case now that the Core Time 2 model may finally make a premium Pebble a reality.
