A non technical review of the Pebble Smart Watch

Being infatuated with the concept of a smart watch, it didn't take long until I pulled the trigger on one. I researched every watch currently available (and some not yet available) and gradually weeded them out due to battery life, cost, battery life, features and battery life. That narrowed it down to the Pebble Watch, which I have had for two weeks now.

I did wait until Samsung officially introduced the Galaxy Gear and was incredibly disappointed with what I saw so later that week I stopped at Best Buy on my way home and got a black Pebble. I will attempt to hold myself back from complaining about the Galaxy Gear and focus on my more positive experience with the Pebble, but you never know...

Anyway, from opening the box to complete setup took no more than 10 minutes. No issues with connecting it to my Galaxy S3 at all. No issues updating the watch or installing the app on my phone. Even going out of bluetooth range and back in, it reconnected without my input. The only habit I had to change was my in my Google Calendar - I now set the reminder to Email instead of Notification so it will pop up on the watch. One weird thing of interest regarding Gmail - while my phone does not notify me of the new "promotion" or "social" emails, the Pebble does. So far, I've not installed any watch faces nor any other 3rd party things. Facebook and Twitter updates on my watch is something of zero interest to me.

The nicest thing is when my phone rings while driving. I typically don't talk on the phone while driving, but all I have to do is check my wrist to make sure it's not an important call coming in (before ignoring it....).

Pros:
Battery Life
Screen visibility in the light and in the dark
It requires a hard shake to turn on the backlight - nice for battery savings
Absolute ease of setup and use. I've read horror stories from others, but luckily I've had no problems 

Cons:
No battery meter - at least not one I can find
It's not a real sexy looking device
It does require kind of a hard shake to turn on the backlight
No one has made a comment about it while out and about :(

While it doesn't have all the features I want from my imaginary watch as detailed here, it is great as is.

Hey Samsung, thanks for making a watch that you can only wear on your left wrist (unless your goal is to take selfies all the time). Camera on watch = stupid

Thanks for reading,
Bryan
@bryanhellard