Pebble Time 2 (2026)

If you remember the original Pebble Watch from a decade ago, getting your hands on this new Pebble Time 2 (released via the rePebble/Core Devices reboot) will feel like a massive hit of tech nostalgia - but with a modernised hard/software experience. It uses Pebble’s e-paper display (a reflective kind of LCD). Specifically, a 1.5" 64-colour e-paper touchscreen with a flat Gorilla Glass front glass. It is optically bonded to reduce distracting reflections, meaning the brighter the sunlight outside, the easier it is to read - kinda like a Kindle!

The build quality is a big step up from the plastic, blocky steel Pebbles of old. It apparently features a CNC-milled 316L stainless steel case with a hardened, ceramic-like PVD coating! The buttons are also stainless steel with a nice, tactile cross-hatch texture. The big and chunky bezels from the 2015 era are gone and the screen fills the watch face to the edges nearly. On the back, we have various sensors, confirmation that it was made in China and also that it's water resistant to 30M.

It's certainly a small watch and (dare I say) might suit someone with femininity about them or a child - but certainly someone without huge limbs like me! But I could get used to it. I currently favour my Moto Watch Fit because it's slim and (what I thought) small, but this is even smaller. I do like the oblong shape of it (over a round watch) as it just makes more sense for those who can get away from a 'clock' needing to be traditionally 'round'. You can get much more data onto it and see things more clearly.

In the box, you get the watch and a little charging 'puck'. It connects to the back of the watch with magnets and pogo-pins. On the other end of it there's a USB-C port, so plug in a charger that you already have as there's not one supplied here. The box is a simple affair, reminding me very much of a Sony Xperia one - white cardboardy stuff which fits into a paper-like sheath sliding over it lengthways.

In a separate box (maybe it will be included in the same one when this gets to mainstream retail) there's a strap which appears to be made from that nasty silicone material, which I find slippery and irritating to my skin, but each to their own! It's a two-part strap with a choice of two lengths for different size wrists, so three-part really! Fortunately, the watch takes standard 22mm pins at either side, so, if you're like me, you can ignore that thing anyway and put your own quick-release strap on made of what you like!

The watch has three buttons on the right, running top-to-bottom and one on the left, very nearly at the top. The one on the left seems to act as a back-to-base button whatever the watch is doing and the three on the right, for navigating menus - top-up, bottom-down and middle-select/OK. The maximum amount of time you can set the blue-like backlight to stay on for (with no activity) is 8 seconds. I do think that could be longer, given that the battery life is clearly going to be super. I'd settle for about double that. You can set it to tap (or double-tap) or move to wake (for those 8 seconds again) though the 'move' is actually more like a 'shake' to get it to work (double twist like Moto's flashlight)! Update - see Shane Craig's video linked below for a geeky workaround to fix this. You can also assign long-presses on the right-side buttons to execute a number of functions.

The screen is much like you'd expect an e-paper screen to look like, really. Very much like any e-ink/paper screen and has the feel of such (not physical, it's just glass, but the style). The blue 'glow' when backlight is active is a lovely 'Pebble' thing which is very attractive. It is a colour screen, as I said above, with 64 of them! Most of them are 'muted' though - again, very much as you'd expect from the modern trend of OEMs having put colour into e-book readers and tablets these days - people want colour! It's also fair to say that if you're dwelling in the shadows indoors, you'll probably not be able to see what's on the screen - but in every other situation, outdoors for sure, but also under any kind of lighting, the more, the brighter it'll be for you!

First thing to do is to download the Pebble app and pair the watch up to your phone by Bluetooth, which was a simple affair here. For those who can't type and search in the Play Store, there's even a QR Code on the outside of the box which you can get your phone to scan! Open up the app and explore the very old-fashioned, retro-feeling software UI. It reminds me very much of what Nothing Phone are doing in many respects, even utilising the orange/black/white accents throughout.

You're invited to add some watchfaces from a few options and similarly, some apps - Compass, Stopwatch, Obilisk (game), Timer and Home Assistant have been picked for the initial intro. You can also here add a Language Pack to ensure that everything is localised. It seems to default to USA English (but of course!) but I was able to change it to English (general), whatever difference that makes!

You're then led through the setting of some basic options like 12/24hr clock, Enable Health Tracking and Heart Rate Monitor as well as how often various functions will 'sample' the biometric data. Activity Insights, Sleep Insights, a switch for Imperial Units and setting of age, height and weight. You can allow it to talk to "your phone's health platform" or not, so I said OK (and gave permissions) for the new-look Google Health and Offline/cloud Speech Recognition - so I guess one can talk to the watch, which I hope to explore the parameters of later.

We're then offered an App Homepage with two main 'tabs' for Faces and Apps. Faces is the landing page of the two and offers a horizontal list of My Watchfaces (ones that you've downloaded and used/tried) then a link out to the Pebble App Store with thousands more! Some of which are paid-for, bought via the Play Store. The Apps 'tab' is much the same but for Apps, obviously, instead of Watchfaces! One thing to note is that you can filter the options via a button at the top, to only show Watchfaces and Apps that have specifically been designed for the new era of Pebble. Leave it unselected, and you get all the historic ones too, which they say still work fine.

Down the bottom of the page, we have Devices (a list of connected-to-phone devices), Health - with a basic overview of collected data, graphs and charts, by the day, week or month, Notifications - which is basically a clone of Android's Notification History, with toggle-controls to turn any one (or all) of them off, mute them, and a list of contacts - which can 'allow through' (or not) one-by-one. Lastly, there's Settings, which, as you'd expect, allows for a detailed drill-down of all sorts of settings and adjustments for the app and watch. I shall highlight some of these as I go rather than hope to cover each one!

I like the Battery data - again, graphically presented with pie charts and options and all sorts - very nerdy/geeky which many will find fun and informative. General permissions throughout of course, keeping your data under your control, but also the ability to open things up to the default Calendar data that the phone has access to. Then there's that aforementioned Speech Recognition, inside which you can opt for Cloud only, Local only, Cloud with Local fallback or Local with Cloud fall back! This service is apparently provided by Wispr Flow. There's Weather data controls, though I'm not sure where it comes from (or perhaps it uses one's default data of what the phone is using). Anyway, yes, loads of settings to tinker with.

Physically then, on the back there's a heart rate monitor, a compass sensor and that basic step/sleep tracking via Pebble Health (shared with your default Heath App if you want it to). The watch features a speaker and dual microphones (the second mic is intended for environmental noise cancellation) that benefit from that 30M water resistance and a new linear, resonant actuator provides a much tighter, quieter and premium vibration alert than those buzzy motors of old.

Because this is a community-driven, independent reboot under the open-source PebbleOS, there are a few crucial nuances. The hardware is apparently engineered to hit a huge 4-week (30-day) battery life. However, it looks like from those already using it with the current early software builds, real-world usage is averaging around 14 to 18 days. That is still oodles better than most, but yes, further power optimisations are still being pushed out via OTA updates (via the App of course).

Some hardware features are physically present but not fully enabled in the software yet. For instance, the second microphone's noise cancellation and advanced speaker functionalities (like reading text aloud or custom developer tones) are still being ironed out in the firmware. It is a touchscreen, but right now the OS relies almost entirely on the 4-button layout (one on the left, three on the right). Currently, the touchscreen's primary function seems to be to tap it for that backlight.

As I hinted above, the watch launches with out-of-the-box compatibility for the entire legacy catalogue of 10,000+ existing Pebble apps and watchfaces via the rePebble platform, and CloudPebble is officially back for JavaScript developers. The founder, Eric Migicovsky, has noted that due to OS restrictions, Android users will get far more functionality out of the watch (like actionable notification replies and deep system integration) compared to iPhone users.

Delightfully (but basically) Pebble have made the App Store available online too, for browsers - which is great! Everyone should do this so it can be accessed on a big screen for workflows and easier viewing other than just mobile (or watch)! You can sign in with the same account established on the watch/mobile app and jump between Watchfaces and Apps. It's very barebones, but the whole catalogue is available, with a good search facility. You can select Watchfaces and Apps then 'send' them to the App and watch (presumably relying on being signed into the same account)! It all works really quickly, select something new, click on it, then nano-seconds later it arrives on not only the phone's app but also the watch! In fact, all the actions and communications work instantly and perfectly between my test devices here and the app/watch. Impressive and a sign of mature Bluetooth coding, I guess.

I downloaded a Mini-Golf app which works with the touchscreen too, thus proving that developers are working to make the touch experience more useful. I guess that Pebble themselves will in time start adding that functionality if it's clearly something that indie developers can do readily. Incidentally, you'd need very sharp eyesight in order to play this game! Obviously the screen is very small and yes, my 63-year-old eyes don't make that an experience I'd want to continue for more than a few minutes to see it working!

The search engine produces a stunning array of options, more than often. As an example, I searched for "Casio" and got a bunch of, sure-enough, Casio watch retro faces. But more interestingly, I tried "Bowie" and sure enough people, presumably fans, have put together various watchfaces with David Bowie AlbumArt, icons and more. So it's either pretty easy to code for this or there's a dedicated-to-Pebble bunch of clever geeks out there. I'll see if I can find out! Here, I find the Pebble Developer Website with all sorts of options to get started by getting the SDK, via PebbleCloud, build with JavaScript or C with all sorts of open source guides, examples, Blog and (clearly) a dedicated community. How hard can it be, I wonder! An exploration project for a rainy day.

So now, in practice - minute-by-minute use. You should be aware that I’m no gym-dweller, nor exercise freak, so most of what I’ll be testing will be the stuff I use (and will leave those who know about higher-end health antics to their reviews). Not saying that I won’t touch on it - I do steps and can work through the sleep stuff, but don’t expect me to be abseiling!

First up, the battery life. And testing so far pretty much upholds Pebble’s claims I think. I’ve had it connected to my phone now for 4 days and the charged-up battery is still showing 92% remaining. The display not being ‘always on’ clearly helps with this (and I always select that on any watch I use if I can) but don’t forget that it’s e-paper too, sipping at the power - and one could argue that the display is always-on, rather than always lit. So in most ordinary daylight (or artificial lighting) situations one can expect to be able to see it well enough to make out what it says. Again, think Kindle. Sitting in bed at night with no lights on, a Kindle needs a light of some sort, build-in or not. Same here. Fortunately, a light is a tap (or two) away if it really is that dark around you. Update after a week and, the way I'm using it, I'm getting 50% left, so it looks like (for me) it's a 2-week battery life. But, as I say, for those less cavalier with functions, they might get further towards the ultimate Pebble claim of a month. Interestingly, I watched a YouTube Video by friend of our Phones Show Chat podcast, Shane Craig - Pebble Time 2 Review: Perfectly Imperfect - which is a really useful 22-minute dive into so much of this stuff. He concludes that, for him, it's also a 2-week battery.

When notifications arrive, they seem to come onto the screen, the screen lights up (for, in my case, 8 seconds), then stay there until you do something about it. I’m OK with this, though as Craig points out, some joined up thinking about dismissing them with the phone (and vice-versa) needs attention from Pebble. If you press the middle-right button, 'OK' we’ll call it, you get a bunch of options pop up - dismiss, reply (using voice - which works really well), open on phone, mute the source of the notification (temporarily or for good) or start Quiet Time. This is basically a stop-notifications option which can, yes, be actioned here, but also in settings (on the watch or phone’s app). You can up/down through the options with the up/down buttons, the OK button to execute.

Back on the homescreen, if you press the 'up' button, you get a page telling me how many steps you've done today, then up again for current heart rate, then up again for sleep data overview. For any one of these you can then press the OK button for a deeper dive - then top-left button to step-back. Back to the homescreen and 'down' button, it gives me a list of my appointments for the day and two more, press again to get more if there are too many, with weather and sun-up, sun-down data interspersed.

Back again to the homescreen and press the OK button, which lands me in the list of system-type options, so Settings, Music, Notifications, Alarms, Weather, Health, Workout, Watchfaces, Timeline (list of Calendar events) and then any apps that are installed. So they can be launched from here via the OK button and each has drilled-down options. In Settings, we have Bluetooth, Notifications, Sounds and Haptics, the aforementioned Quiet Time, Timeline, Quick Launch, Time and date, Display, Health, Background App and System. Under System we have Information, certification, standby mode, debugging, shut down and factory reset. Phew! And inside all those, there’s plenty more for the curious!

The haptics are not bad - a little buzz on the wrist which I’m sure most people would be happy with - it can be set to low/high (or off), you can change the size of the on-screen text too, though I think that the default is a good balance between size and amount of scrolling needed. One of the good things about the forthcoming touch-screen expansion will be not having to reach around to the left side to go back, which is a bit cumbersome. I guess you could wear the watch on the right wrist, but then it would be even worse to access all 3 right-side buttons. Hopefully someone at Pebble is coding a 'Back' button for the screen somehow as I type! Or maybe one of these clever developer bods have already done it!

The Music app/function is nifty - not for playing music on the watch’s speaker like a Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra - but for direct control of the last-used Music app on the phone. You get a little red progress bar, cute icon of a cassette tape, name of artist and track title, then on the right, aligned with the three buttons, next track (bottom), previous track (top), three dots on the OK button - press it and you get a play/pause pop up for that OK button and the next/previous track buttons turn into volume up/down. It’s been very nicely thought out and works brilliantly well. Only thing missing for my pleasure is AlbumArt! A step too far maybe, but who knows, being open to developers. The use of colours throughout seems quite sparse for/with the built-in apps, but yes, they pop up now and again - as I said above, kind of muted because of e-ink, but that’s fine. That little golf app I downloaded and installed certainly looked very green for the grass, so it shows that with careful testing in development the colours can be more impactful.

Still exploring, but for now, that's it! I shall come back after a while if I can add anything. Certainly keeping an eye open for more touch adjustment - it'll no doubt come soon as updates fly in thick and fast, sometimes daily! It feels much more like a fun gadget than anything that's going to challenge WearOS or the like anytime soon! It leaves deep sports analysis alone and trades it for a charming, fun, retro yet premium-feeling device that nerds and geeks will love! The battery life, though maybe not quite what they claim, is still stonkingly good and if you can live with the muted colours and physical buttons, you'll love it.