After wearing the Pebble Time 2 for two weeks, I'll never buy another smartwatch

100% agreed. I wore an apple watch daily for almost 10 years and have switched back to automatic watches. The notifications caused me to be way too connected to my phone, and the "tracking" aspects of it were kind of useless to me. I know intuitively if I got enough exercise in a given day (did I go to the gym? Did I go on a long walk?), I don't need a computer to tell me that. Same thing with sleep tracking: do I feel like shit in the morning? I probably didn't sleep well!

The one thing it's good for is run tracking, I'll still put it on for that activity.

I'm surprised that the article even said "but you don’t always have the luxury of sitting down to set the time and get the watch ready for the day".

I wear an automatic all the time, in fact I collect them, and most automatic watches will happily keep ticking for 36-48 hours. If you take it off to sleep it won't need adjusting the next morning.

Even if you did need to fiddle with a watch in the morning (which I do, as I switch watches every few days) it takes seconds to whirl the hands to the correct time. Certainly not a significant timesink.

Well said. "Smart" watches seem to make the argument that somehow your phone was not accessible enough, not ever-present enough, and the best solution would be to build a phone relay and strap it to your body. Although the smart phone did flatten most people's impulse control to near zero, it seems the last little bit of progress in the area of impulse-control-destruction could be achieved by strapping a phone relay to your wrist. Too tough to pull your phone out of your pocket? Good news, now that stupid post / notification / chime / whatever is on your wrist and you can never get away from it.

After 3 attempts at an Apple Watch over the years, I finally had the experience that pushed me over the edge and I sold my Apple Watch 10 for a Coros APEX 4 - a device that has real battery life and a quality build, so no more worrying about my activity tracker dying during a half marathon, no more charging a device 2-3 times during an overnight backpacking trip and no more worrying about every bump and scrape. Apple has truly dropped the ball with their Watch line, with their only solution to the dismal battery life for *active* people being spend another $400 for a few extra hours of battery. No thanks.

I'm quite happy with my Coros upgrade. It's really shown me that Apple Watches are a general catch all with feature bloat that don't do anything super well for serious activity seekers, yet its main requirement is the user be tethered to a charger every damn day - sometimes multiple times. That being said though, once this Coros kicks the bucket, I will being giving a lot of thought into whether I will be purchasing another activity tracker. Even with this new device that lasts 2~ weeks on a charge, I find myself missing the simplicity of my Casio G-Shock - a device that simply works. My phone still functions as a great activity tracker for biking, running and brief hikes, but lacks the real battery life needed for backpacking - which is my only holdout.

I think there is a bit of a spectrum e.g.

- I don't want EVERY SINGLE notification from my phone to go to my watch

- I also don't want zero notifications b/c it's very useful to get notifications from my kids, important calendar reminders, my boss sends me a slack etc

Also, the watch allows me to still be "connected" for important events but not distracted by my phone.

(I should add that Apple watches give you a LOT of control over the notifications from your phone to your watch. Not sure if that's true with other watches)

When I had a Pebble Time (dead, waiting on PR2) I basically had notifications turned off. For that matter, I have very few notifications enabled phone too.

It's great as a watch that can tell you if it's going to rain, give you TOTP authenticator codes, and control music playback.

The tiny springs and gears are neat though, in a different sort of way from tiny transistors, can't argue with that one.

I'm with you. I get great joy knowing that the machine on my wrist started out as rocks (ore) and was refined and fashioned into something that keeps time with very little energy input. Just keep them away from some modern devices, like an Air Pods case, which will magnetize a watch making run poorly unless demagnetized!

I've been tempted to go that route: I used to have a transparent self-winding watch and I miss it.

The thing is, I really like seeing text messages on my watch out of the corner of my eye. I don't read them, but I know that so-and-so texted me, and if it's important I figure out how to read the text safely.

Otherwise, I turn off almost all watch notifications very aggressively.

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I also really enjoy using my watch as an alarm clock and to track sleep, but I could just wear it at night if I wanted to wear a mechanical watch.

Cannot relate. I do not have notifications enabled on my Pebble.

I don't have any guilt over not having enough steps at the end of the day. But I am walking more thanks to my smartwatch.

I can start a timer in seconds when I am meditating, when I am cooking, when I am starting the watching machine. Also I have made a little app that shows me the weights and reps and sets I need to do for my powerlifting programme. I don't have to bring my phone to the gym. Lastly, I made a little app that shows me one thing I need to be doing for my morning routine or the next TODO on my todo list. A god send for someone suffering from ADHD.

I couldn't imagine wasting so much time having to take my phone out of my pocket to see my important notifications (the unimportant ones don't go to my watch).

It is pretty damn useful to track your progress if you do any kinds of endurance sports like running or cycling, but yeah I turned those notifications off right away.

I wanted to love my Garmin watches so much. I've tried a couple of Forerunners and an Instinct 2S. The hardware is great, but the software UX is so poor... I had to memorize an archaic maze of presses/long-presses to get to various features.

Just putting the watch into DnD mode required flipping through a ring of shortcuts hidden behind a long press menu. My Pebble can do this with a shortcut I assigned to a back-button long-press. Pebble's shallow-menu + shortcuts system is brilliant.

I ponder what Garmin is like in an alternate dimension where _they_ bought Pebble and used their UX chops for their own devices...

Yeah I love my forerunner 945. Got it used in 2020 and when it died in 2023 Garmin replaced it for $150 including tax and shipping. Couple friends have got the new fancier touchscreen models but I like the simplicity of my watch. I blocked most texts from coming through as a buzz except immediate family or 2FA but it would be nice if Apple's focus modes worked better with it automatically. Been wondering if Pebble would be a good move to get even further away from proprietary software though as someone who runs or hits the gym monday through saturday

Garmin and Pebble also are the watches with custom watch faces. You can change them to serious or silly or incomprehensible.

Whenever I look at my Apple Watch, it's a reminder that Apple owns it and requires it to look a certain way.

I’ve found Coros to be great too. I’ve used my Vertix to track GPS for 48 hours continuously during a race. It’s been beaten up against rocks, soaking wet and filthy for extended periods and still works 100%. Just yesterday it saved me from a minor emergency when I got lost on a new trail and needed to backtrack. After years of use it still has weeks of battery life for tracking daily workouts. I don’t use any of the smartwatch features like notifications though and wear a mechanical watch as my daily driver.

Before owning a Garmin watch (Epix Pro Gen 2 in my case) I had no idea just how useful always having a flashlight* with you is. I'd put this feature near all the health/digital features in terms of usefulness. I have it set to red light mode by default and double-pressing the light button gives me instant and unobtrusive night vision. I have also turned on the Red Shift mode for the display which makes the watch itself much more pleasant to use.

* not all Garmin watches have it AFAIK

Yeah, my Garmin Instinct Solar 3 gets a 4-week battery life. I never looked back at my Pebble Time.

What do you do when the battery eventually dies.

For example the Withings Scanwatch Horizon is quite expensive but it seems it doesn't have a user replaceable battery. So what do you do when the battery can't hold a charge anymore?

> I dont know why apple, samsung and google are not getting it.

I know nothing about smart watches other than the fact that the Pebble company failed and that I see Fitbit/Apple Watch everywhere. I’m not convinced that Apple/Google don’t get it.

Echoing a sibling: yes, apple seems to "get it" just fine.

> In 2021, analysts estimated there were 100 million units in use.[1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210212163703/https://www.techr...

> only need to charge it once every 2 days

The bar for Pebble/Garmin users is multiples of weeks. I typically charge my Garmin every 2-3 weeks, depending on how much activity I've been engaging it. If the battery is at 10%, that means I usually have a day or two to remember to slap it on a charger.

I don't use it on my Garmin, because as you said it dramatically lowers battery life, and often shows up as life-threateningly low. It also doesn't do anything with the data, meaning I only see if it I go into the app and click on the Pulse Ox tile.

I leave it enabled on my Apple Watch though, the battery life is already bad and any irregularities would be shown on the vitals app.

I'm scared of having a lithium battery on my finger like that.

You say "digital" rather than "smart". Digital or analog, a basic watch has that single advantage of being mounted on the wrist. It is always there, supporting a quick glance when you don't have time, free hands, or social context to pull a phone out.

Once you add vibration, now you open a class of discreet alerts. Even an offline watch can give you a silent alarm function, which is great to reduce disturbance to your sleepmate. And some people value the smart notification alerts when awake too. The phone may be in a bag or coat pocket where vibration isn't obvious.

Then there are all the wearable sensor platform things, which divide the population into very different use case priorities. I.e. all the accelerometer and heart-rate tracking for sports, fitness, and lifestyle modification.

Or for outdoorsy people, the wearable GPS, digital compass, and barometric altimeter. This is my reason for having a Garmin watch. I find zero value in a "smart watch" that lacks these sensors. And I don't care for the other connected-watch features, so I actually have the bluetooth link disabled almost all the time. I go back and forth on the fitness tracking. It is bundled in the watch, so I use those sensors sometimes. But, I didn't actually care for them at all when shopping. There just isn't enough market for a good GPS+compass+altimeter watch without fitness sensors, so they don't make it.

Compared to any phone app I've tried, my watch records much cleaner tracks for hiking, both in terms of all the tight turns and accurate elevation data. It also presents the real-time data in a much more convenient, wearable format. When navigating a planned route, it can also vibrate and show me a course hint as I approach a faint trail junction in the wilderness.