Pebble Time Round is a sleek round watch, with compromises
Smartwatches
[SOUND] Pebble makes some of my favorite smartwatches.
Why?
Because they offer stuff that other watches lack.
Battery life, up to a week or more.
Water resistance.
You can wear them swimming.
And an always on screen.
Pebble's newest watch, the Pebble Time Round, is here, and while it does a lot of what the other Pebbles do, it turns a lot of its best features on its head in the name of fashion.
It is really thin I mean this round version is super, super thin.
It's thinner than nearly any other smart watch I've ever seen and it feels like a regular watch, feels great on my wrist and it's comfortable.
But the display is small compared to its thick side bezels.
It is always on and it looks even better in bright sunlight but it could have been larger.
And there's no touch screen.
Use buttons on the sides just like other pebbles to check the time, open apps, control music, check messages or look at your daily timeline.
There are many colors and designs you can choose from and either fourteen or twenty millimeter watch bands options.
My version is black.
Battery life is shorter it now lasts just two and half days on a charge not bad but not nearly as good as other pebbles.
It uses the same charger at least but I miss have it last a week.
It can't be warn swimming you can get it wet but this isn't a pool watch anymore the water resistance has been downgraded which is a shame And it won't work with every Pebble app.
Because of its round display, only some watch faces and apps work on the new pebble time round.
You're gonna have to hunt and peck in the Pebble app store, and so far a lot of my favorite apps have not made the leap.
Will they?
Who knows.
It has the same features otherwise as the Pebble Time and the Time Steel, color reflective screen, and accelerometer and gyro for fitness tracking apps.
Vibration for silent alarms and messages, and a microphone which you can respond to messages with on Android, but it also works with a lot of cool new voice enabled apps that can be used with iPhone, like a new voice dictation note app.
But the round is expensive, $250, the same price as the pebble time steel.
Yes it's smaller, but I prefer more of that battery life, swim capabilities, more apps.
Maybe you feel differently.
At least Pebble offers you a choice.
Just be forewarned that the round makes compromises for its cool size.
I'm Scott Stein with CNET, looking at the Pebble Time Wrap.
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