Smartwatches have become health gadgets. Over the last five years or so, Apple, Garmin, Google, Samsung, and practically every other company wanting to strap their wares to your wrist have emphasized exercise integrations, sleep tracking, hypertension monitoring, and more. The most expensive among these devices are also satellite communicators, because now that you have a smartwatch, you are surely so active that you cannot be contained by cell towers.
These are the features that have made smartwatches successful. They’re also not remotely what I’m looking for in a wearable. I want a smartwatch that tells the time. I want a watch that helps me throughout the day, whether by delivering important notifications or helping me do small tasks without taking out my phone. I want some health and fitness stuff, sure, but I don’t need anything more than a step counter and an alarm clock that buzzes my wrist instead of blaring. I want a watch that is smart, not a fitness accessory.
The Pebble 2 Duo almost ticks all of my boxes. It’s a $149 smartwatch with an e-paper display that shows the time, all the time. Its battery lasts nearly a month. It buzzes my wrist with notifications and gives me lots of control over what buzzes. It does very (very) basic fitness tracking. It’s thin and light enough that I hardly ever think about it. It’s not my favorite watch to look at, and it lacks some of the polish and details you’d get on an Apple Watch or a Garmin (for at least twice the price). The first Pebble in nearly a decade isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t technically do all that much, but it’s an impressive showing for an idea from a decade ago.
Quick Pebble history lesson, in case the name rings a bell: the company launched in 2012, with a then-record $10 million Kickstarter campaign. It predated the Apple Watch by almost three years, and was one of the first really good smartwatches. Pebble shipped more devices, grew a bunch, eventually didn’t grow fast enough, ran into trouble, tried to pivot, and sold to Fitbit in 2016. Fitbit sold to Google in 2021, and the whole Pebble universe went dormant, save for a group of committed users and developers in a community called Rebble.
Eric Migicovsky, the original founder of Pebble, went on to other things but never stopped caring about Pebble, or wearing his own watch. At the beginning of this year, he got Google to agree to open-source the Pebble’s operating system, which meant that Migicovsky or anyone else could build new hardware running Pebble software. Migicovsky started a new company called Core Devices to do just that. He’s been clear from the beginning that his goal is not to reinvent the Pebble for 2025, or to make the Pebble what it should have always been. He just wanted to make more Pebbles.
The Pebble 2 Duo is the spitting image of the Pebble 2, a device launched in 2016. (It’s even using literally some of the same parts, which Migicovsky says were still just in a warehouse somewhere in China.) Same black-and-white, 1.2-inch e-paper screen, encased in a blocky piece of polycarbonate that looks more like something by Fisher Price than by Patek Philippe. I don’t particularly care for the style, and I definitely wish I’d gotten the subtle black model instead of the bright white. Pebble has always had a very specific retro-tech aesthetic, from its hardware to its software, and the look is just not my cup of tea. Luckily, you can change it somewhat to your liking because the 2 Duo fits any standard 22mm band, in addition to the silicone one it ships with. I attached a fabric NATO strap I bought for a few bucks on Amazon. It fits and works great.
There’s only one new hardware “feature” to speak of here, a small speaker, but I have nothing to tell you about it because it’s not yet enabled. The idea seems to be to pair it with the microphone and let you have voice chats with AI bots, or maybe have notifications read aloud. For now, you can use the microphone to respond to texts (but only if you have an Android phone — iOS doesn’t allow third-party watches to do that) or issue commands to Claude via the app in the Pebble Store, but not much else.
Beyond that, there are only a couple of small changes, like a sturdier set of buttons on the sides that I’ve found to be a little stickier than I’d like, but which Migicovsky says will last longer than before. Most of the watch’s other upgrades are just things that have improved in a decade of technological progress, like the more efficient Bluetooth chips that make the battery last longer. (Core quotes 30-day battery life, but mine has been more like three weeks. Still really good!)
After a few weeks with the 2 Duo, I’ve found it useful for a handful of things. The first is telling the time, which is not always a smartwatch’s strong suit! Between the low-power screen and the long battery life, this thing just has a very good track record of showing me the time when I look. There are thousands of watch faces in the Pebble Store, most of which are hideous, but some of which are fun and delightful. The screen is easy to see in sunlight and its backlight doesn’t blare super bright in the dark. It’s easy to set alarms and timers. (Only one at a time, though, as far as I can tell.) It’s a straightforwardly good watch in a way most smartwatches simply are not. I also really like the Timeline view, which just shows a scrollable list of my upcoming calendar events. That fits right with the “help me navigate my day” job for a smartwatch.
You can elect to send all your phone’s notifications to your wrist, turn them off entirely, or choose app by app. I turned off all but the most important few, and now get buzzed only for texts and phone calls I care about. If I’m wearing headphones and get a call, I’ll often click the middle button to accept the call from my wrist, which is easier than reaching for my phone. I can also use the Pebble’s buttons to navigate whatever music or podcast I’m listening to, which might be my most-used feature — I appreciate just mashing the bottom button to skip tracks instead of hunting for my phone or even having to glance down at my Apple Watch’s screen.
You handle most of the initial Pebble setup and all the app and watchface maintenance in the Pebble companion app for iOS and Android. As usual, you’ll get more out of a Pebble with an Android phone, which can connect more deeply to third-party watches. But I don’t think iOS users are missing much: I installed a bunch of apps from the Pebble Store, thinking I might spend a bunch of time poking at the watch, but ultimately the only one I actually ever use is a step tracker called Misfit. In general, the 2 Duo just isn’t meant to be used all that much. Scrolling up and down with the buttons is kind of annoying, the screen is pretty slow, and it’s just not much fun to play with. That’s fine. I like it much better as a quick information delivery tool.
This set of features seems about right for me. Yes, Pebble offers a vastly less ambitious, less impressive, and frankly less attractive device than just about any smartwatch you’d find from the Garmins and Googles and Apples of the world. But even after a decade of using those watches, I’m not nearly active enough to need or care about most of what those devices offer. What I need is a device that helps me through my day, and helps me do things without my phone.
If you do care about the fitness and health stuff, though, the 2 Duo at least nods at some of the features you might want. It has a workout app that tries, in my experience mostly in vain, to automatically guess when you’re working out. There are some sleep tracking apps in the Pebble app store, too; I like one called Morpheuz, which offers pretty mediocre sleep data but does have a smart alarm feature that tries to wake you up at the least jarring moment. You absolutely should not buy a Pebble if you care primarily about health features, but these are enough for me.
I bought the 2 Duo to get into the earliest possible shipment of Pebbles, so I’m stuck with this one. But If I were you, I might hold out for the upcoming $225 Time 2, which has a bunch of appealing upgrades on the 2 Duo, including a full-color touchscreen, a heart rate monitor, and a nicer steel case. It’s supposedly shipping soon, though Pebble’s ship times have been all over the place. Whatever the case, though, I’m just happy to see the Pebble idea back on the market. While the rest of the industry has converged on various levels of fitness tracking and self-quantification, the Pebble still feels like a watch. Just a little smarter.
