Pebble is back, and its new Round 2 feels like a love letter to those who have long treasured simplicity, legibility, and battery life over feature creep.
Hands-On With TIME at CES: This is the minimalist smartwatch I’ve been waiting a decade to wear again — and it’s smarter, more cleanly executed, and infinitely more useful than the reminiscence-evoking original.
Design And Display Are The Real Stars Of The Show
The Round 2 is true to the retro-futurism Pebble’s always known: a round case, four physical buttons and an overall shape that reads as a watch as opposed to, well, you get the idea. The big change smacks you as soon as the screen lights up. Out is the Pebble Time Round’s chunky bezel, and in its place is a flush 1.3-inch e-paper screen that finally allows watch faces and notifications to stretch out without interruption.
At its heart it’s still the Pebble: an always-on e-paper panel that laughs at bright light and sips power. In the land of OLED glare and aggressive dimming, it’s a relief to look at a face that gets easier — not harder — to read in bright light. You see more lines of text, less truncation and less scrolling, which makes this display upgrade feel larger than its spec sheet can portray.
Featherweight comfort that few rivals can truly match
The eerie lightness has not vanished. After strapping chunkier flagship models from Apple, Samsung and Garmin to our wrists for years, the Round 2 feels like a demo unit — so thin and airy you have to double-check that it’s even on. For smaller wrists, or really anyone who doesn’t care so much for the bulk of most mainstream smartwatches, let the comfort alone be a bit of a revelation.
That watch-first design has knock-on benefits: it slides under cuffs without getting caught, doesn’t move around when you’re asleep and never overtakes your wrist. It is the sort of wearable that fades into the background until it taps for your attention.
Minimalism with a Purpose, Not a Compromise
“We are Core Devices by name, core in mission,” says the new company, founded by Pebble creator Eric Migicovsky. The Round 2 is not an attempt to out-Apple the Apple Watch. There is no speaker, there is no heart-rate sensor, there is no GPS, there is no NFC. Instead, it’s a concentrated notification hub that purports to last up to 14 days on a charge. You receive the basics — alerts, calendar cues, timers and music controls — without the distractions of a wrist computer rocketing you into unthinkable complexity.
That sounds radical only because the category has drifted in the other direction. Apple itself advertises approximately a day of battery life on most models, while feature-packed wearables often fall in the one-to-few-days range. What Pebble is betting here is that a wide range of users would happily trade those extras for reliability, readability and endurance.
Buttons Above Swipes And A Familiar Flow
The four-button design is still a superpower. Fast, fumble-free and great when your hands are wet, you’re on the go or if you just like tactile control. Navigation is snappy and predictable, and the interface opts for clarity over cool. It’s the same “check, act, move on” cadence that made the original Pebble so revered as an everyday companion.
Luckily, that e-paper display is always on, and it won’t flash obnoxious animations or black out quickly. Between that and the hardware buttons, the Round 2 seems purpose-made for frictionless micro-interactions, which is all most people really want from a smartwatch.
A countertrend taking shape in a crowded smartwatch market
Wearables are still shipping in huge numbers worldwide, with research from firms such as IDC highlighting continued interest in smartwatches and fitness bands. But the mainstream — more sensors, more apps, more complexity — doesn’t necessarily work for every wrist. Round 2 fits into a wider trend for more consumable devices, like the Light Phone 3 or the messaging-first Clicks Communicator: do less, do it right and spare some of our overrun bandwidth.
Core Devices is playing into that identity with a refreshed roster that includes the Pebble 2 Duo and the Pebble Time 2, but it’s the Round 2 that best encapsulates the Pebble ethos. It feels like a watch, works as a personal assistant and lasts long enough that you stop thinking about chargers.
Price, preorder details and early availability timeline
The Pebble Round 2 can be reserved in advance at $199. If you long for the days when a smartwatch did little more than keep you in the loop and out of the way, then this is one of those rare modern wearables that was built just for you.
With time on the wrist, a larger e-paper display and the weightlessness of a feather, not to mention a clearer sense of identity, all make Round 2 feel less like a reboot than business finally completed. It’s not the best smartwatch, not by a long shot. That, of course, is the point — and why it just might be the most compelling.
