Pebble is being bought by Fitbit and will no longer provide support for their products. Probably a good idea to avoid this one.
Agreed. Here’s another article from Consumer Reports website. If you MUST buy it, you’ll need an outside warranty
https://consumerist.com/2016/12/08/your-pebbles-warranty-is-void-now-even-if-its-new/
Here’s the official Pebble announcement
We’re offering it with a 90-day woot warranty for this reason.
Loyal wooter here. Not turned off by the Pebble acquisition personally but I’d do it without a second thought if it had a deeper discount for the risk we take on it becoming bricked one day
Pebble isn’t really being “bought” by FitBit. Pebble is going out of business and FitBit is picking up the IP and some of the staff. Pebble is no longer manufacturing or supporting any of their products.
Outside of the 90 day Woot warranty I doubt there is any official avenues for repair or replacement.
Man, I sure hope the “Pebble-ness” gets incorporated into FitBit products. I’ve got a Pebble Time, and it’s really a great watch. It works really well, has great battery life, and it just has so much personality. I was bummed when I heard that Pebble was going away.
I almost bought one of these a few months ago, but the model I wanted wasn’t yet available so I went with a FitBit.
From the announcement, it’s likely that these smart watches will become dumb at some point during the next year, as server support will be minimized or cease to be.
They were good products, had a great fan base, but buying one of these is throwing money at a future brick.
I’d love to see FitBit make a “pebble” line but that doesn’t seem to be the approach they are taking.
As mentioned before, Pebble is in the toilet. For a great smartwatch at a bargain price, look around for an Asus Zenwatch. You can probably snag one for about 55 clams.
I bought one for my brother last Christmas.
I was hoping that Fitbit would at least absorb the programming staff and continue to at least support the firmware/software in the things. They really are a good design.
(Me? I have a Fitbit Charge 2 now…)
As an iOS user who was a backer of the original Pebble on Kickstarter, I’ll say this:
If you’re an iOS user, either buy an Apple Watch instead or skip this entirely. Just about everything that the Pebble wanted to do, the Apple Watch does better. Notifications on the Pebble were unreliable, battery life actually isn’t significantly better than the Apple Watch, and the app that you have to use to load watch faces, etc. (which will likely disappear after the acquisition by Fitbit) is janky as hell.
The one thing that the Fitbit does that the Apple watch does not do is provide music control (play/pause FF/REW) via hardware buttons. But if that’s something you really, really need, you can spend $15 on a Bluetooth device that does just that, and that will continue to have support in the future.
I’ve heard stories that Pebble integrates more deeply and meaningfully with Android devices. So if you’re an Android user, maybe this is a deal for you. But if you’re using iOS, just take whatever you were about to spend on a Pebble and apply it toward an Apple Watch. Or arch supports for your shoes. Or the next several days of Woot! shirts. Or a copy of one of the Matrix sequels on HD-DVD. Or a plumbus. Seriously, even a bag of premium currency in whatever freemium game you don’t want to admit you’re sucked into right now would be a better investment than a Pebble if you’re an iOS user.
I figure that I’ll still hold on to my first-gen Pebble since it is marked as being a Kickstarter edition. Maybe that’ll be worth something someday to someone who collects abandoned hardware.
Pebble battery life blows APPLE away! One charge last at least 5 days! It will become a brick next year, but a well charged brick!
What size is the band on the Pebble Time Round? My wife’s just flaked out, looking to see if Amazon will take it back even though it was 6 months ago. If they do I am thinking about one of these to replace it. She has the one with the 14mm band though.
You lost all legitimacy right there. My Pebble time gets 10 days of battery life easily. Apple watch is 1.5 days at best. If you really use it, you’re lucky to get a full day. It’s the main reason I didn’t buy an apple watch (after testing each for a few weeks).
Very sad to hear that the pebble OS may be gone forever, it’s such an elegant interface and I much prefer having the hardware buttons to navigate over the gimmicky iwatch knob.
I’ve enjoyed the Pebble steel bought here for $99 a few months ago. It gets 7+ days on a charge. This is a disappointment to hear. I would never buy a fitbit after experiences with the one my wife bought. I guess there is an Apple watch in my future when my Pebble craps out.
Just another “me too”.
I backed the original Pebble (7-10 days battery for me) on kickstarter, moved up to Pebble Time (about 3 days battery for me) for a less geeky look.
Happy all around. Until the company crashed. Now, in the words of a consummate diplomat, “Sad!”
According to the specs, they’re offering 14mm band Rounds.
Thought I’d add a little truth to counter the speculation and rumors.
FitBit will continue to support Pebble through 2017.
https://developer.pebble.com/blog/2016/12/14/first-steps-forward-with-fitbit/
I just bought the Asus Zenfone Zoom, so the Zenwatch would probably be the direction I would go, if I were going to buy a smart watch.
In other news: Smart watches are a dying breed, all together.
No One Is Buying Smartwatches Anymore
The Pebble Cloud servers are being shut down at the end of 2017, at which point the entire Pebble product line will cease to have smart functions (voice-to-text, weather info, etc.). They’ll still function as dumb watches with a few extra features (app notifications are handled locally, so those will theoretically still work).