JoltVib

Let’s start with the Time’s hardware. It’s easily the best-looking Pebble yet, with a thinner body that curves slightly to fit your wrist, a curved piece of glass over its new display, and a stainless steel bezel framing the always-on color screen. The four physical buttons from the earlier Pebbles have carried over (there’s no touchscreen here), but there’s now a microphone on the left side for voice functions. The Time is water resistant to 30 meters, which means it was fine when I wore it in the shower.

For the first time, Pebble is using a color display on the Time, but it’s not a particularly great one. Instead of a full-color screen like your smartphone or the brilliant display of the Apple Watch, it offers a limited palette and muted colors, like a screen from a 2004-era flip phone or a Game Boy Color. The screen is low resolution enough that individual pixels are easily visible, and it’s not especially bright, even with the backlight that comes on when you shake your wrist. It’s better outdoors because it reflects the sunlight and it has the benefit of always being on, but there’s nothing especially impressive about the Time’s display.

The soft rubber strap included with the Time is a standard 22mm and comes with quick-release pins. That makes swapping straps easy — I was able to switch to a similarly equipped leather strap while waiting in line for a coffee. The charging port has been moved from the side to the back and now doubles as a two-way data port. This enables what Pebble is calling "smartstraps," watchstraps that can add more functionality to the Time. The company envisions other hardware makers developing straps that add GPS functionality or extend the Time’s battery. But Pebble itself isn’t making the smartstraps and you can’t yet buy any from other companies. For now, this is a dream not yet realized.

The Time is light and comfortable to wear for extended periods, and it’s not as big or bulky as Android Wear watches. It’s roughly the same size as the smaller Apple Watch, making it ideal for people with smaller wrists. Unlike the Apple Watch, which gleams on your wrist, begging people to ask about it, or the Motorola Moto 360 and its comically large proportions, the Time is understated and doesn’t command too much attention. It mostly just looks like an inexpensive digital watch.

That’s largely because the Time is mostly plastic and doesn’t have the nicer materials of its competitors. The best way I can describe the Time is that it’s, well, creaky and a bit toylike. Push on the bottom of the display and you can hear the plastic parts rubbing together. The strap lugs have sharp edges that can poke into your skin. And the plastic buttons are the exact opposite of reassuring. They work every time, but they just don’t feel great to touch. A lot of what makes nice wrist watches wonderful is their tactility and craftsmanship, which is missing from the Pebble experience. Don’t get me wrong — the Time is far nicer than Pebble’s first effort, but that’s a pretty low bar to achieve.

Depending on your personal style and taste, you’re either going to love the Time’s retro-techie aesthetic or despise it. I don’t think it’s really for me, and my wife agrees. (She called it "very ugly.")

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