Pebble Announces Improved Health Tracking and Lower Prices
by Brandon Chester on September 30, 2014 1:00 PM EST
Regardless of one's opinion about the utility of the Pebble watch, there's no denying that the company has done a good job of updating their software, features, and both UI and hardware design as time has gone on. Earlier this year the company revealed the Pebble Steel which is a version of the Pebble with a more premium design. They also introduced the Pebble appstore which is home to over 4000 applications that have been downloaded over 5 million times cumulatively. Today the company is announcing more fitness focused features and a price drop for all versions of the Pebble,
The incoming health and fitness update will enable full activity tracking and sleep monitoring. The Misfit health application for Pebble has also been updated to take advantage of these new abilities. This, combined with the Pebble's relatively long battery life for a smartwatch, will provide health, fitness, and sleep tracking throughout the day and night which is difficult to do with other smartwatches that need to be taken off for a nightly charge.
To celebrate the Pebble's growth, the watch is also being reduced in price. The original Pebble is being dropped to just $99 / €129 / £99, while the Pebble Steel has been dropped to $199 / €229 / £179. At $250 the Pebble Steel was definitely pricey and had pressure from competing Android Wear devices that can sell for $199 or less. Even at $199 I think the Pebble Steel may be a hard sell due to its limitations compared to other smartwatches, but the superior battery life may be what sways users
Source: Pebble
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Samus - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Still rocking my kickstarter Pebble. Other than the occasional screen corruption that occurs with a low battery it's been a great accessory to my Galaxy SIII and now my iPhone. That's what I think I like most about it...cross-platform compatibility, something no other smartwatch has.I'm curious to see how well the accelerometer works to track sleep, because it doesn't seem to be very precise for, say, initiating the backlight...
sykosoft - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I've been tracking my sleep with the pebble for months. At first, I used Morpheuz, then I used Sleep as Android with the Pebble support. I do it every day. It works fairly well I'd say.jakebruno - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link
Pebble is one of the best smartwatches on the market in my opinion, but there are still a couple that are higher ranked (see http://www.consumertop.com/best-wearable-tech-guid... But either way, I'm really happy with my Pebble!CharonPDX - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
As with sykosoft, I've been using it for a while - solely through Morpheuz. It is reasonably good, and I had a proper medically-operated sleep study that it agreed with reasonably well.It also works fairly well for step tracking, with a couple different activity trackers.
It will be *VERY* nice to have both functions built-in with background support - if my step tracking app crashes during the day, I lose all steps tracked before it now. And my "watchface" step tracker (as opposed to a manually launched app,) isn't nearly as accurate. (It often 'hangs' the step counting, even though the watch face itself continues to work fine.)
I'm still on my Kickstarter one, too. I upgraded the watch band (to one that was another Kickstarter, appropriately,) and my face has a few scrapes on it, but it still works perfectly.
CharonPDX - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Okay, with one night of tracking, comparing Morpheuz active with Misfit passive, the two do differ.Morpheus says I had light sleep for 2:30, deep sleep for 2:30.
Misfit says I had 4:28 total sleeping, 2:14 of it deep.
Odd that they both agree that "deep" sleep was exactly 50%.
Of course, now that I look at Morpheuz's dataset, it only tracks every 10 minutes. I suppose it could be rounding up.
Death666Angel - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
"$99 / €129 / £99 | $199 / €229 / £179"Haha. That is a good joke. I get the US prices are without VAT, but considering that 1 Euro = 1.26 USD that is just highway robbery. 129€ = 162.54 USD. So unless you pay 60%+ in VAT, that is just absurd. The Samsung, LG and Sony stuff that should be similar (though I guess Pebble is less feature rich but more watch) costs the same or less. I doubt Pebble will have a huge success worldwide with those prices. Can someone explain them to me?
jimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
As sad as it is I got used to this kind of pricing a very long time ago. Even when the exchange rate was $1.8 to £1 we would still be charged roughly 1:1 $ to £ in the UK.It sucks but it has been this way for so long.
Flunk - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
This makes me want to start and international electronics cross-shipping company.mchart - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Well when you account for 20% VAT, and other various fee's you'll find that 1:1 disparity exists for a reason.Mumrik - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
That's why there's companies that rent out American street addresses and collect, repack and reship packages for you.