The dream of the cool-but-not-overly-garish smartwatch is alive and well with not-Pebble’s new smartwatches, the Core 2 Duo and the Core Time 2. Pebble, known by diehard nerds for making one of the gadget world’s most beloved throwback wearables, is reprising its vintage-looking smartwatches under a new moniker, Core Devices. Aesthetically, the smartwatches remain largely unchanged from the initial rollout in 2013, which is genuinely good news. After all, there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken. Smartwatches have become the all-you-can-eat buffet of the wearables world, often at the expense of battery life and user experience, not to mention the pressures of getting locked into an ecosystem.
The new duo of Pebble smartwatches don’t wholly escape the technological pressures of our modern times. For instance, a microphone enables you to interact with ChatGPT because there is no escape from our AI overlords in this current timeline. Step and sleep tracking are available in both watches, considered the bare minimum of “wellness” offerings in the wearable world, plus heart-rate monitoring in the slightly pricier Core Time 2. Both smartwatches claim a whopping 30 days of battery life, up from the original promise of seven days, which is more than even Android’s longest-lasting smartwatch, the OnePlus Watch 2R.
But everything else about the Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 is simple. Of the two watches, the most “barebones” offering, the Core 2 Duo, is for the true minimalist. It doesn’t even have a touchscreen. You control it with four buttons, which is how regular watches are programmed. The Casio G-Shock, a classic favorite, offers the same tactile feedback button input exhibited by the Core 2 Duo. The only difference is that the software running on the smartwatch is easily hackable, whereas wristwatches are just clocks.
The colorful Core Time 2 is a little more sophisticated, but still, it appears approachable with its four-button input and 64-bit color display. This watch has a touchscreen for those with one foot in the present, making its $225 price tag a little easier to swallow. Compare this to the cheapest Apple Watch SE, which starts at $250, a little more than the Core Time 2. Even with its “standard edition” branding, Apple’s smartwatch is anything but standard. It is a ticket into a vertically integrated ecosystem. It’s the same with an Android smartwatch from the likes of Samsung or Google. It is not only a gateway into Google but an invitation into an entire fitness ecosystem, whether it’s Fitbit on the Pixel Watch or Samsung Health on the Galaxy Watch. Even a basic fitness tracker from either brand feels like it’s straddling the line for those who want notifications on their wrist and a pedometer to track steps all day but don’t necessarily want to bother with a second or third account for logging in.
These new PebbleOS smartwatches are beginning a trend to move back to simplicity. It comes at a time when the /r/dumbphones subReddit has been particularly active. The Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 will not be manufactured en masse like a Samsung device. Core Devices only plans an initial production run of about 10,000 units. Although shipping doesn’t begin until July, you’ll want to pre-order yours before someone else takes your place.
As Pebble’s founder, Eric Migicovsky, who has helped revive PebbleOS, bluntly put it, the revamped Pebble watches aren’t here to compete with Apple and Garmin but rather to offer an alternative to those who need it. “If you’re looking for something that’s perfectly polished or looking for something like a Garmin, go and buy those watches.” As for the rest of us looking for a semblance of life before it was all shoved into a watch on a wrist, there’s deliverance coming.
