Pebble’s Iconic Round Watch Is Back (and Better)

Pebble, the early smartwatch pioneer, has added a new model to its relaunched lineup, and it’s the slim, round model Pebble fans have been waiting for. What intrigues me even more is the fact that the Pebble Round 2 doesn’t have a heart rate sensor, signaling that a smartwatch doesn’t have to also be a fitness watch. The Pebble Round 2 begins shipping in May and is available for pre-order now for $199.

The new watch is supposed to be a modern remake of The 2015 pebble time round. Pebble fans love the round watch, and every new product thread on the Pebble subreddit has at least a few comments begging for a new version of it. This wish was granted. (I noticed that Pebble’s website had a teaser telling people who visited the website to “come back” to see what was in today’s announcement. Cute.)

What’s in Pebble Round 2

The Pebble Round 2 is a round smartwatch in a stainless steel frame. It’s roughly the same size and shape as the old Pebble Time Round, but has a much larger display area with almost double the resolution, better visibility from an angle, significantly increased battery life and, unusually for smartwatches these days, no heart rate sensor. Specifications include:

• Battery life of 10 to 14 days

• 42 millimeter size, 8 millimeter thick (that’s thinner than every Apple Watch)

• Color e-paper display (the same technology Garmin calls MIP)

• 1.3-inch screen with 260×260 resolution

• Two microphones for voice input

• Accelerometer

• Magnetometer

• Touch screen

• Accepts a 20mm watch strap (black and brushed silver models), or a 14mm watch strap (brushed silver and rose gold models)

• Works with iOS and Android

• Tracks steps and sleep

Eric Migicovsky, founder of the original Pebble company and its modern incarnation Core Devices, told me that the e-paper display is the same one Garmin used in its older Forerunners. You might remember I think the Forerunner 255 is one of the best kept secrets in the world of smart watches, and this MIP displays have some advantages compared to AMOLED displays which are more common these days.

I’ll say more below, but the lack of a heart rate sensor is an interesting choice. The Pebble Round 2 can still track steps and sleep by detecting motion, so it’s not like health tracking features are completely missing. But it won’t measure your heart rate during workouts, nor will it try to capture heart rate and HRV while you sleep.

How the Pebble Round 2 Bucks the Smartwatch Trend (And Why It Does) probably a good thing)

That’s a really interesting spec list, to me. Microphones for voice input are a new trend that is spreading to more and more watches (both Garmin And Coros I added them to more models this year). Battery life is a nice improvement, since the old Pebble Time Round only had about three days of battery life, and even today’s smartwatches often struggle to get more than a few days. The thinness of the device is impressive: I think it is currently the thinnest on the market.

But some aspects seem retro. Display technology is an older technology that seems to be dying out. And what I can barely understand as a fitness-focused writer is How to release a smartwatch in 2026 without a heart rate sensor? This is madness! Or… is it?

Over the past few years, perhaps over the past decade, smartwatches and fitness watches have converged. It seems like every device wants to be able to say “we have this feature too!” » So Oura now tracks activities instead of just sleep, Whoop tracks steps instead of just heart rate and HRV, and Apple, still poised to be considered a fitness company but still lagging behind when it comes to fitness features, finally, in 2025, gave us a real fitness app. These days, every watch has a heart rate sensor, every brand is ditching MIP-style displays for AMOLED displays, and there’s no longer a categorical difference between smartwatches and fitness watches. Everything is trying to do everything.

This trend is not necessarily good for users. For example: Garmin needed to add more features to the Forerunner 265 to justify a new model, but it already had just about everything a runner could ask for, at an already high price. Garmin therefore added a speaker and a microphone to create the 570and increased the price by $100. Should a Mid-Size Running Watch Really Cost $550?

In contrast, the Pebble Round 2 relies on the things it’s good at (thin build, e-paper display, microphone for typing) and leaves out the things that, in theory, Pebble Round 2 users don’t care about. It lacks both a heart rate sensor and a speaker, but its rectangular sibling, the Pebble Time 2, has both. These two models sell for $199 and $225, respectively.

I’m cautiously optimistic that Pebble’s approach could signal a change in trend. Migicovsky wrote in a postmortem on the failure of the original Pebble company that Pebble could have kept its niche of “THE smartwatch for hackers”, but tried to be too many things to too many people. (In that same blog post, written in 2017 and updated in 2022, Migicovsky notes that the 2015 smartwatch market was moving toward fitness, but Pebble was not a fitness company and arguably shouldn’t have tried to be one.)

“People want different things,” Migicovsky told me on a call earlier this week. It focuses Pebble’s new products on things he would like to use, not on what he thinks everyone wants. This could be a risky move, as I’m not convinced there is a huge market for a smartwatch without a heart rate. But I think he may be right that the smartwatch market is ready to stop being all things to all people.