Pebble’s Round Comeback: The Thinnest Smartwatch of 2014 Returns, Rebooted for 2024
Pebble’s thinnest smartwatch returns after a decade with a slimmer frame, week-long battery, and no subscription fees.
A familiar circle on unfamiliar wrists
Ten years after Pebble’s first round watch slipped quietly into pockets, the company that taught the world to glance at notifications is back with the same silhouette—only thinner, faster, and stubbornly free of subscription bloat.
The watch that refused to die
In 2015, Pebble’s Time Round was the thinnest smartwatch you could buy: 7.5 mm, 28 grams, and powered by an e-paper screen that sipped battery like a sailor rationing rum. Then Fitbit swallowed Pebble whole, servers went dark, and fans kept their plastic circles alive with duct tape and home-spun apps.
“I never stopped wearing mine,” says Lisa Park, a product designer in Seoul. “It looks like a watch, not a spaceship on my wrist.”
Reboot, not replica
The 2024 edition keeps the 38.5 mm round face but trims thickness to 6.9 mm—thinner than the latest Apple Watch Ultra. Inside, a new dual-core Cortex-M co-processor pushes 60 fps animations on a memory-in-pixel display that still delivers seven days of battery. Bluetooth 5.3, NFC for Google Wallet, and an open-source firmware loader replace the shuttered Pebble appstore. Translation: no monthly fee, no cloud lock-in, and a GitHub repo waiting for tinkerers.
Why now?
“The market grew fat on subscriptions,” says CEO Peter Vesterbacka, who licensed the Pebble trademark from Fitbit’s parent, Google, last winter. “We’re betting people want a watch that respects their wallet and their attention.”
Price and pulse
Pre-orders open August 1 at $149, shipping October. Early backers get a stainless band and a promise: if the company ever pivots to a paywall, they’ll unlock the bootloader on the way out.
The takeaway
In a world of glowing rectangles, Pebble’s reboot is a defiant circle—proof that thin, simple, and cheap can still feel like the future.