Pebble Time Steel Takes A Shine To Apple Watch Edition
A week ago, Pebble began fundraising for its latest smartwatch with a color screen through Kickstarter — since then, it’s raised more than $12.1 million from over 54,000 backers.
But Pebble isn’t done. On Tuesday it introduced another watch: The Pebble Time Steel, which happens to look exactly like the gold Apple Watch that’s going on sale in April.
The second I saw the Pebble Time Steel, I immediately realized how familiar that image looked, and I’m sure everyone else did, too. Put side-by-side with the yellow gold Apple Watch Edition in red (image via TechRadar), it’s obvious that Pebble is either is trying make people think their product looks as stylish as Apple Watch Edition in order to truly push sales (at between one-twentieth to one-fortieth of the price), or that they’re simply trolling Apple because, well, they can.
Personally, though, I wouldn’t call this a replica at all. Sure the colors and angle of the watch are similar, but make no mistake, this is not a “premium” luxury featurewatch whatsoever. It may user nicer materials and look better than the regular Time, but Pebble isn’t advertising its finish type. I doubt it’s even 10-karat gold plated. As a fashion piece, it works. As a high fashion piece, not so much.
I still think they should have called it Pebble Time Special Edition. Of course, I feel like, had Pebble not already trademarked “Steel” for their last-gen model, Apple might be using that name for their own stainless Apple Watch version (to go along with “Sport” and “Edition”). And maybe that’s the one thing about this functional non-competitor that actually annoys the big boys in Cupertino.