I'm amazed by how much I love this thing. I've been looking for a smart watch/fitness tracker I liked for more than a year. I've owned the Moto 360, Fitbit Charge HR, Fitbit Blaze, Jawbone UP3, and Xiaomi HR. None of them hold a candle to this thing.

1. The screen. Omg. I was disappointed at first by two things: it has no color, and it's not touch. Guess what? I was wrong! Those things are AWESOME. It's crystal clear, the lack of color looks super classy and eye-catching, and no touch screen means navigation is super simple and accurate. I hated the Moto 360's touch screen, you'd touch three things you didn't mean to before you got the right thing. And the Blaze's was super laggy and everything was tackily oversized so you could click it easier. But I didn't realize before now... A touchscreen is completely unnecessary! I think I just wanted it for the 'cool' factor, or maybe it's just been programmed in me that touch screen=more advanced=better. But the navigation on this thing is so simple and easy and accurate. I absolutely love it. It even lets you program quick buttons, so holding down each of the four buttons for a second will automatically load whichever app you choose. And the four buttons is a million times better than the standard one or two that's on most fitness trackers.

2. It's so fast!! I've never had such a fast gadget. It's faster than my Galaxy S6. It loads everything SO quickly it still trips me out. No glitches (so far), no freezes or anything. And the speech-to-text feature is faster than the Google app on my phone. I don't know how, but it's movie-quality fast and has yet to get a word wrong.

3. The HR monitor is as accurate as I can find. As good as if not better than the Charge HR. Which, PS, makes the smart alarm work PERFECTLY. And- how cool is this- it takes just seconds to set a smart alarm from the watch itself. Just menu>alarms>smart alarm or >basic alarm. (If you don't know what a smart alarm is, it uses your HR and accelerometer info to decipher when you're in the best part of your sleep cycle to wake you up. You set the latest time the alarm should go off, and give it a window of time that it could go off. During that window, it'll wait until you're in the lightest part of your cycle to wake you up, since waking up out of deeper sleep makes you groggier. This thing wakes me up feeling nice and refreshed, which never happens [never used to happen, anyway!] Both the basic and smart alarms are vibrate only, and you can set different vibration patterns/intensities.)

4. The app is pretty cool. It's easy to navigate, appealing, and has everything on it that I'd want. Your sleep, heart rate and workouts are right there with no digging, and they're easy to understand/navigate through. Out of all the apps I've used (for fitness trackers), I'd say it's a smidge better than the Fitbit app. That one always sucked at connecting and updating (it would take hours to upload info from the tracker to the app and then onto Fitbit.com or whatever, which wasn't optional and would take way too long). This one has no connection problems, updates within minutes and has yet to glitch out on me or be buggy.

5. Even though they have a LOT of user-made apps that do just about whatever you want, the default Pebble itself is super useful and programmed very well. And it's super cute. Right out of the box it was programmed to know my calendar and warn me of appointments and such, could control the music I was playing on my phone (Spotify), and the weather was one click away. And the animations are all so smooth and just plain nice looking.

6. I've heard a lot of complaints about watch faces. How many do you need? There are THOUSANDS. There are even lots of ways for you to make your own. I've had mine less than a week and I already have nine favorites that I've been toggling between because I can't pick a favorite. And I'm very picky, so if I had to guess I'd say you can find at least a handful you like.

7. It's so sleek! And gorgeous! And comfortable! The band is that strange silky silicon that you just want to keep touching. It's waterproof and the battery lasts up to a week. It's simple but eye-catching. I can find no faults with this awesome little watch. I'm so happy with this thing. I don't care at all that Pebble was sold and will no longer support it. Who cares? How often have you had to contact a manufacturer about your watch? These things are ephemeral anyway, and if you're really that afraid of losing your $100 smart watch in a year or two due to some kind of failure then you probably shouldn't be in the market for a smart watch.

I will 100% stand by and recommend the Pebble 2. No more smart watch searches for me! Woohoo!!!

***UPDATE 12/7/2016***

Fitbit is buying out Pebble:

Fitbit will maintain services so that Pebble devices continue to work as normal until at least the end of 2017. Pebble functionality and service may be reduced in the future. Pebble Time 2 won't come to life at this point now will the core.

This is truly sad as I loved my first gen and I really like this watch. I am happy with it but the Heart Rate monitor is currently flawed. I don't think I could recommend buying this watch at this point but I might buy another Pebble 2 without the HEart Rate Monitor if they go on discount before they disappear forever.

All over the tech blogs people are talking about the death of the smart watch section and how they failed to materialise anything worthwhile. I really couldn’t disagree more but I had the first gen pebble for over a year and pebble 2 for over a month now. I am sad that they are now defunct but it represented what a smart watch was supposed to do. It fit great battery life, I only missed call or the notifications I wanted if my phone was off(on android I heard apple was a different story but that’s because of the walled garden), and it didn’t try to do things it shouldn’t like lower me doodle on a tiny screen on my wrist. The only feature that I really doing it lacking on was NFC/mobile wallet, however that had the potential to be addressed if smart straps had come to fruition before pebble died, sadly that will never be the case now. I really blame the people that review smartwatches for this demise in part besides any fault of the company. They promote apple or Samsung but so few ever even wrote about pebble, good or bad. Don’t get me wrong the pebble 2 had it’s flaws, the great rate monitor is a joke but overall it is the best smart watch out there at the moment. The time 2 looked great too, I’m sad I’ll never see one. That’s just my two cents but I agree most of the avast watches out there are gimmicky and fall short, but that category didn’t your coverage did. I’m hoping by the time my pebble 2 needs to be replaced there will be something worthy out there

My original review:

I was one of the Kickstarter backers for the P2. I got mine in Black/flame. Previously I had an original pebble smart watch that I really loved and I wanted to upgrade it after a few years on my wrist. There was nothing wrong with the old watch, which I think speaks pretty well for Pebble and the product they made. This review is specifically written comparing it to the first gen Pebble. This review isn't to convince you that you need a smart watch, I like mine as I can keep my phone on silent 100% of the time but I don't miss calls, and I can see when important notifications come through. I love my pebble because it gets good battery life so I don't have to worry about charging it every other day and it just "works" I don't need to constantly tinker with it. Because of the battery life it is the only smart watch I would consider. I consider Pebble smart watches to be the best smart watches out there, I don't need a touch screen or to doodle on my watch, it exists to prevent me from taking out my phone every time it buzzes or I need to log in with an authentication key and this watch does that perfectly

Please feel free to ask any questions and I will answer if I can!

Design / feel in hand / on wrist

So this is much sleeker than the first gen Pebble, more compact and it feels much nicer on the wrist, moving the charger port to the back makes it looks much sleeker. The case watch feels very nice, the tolerances are all very tight and the buttons all have a nice satisfying click. The mic works well for voice texting, I haven't tried it to much outdoors but it works well every time I have tested it. The band feels nice and is very similar to the first gen band which I also thought was very high quality. The real difference here is the gorilla glass screen is slightly raised compared to the flat surface of the entire first gen Pebble. It doesn't take anything away from the watch the only problem I could see would be it would be harder to add a third party skin like I did on my first gen, however this watch looks really good in black / flame so I'm not looking for a wrap at the moment. If I do I will add what I add and what I think of it

Software

So this is a huge improvement from the first gen watch. The main settings menu is a bit flatter and gives you battery life right on the settings line in a 10% (it goes by 10% increments) It also gives me the local forecast on the main settings page when (see the attached picture for clarity) I don't run a ton of apps on my Pebble, the main one I use is the QuickAuth app to run my google authentication key. I would highly recommend this app. I use MisFit instead of Pebble Health because my work health program can sync with MisFit and not Pebble so it imports my steps to Virgin Pulse. A small bonus, otherwise I would use Pebble Health, it seemed that for the day that I had both turned on Pebble Health seemed to track fewer steps than MisFit but I am not sure which is more "accurate" I don't really care about that one way or another. Allowing to luanch quick launch off the center and back buttons is also nice as it lets you get to 2 more apps quickly. 4 is more than enough for my personal uses but of course that is personal preference

Battery Life

So from my attached picture you can see I am at 30% battery, that should last me easily until tomorrow when I will charge it before I leave work for the day. I could most likely go 2 more days and charge it in the morning when I first get to work. It was last charged 5 days ago. I would rate my usage of it as moderate so I am well within the battery range advertised. I actually think it gets slightly worse battery life than my first gen pebble but I also have the weather app enabled so it is pulling that data from my smart watch more often. I also am playing with the new "toy" more often so I can't say with 100% certainty. Of course it could always have more battery life but I am very content with the battery life this watch gets over all. I also have Pebble Health turned off (and the heart rate monitor) as I use MisFit to count steps for my company fitness program. If Virgin Pulse would every sync with Pebble Health I would drop MisFit in a heart beat but that is another matter. I imagine this has a positive impact on my battery life not having the heart rate sensor enabled

Overall I am very pleased with this watch, it was a great upgrade from the first gen Pebble and I would buy another hands down, I wouldn't mind getting a Pebble Time 2, but that isn't in the budget any time soon this will happily stay on my wrist every day for the next few years. The software upgrade and the sleeker form factor are much appreciated and the price point is very reasonable, if you don't care about the heart rate sensor (which I don't) they are even coming out with one that is just the Pebble 2