I’m currently at CES checking out all of the latest and greatest tech for the coming year, and one of my favorite things I’ve seen so far is a new Pebble smartwatch. No, I didn’t time-travel back to the 2010s. This is CES 2026, and if you missed it, Pebble is back.

Last March, Eric Migicovsky (Pebble’s founder and former CEO) created a new company called Core Devices to launch two new Pebble watches: the Pebble 2 Duo and Pebble Time 2. Earlier this month, Core Devices announced a third Pebble smartwatch with the Pebble Round 2 — a spiritual successor to the Pebble Time Round from 2015.

If you ever owned or used the Pebble Time Round, you’ll be very familiar with the Pebble Round 2. The case design is virtually identical, with the same circular display, four buttons, and ridiculously thin/lightweight body. However, you’ll immediately notice an unmistakable change: the display.

Joe Maring / Android Authority

Pebble Time Round (left) and Pebble Round 2

The chunky bezel surrounding the Pebble Time Round’s 1-inch display is gone, replaced by an uninterrupted 1.3-inch screen on the Pebble Round 2. As someone who used to wear (and love) the original Pebble Time Round, I have no idea how I ever managed with such a tiny screen and such big bezels after just a few minutes using the Pebble Round 2. The Pebble Round 2’s screen lets watch faces shine more than before, allows you to read more text on notifications without scrolling, and helps transform the Pebble Round 2 into a nice-looking timepiece in a way the Pebble Time Round could never achieve.

And, because this is a Pebble, the screen is still e-paper rather than LCD or AMOLED. As with Pebbles of yesteryear, this means the screen is easy to see and read even without using the backlight, especially in a brightly lit environment. It was strange going back to a watch where lots of light makes the screen easier to read rather than harder, but just like on the OG Pebbles, that’s one of the main advantages of the Pebble Round 2.

The other thing that really impressed me is the size and weight of the Pebble Round 2. While it’s essentially unchanged from the original Pebble Time Round, going back to a watch this thin and this lightweight after years of wearing Pixel Watches, Galaxy Watches, and Gamins was a little mind-blowing. We often say that watches like the Pixel Watch 4 and Galaxy Watch 8 are so comfortable you often forget you’re wearing them, but the Pebble Round 2 takes that to another level.

After strapping the Pebble Round 2 to my wrist, it truly felt like I was wearing a dummy unit rather than a real, functioning model. Smartwatches simply aren’t designed like this today, and as someone with smaller wrists, the Pebble Round 2 is perfect. This is one of the main reasons I loved the original Pebble Time Round so much, and it’s a big reason why the Pebble Round 2 is so successful.

As you might expect, that thinness does come with trade-offs. The Pebble Round 2 doesn’t have a speaker, heart-rate sensor, GPS, NFC chip, or other features you’d expect in a modern smartwatch. But those limitations are a feature of the Pebble Round 2, not a bug.

Joe Maring / Android Authority

Speaking with Eric Migicovsky during my hands-on session, he was very clear that he didn’t create the Pebble Round 2 to replace the Galaxy Watches and Apple Watches of the world; he’s creating these new Pebble watches because the exisitng options don’t work well for him. The Pebble Round 2 is a lightweight, comfortable smartwatch that reliably delivers notifications from your phone and offers up to 14 days of battery life. And that’s it. It’s not trying to be a dedicated fitness tracker, phone calling device, or anything else. If you want those features, you’re better off with another smartwatch.

This means the Pebble Round 2 won’t be for everyone, but it absolutely is for me. I’m not ready to completely give up my Garmin (I still need something to track my runs), but the idea of wearing a watch that excels at notifications and lasts for two weeks on a charge — without any extra fluff to distract or annoy me — is really, really enticing.

I do think it’s important to note my personal bias toward Pebble, as I owned the original Pebble smartwatch, the Pebble Steel, the Pebble Time, and the Pebble Time Round. I grew up with Pebbles, and using the Pebble Round 2 brought back a lot of those memories. It’s a smartwatch I’ve waited over 10 years for, as such, there’s undoubtedly a nostalgia factor at play here.

Joe Maring / Android Authority

That said, I didn’t enjoy my hands-on with the Pebble Round 2 just because I liked the older models so much. For the type of smartwatch Migicovsky is trying to build, I think the Pebble Round 2 is a potential home run. There’s been a rise in purpose-built phones in recent years, such as the Light Phone 3, as a minimalistic alternative to our standard, addictive smartphones. We also just saw the Clicks Communicator debut as a dedicated phone for messaging and communicating.

The Pebble Round 2 will certainly appeal to people like me who know and love the brand, but I also think there’s a strong case for it as a purpose-built smartwatch, similar to those phones mentioned above; a watch that tries to be the best at being a notification hub for your phone. After about an hour with the Pebble Round 2, I think it’s well on its way to achieving that goal.

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