Joe Maring / Android Authority
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.
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