CNET’s Scott Stein spent real travel days with the revived Pebble Time 2 and came away surprised it earned wrist time again beside modern Apple Watches. The $225 Time 2 keeps the classic button-first Pebble soul, adds a color backlit display, touch input the originals lacked, optical heart-rate and basic fitness tracking, swim-friendly build, and a clean companion app that reloads the old universe of free watch faces and tiny apps.
Stein still missed Apple Pay and slicker notification muting, but praised automatic walk/sleep tracking and the joy of weird community faces. A round Pebble model is teed up about a month out in the same comeback wave. For buyers tired of heavy smartwatches, the story is niche but real: light, quirky, and intentionally retro — not a feature-for-feature Watch killer.