Pebble’s Iconic Round Watch Is Back (and Better Than Ever).

Pebble, one of the early pioneers of smartwatches, has added a new model to its updated lineup —a slim, round model that Pebble fans have been eagerly awaiting. I was even more intrigued by the fact that the Pebble Round 2 lacks a heart rate sensor, suggesting that a smartwatch doesn’t necessarily have to be a fitness tracker. The Pebble Round 2 will begin shipping in May, and pre-orders are available now for $199 .

The new watch is intended as a modern reworking of the 2015 Pebble Time Round . Pebble fans adored the round watch, and every thread about new products on the Pebble subreddit has at least a few comments asking for a new version. That wish has been granted. (I noticed that Pebble’s website had a teaser urging visitors to “check back later” to see what was in today’s announcement. Sweet.)

What’s included in the Pebble Round 2?

The Pebble Round 2 is a round smartwatch with a stainless steel case. It’s roughly the same size and shape as the older Pebble Time Round, but features a much larger display with nearly double the resolution, better angled visibility, significantly improved battery life, and—unusually for modern smartwatches—no heart rate sensor. Specifications include:

• Battery life: 10 to 14 days

• The size is 42 millimeters, the thickness is 8 millimeters (this is thinner than any Apple Watch).

• Color screen based on electronic paper (the same technology Garmin calls MIP ).

• 1.3-inch screen with a resolution of 260×260 pixels.

• Two microphones for voice input

• Accelerometer

• Magnetometer

• Touch screen

• Fits 20mm (black and matte silver models) or 14mm (matte silver and rose gold models) straps.

• Works with iOS and Android

• Tracks steps and sleep.

Eric Migicovsky, the founder of both the original Pebble and its modern incarnation, Core Devices, told me that the e-paper display is the same one Garmin used in its older Forerunner models. You may remember that I consider the Forerunner 255 one of the smartwatch world’s best-kept secrets , and that MIP displays have some advantages over the AMOLED displays that are more common today.

I’ll go into more detail below, but the lack of a heart rate sensor is an interesting decision. The Pebble Round 2 can still track steps and sleep based on movement, so it’s not completely lacking in health tracking features. However, it won’t measure your heart rate during workouts or attempt to track your heart rate or heart rate variability while you sleep.

How the Pebble Round 2 Differs from the Smartwatch Trend (and Why That’s Probably a Good Thing)

In my opinion, this is a truly interesting list of features. Microphones for voice input are a new trend that’s becoming more common in watches (both Garmin and Coros have added them to more models this year). The battery life is a welcome improvement, as the old Pebble Time Round only lasted about three days, and even modern smartwatches often struggle to last more than a few days. The thin case is impressive—I think it’s the thinnest watch on the market right now.

But some aspects feel outdated. The display technology is outdated and seems to have long since been phased out. And the most baffling thing for me as a fitness writer is how can a smartwatch be released in 2026 without a heart rate sensor? That’s insane! Or is it?

Over the past few years, maybe even the past decade, smartwatches and fitness watches have been converging. It seems like every device wants to say, “We have that feature too!” So Oura now tracks activity, not just sleep, Whoop tracks steps, not just heart rate and heart rate variability, and Apple—always striving to position itself as a fitness company but always lagging behind in fitness features—finally released a real fitness app in 2025. These days, every watch has a heart rate sensor, every brand is ditching MIP displays in favor of AMOLED, and there’s no longer any fundamental difference between smartwatches and fitness watches. Everything is trying to do everything.

This trend isn’t always beneficial for users. For example, Garmin needed to add more features to the Forerunner 265 to justify releasing a new model, but it already had almost everything a runner could need at an already high price. So Garmin added a speaker and microphone to create the 570 , raising the price by $100. Does a mid-range running watch really need to cost $550?

In contrast, the Pebble Round 2 emphasizes its strengths (thin body, e-paper display, microphone for input) and forgoes features that, theoretically, are unimportant to Pebble Round 2 users. It lacks a heart rate monitor and speaker, while its rectangular counterpart, the Pebble Time 2, has both. These two models retail for $199 and $225, respectively.

I’m cautiously optimistic that Pebble’s approach may signal a change in trend. In his analysis of the original Pebble’s failure , Migicovsky wrote that Pebble could have maintained its niche as a ” smartwatch for hackers,” but it was trying to please too many people. (In the same blog post, written in 2017 and updated in 2022, Migicovsky notes that the smartwatch market of 2015 was moving toward fitness, but Pebble wasn’t a fitness company and perhaps shouldn’t have tried to be.)

“People want different things,” Migicovsky told me over the phone this week. He’s targeting new Pebble products toward what he personally wants to use, rather than what he thinks everyone else needs. This could be a risky move, as I’m not sure there’s a huge market for a smartwatch without a heart rate sensor. But I think he may be right that the smartwatch market is ready to move beyond one-size-fits-all.

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