Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by ImPostingOnHN | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

ImPostingOnHN

> No more bezel

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong image, but I see a silver bezel going all around the watch screen.

I thought "no bezel" on a screen means the screen goes all the way to the edges of the device.

Still want one tho.

View on HN

I think pretty much all watches have some sort of raised dial/edge in order to protect the glass. This one is not as small as some, but compared to the original round pebble, this is much, much smaller.

All the (fancy, mechanical) watches I had within reach seem to actually have the crystal slightly protruding out of the case.

I don't have any fancy watches in reach, but was just talking about watches in general. I think it makes sense to compare $200 Pebbles to similarly-priced watches (smart and otherwise) in this regard. I can imagine that diamond-encrusted or otherwise dearly-priced watches differ in terms of use case and design tradeoffs.

My Seiko Kinetic that I got for around $100 has the crystal surface about 1mm above the case (it is beveled though, so slightly narrower on top than where it meets the case; I assume a right angle would be both unpleasant to touch and more liable to break the glass; it's too cheap to be a mineral crystal.

I'm very minorly into watches and $200 is very "mid/base" for watches.

My most expensive watch is a Fenix7 (used) @ $300. Then ~$150 for a "Svalbard" single hand automatic (winding) watch, and a smattering of "$50-80, used off eBay" watches.

I had two (used) pebble watches back in the day, pre-ordered the PT2 before they went bankrupt, and have preordered the "new" PT2 (at ~$200 price range).

Freaking Timex Expedition is costing $60-80 on sale nowadays. No smart stuff, just "chunky Casio vibes" and it's $80. Timex "Transcend" is a fun one in the $100 price range.

Apple Watch SE is $250, and all the re-pebbles are $200 price range? Color me impressed!

I hate to say that Pebble Round 2 is "almost an impulse buy" (prior to Time2 shipping), but there are occasions (eg: last night) where my Garmin was out of battery, I went to a friends house, so I pulled out my slightly fancier round-dial analog watch.

The fact that pebble is hitting $200 price points is actually an incredible (and hopefully sustainable!) value for what they offer!

> a "Svalbard" single hand automatic

nice, so i'm not the only one with a single hand Svalbard watch :D one day i thought "i wonder if there's a watch with one hand and 24h", pretty soon landed on the Svalbard website and ordered one. i must say that i rarely wear it as it's pretty hard to get an accurate time reading from it, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of a watch.

but i did get lots of comments when wearing it...

I call it my "weekend watch". Specifically taking off the "notifications" watch, a few quick turns to "take the approximate time" with me and it's perfect! I have the 12hr (not 24hr) which effectively gives you "metric" minute markings (10 min increments instead of 15/5). https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_Gauge_FK21.html

My next "grail" watch is something pilot-y, with inverted hour/minute markings (ie: 55m on the outer rim of the face/dial, 12h on the inner), eg: search "Laco Men's Pilot Aachen Automatic Watch", but obviously not that expensive. I just can't justify "yet another watch" and since getting the garmin (w/ sleep tracking, heart-rate, and notifications) it's even less justifiable.

When this one went on sale during prime for $15, I couldn't resist it though! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JCPX9L1

Strap is trash, whole thing is very much lightweight/flimsy, but it has a similar semi-minimalist vibe.

Ah I see, your model gives more details in a simple way. The one I bought is veeery barebones[0], I basically have to stop what I'm doing and look at the watch for a couple of seconds to figure out approximately what time it is...

> I just can't justify "yet another watch"

Same, there's a watch I find absolutely beautiful[1] since years, but it costs around 3.5k, could never justify spending that much for a watch.

The other two watches you posted are interesting, fun to meet another person who likes cheap and/but quirky watches. Took longer than I'd like to admit to understand how the SHENGKE works :D

Since getting my RePebble a couple weeks ago I haven't worn another watch.

[0]https://svalbard.watch/pages/Svalbard_Singly_AA29.html

[1]https://www.longines.com/de-ch/p/watch-longines-master-colle...

I change my Garmin watchface to be something different during nights/weekends, as a reminder that I'm off the clock. I hope that Eric offers a way to automate this in PebbleOS!

I made that same comment!

https://ericmigi.com/blog/how-to-build-a-smartwatch-software...

...fingers crossed or "patches welcome" I'm sure.

Indeed, and thanks for flagging the 'disable wrist backlight trigger' in sleep mode as well. I like that Garmin does this. It's nice to use Pebble as a dim light when stumbling around in the dark, but it's easy enough to press a button to turn on.

> Apple Watch SE is $250, and all the re-pebbles are $200 price range? Color me impressed!

I have wondered why Eric didn't price them higher, and I think it comes down to wanting to make sure there is sufficient demand to justify production runs, and staving off competition that could front-run him and use his open source software too.

I am genuinely curious to see what competition emerges, and how long it takes to appear.

Except, of course, the most popular smartwatch (Apple Watch) which extends the glass above the case, giving it zero protection against impacts from the front.

FWIW the same is true of the Rolex Daytona and Patek Philippe Nautilus.

There’s probably an actual reason for why this is done. On a mechanical watch I’d often prefer for the crystal to be damaged rather than the case, though I’m not sure that the same logic works for Apple Watches.

Does one ever polish a crystal? Having it raised would make that much easier (also if one does, tell me who can do it to mine, my crystal is scratched to the point where I can't read my watch if the main lighting is behind me).

Having a soft but easily polishable crystal made of acrylic was a feature of old military watches. The softer crystal was more easily scratched, but fixable; and less prone to shattering, which would completely break the watch.

It might be possible, but I’m quite sure nobody does it with newer crystals. The replacement costs just aren’t high enough to justify the effort

Also, they just don’t really scratch.

> Also, they just don’t really scratch.

Do I need to take a photo of my crystal? Maybe mineral crystals don't scratch but glass ones certainly do.

Sure, but I was referring to new high-end watches which mostly use sapphire crystals.

If you have a glass crystal, you can easily polish that at home. There’s a polywatch polishing paste you should look at.

I don’t get why you’d want no bezel on a watch. Look how big the bezel is on a Rolex GMT Master 2, or an Omega Seamaster.

The bezel is kinda functional on these watches, also they need it for huge water resistance. This Pebble is more comparable to traditional dress watches which don't have a prominent bezel.

Yes, no more bezel cuts off the details. What is meant is that does not have the big bezel of the original Pebble Round.

The original round Pebble had an octogonal screen with a big chunky ring overlapping all the edges making it look round. I guess there are rounder display options now so the screen can go to the edge of the case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com