After almost a decade out of the game, cult smartwatch brand Pebble has returned with a duo of watches.
The Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 are modelled after the Pebble 2 from 2016 and the Pebble Time 2 from 2017.
These two watches are available to pre-order now, but their pricing and release dates are quite different.
The Pebble Core 2 Duo costs $149, and will start shipping from July 2025. Pebble’s Core Time 2 costs $225 and will be available from December 2025.
Just as the Pebble founders promised when the brand relaunched in January 2025, these new watches have plenty in common with their inspirations.
First up, while the Core 2 Duo has a plastic, or “polycarbonate” casing, the Core Time 2 has a metal frame.
Both watches use low power draw e-paper screens. The Core 2 Duo’s is a 1.2-inch monochrome display, the Core Time 2 a 64-color 1.5-inch panel. It’s a touchscreen watch too, unlike the Core 2 Duo or previous Pebble watches.
An upgrade to the Core Time 2 also brings additional features. While the cheaper watch has a barometer and compass, the more expensive one also has an optical heart rate monitor on the back.
The watches both have microphones and speakers, and will both count your steps and track your sleep. A Pebble watch’s speaker and mic combo is not there to let you answer calls, but is instead intended for use in apps “that benefit from audio output, like a ChatGPT or other AI agent app.”
Both watches are rated for 30 days of use between charges, which is far longer than the “up to 10 days” promised of the Pebble Time 2 .
Pebble Time 2 And Core 2 Duo Features
Anything missing? Pebble only claims to be “targeting IPX8” water resistance for these designs, rather than the 5ATM or 10ATM water resistance desirable in a sports watch. Neither of these would make an ideal sports tracker, though, as they do not have GPS. Pebble’s own blog even suggests buying a Garmin watch instead.
Retro charm is the big seller here. The Pebble Core 2 Duo and Core Time 2 run the same PebbleOS software as the original watches — now an open source system — and have access to the “10,000+” watch faces and apps developers made back in the day.
But will those original developers return to update them? The Pebble Time 2 has a higher resolution 200 x 228 pixel screen than the old models, and the Pebble team says apps will display with a blank border around the outside unless they are updated to factor in the new display style.
The touchscreen features of the Pebble Time 2 will require additional dev support too.
“I want to add the concept of ‘complications’ to watchfaces and widgets. Like on Apple Watch, these complications/widgets will show glanceable information like weather, next calendar event, step count, etc. The touch screen adds the ability to tap on the complication and directly open the associated app,” says Pebble’s Eric Migicovsky.
The Pebble Time 2 and Core 2 Duo are available to pre-order from the Pebble Store.