LAS VEGAS—I'll always love my traditional Analog Timex, but I must admit my wrist is feeling a little behind the times after seeing all the smart watches on display at CES this year. I saw plenty, from GPS-enabled watches from Garmin, to watch-like wearable fitness trackers. Here are three that really stood out.
I'm watch
The I'm Watch is basically an Android device for your wrist. It runs what the company calls its Droid 2 operating system; it's actually just an ancient version of Android (1.6) that's been tweaked beyond all recognition. This watch is all about apps, and it supports features like on-demand music and cloud connectivity. It has a 1.55-inch, 240-by-240 color display, and comes with 4GB of built-in storage. It's powered by a 450MHz Atom 9 processor and 128MB of RAM, though it felt a bit laggy when I got a chance to interact with it.
Apps like Facebook, Twitter, the news, and a calendar are all pretty cool to have right on your wrist, but it'll cost you: The basic color version of the I'm Watch that I saw starts at $349, and the company sells blinged-out models that go for upwards of $20,000. The watch is still in its production phase right now, and there's no word on an actual release date.
Martian
Move over, Dick Tracy. The Martian Watch is here to give everyone a taste of what it feels like to field calls from your wrist. The Martian Watch is all about voice control, and it uses Bluetooth to let you know who's calling and answer calls. It can even read back text messages while you're driving.
The Martian Watch looks the most like an actual watch compared with the rest of the smart watches I saw at CES. It supports voice control with both Android and Apple iOS operating systems, and there's a (very) tiny screen at the bottom of the watch that communicates with your phone to show you who's calling, and give you a 40-character preview of text messages.
Like the I'm Watch, the Martian Watch is another pricey piece of tech, starting at $299. The first watches produced will go out to Kickstarter backers in February, and then sales will be opened to the public.
Pebble
My favorite smart watch at CES, this Kickstarter-funded phenom is also the most versatile. The Pebble Watch features a 1.26-inch, sunlight readable, black and white e-paper display with 168-by-144-pixel resolution. E-paper isn't the same thing as E-ink; it's an LCD variant with a 30-fps refresh rate that lets the Pebble use lots of cool, smooth animations.
Designed with an active lifestyle in mind, the Pebble is water resistant to five atmospheres, and should last for a full week on one battery charge. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 to communicate with your Android or iOS device, and allows you to check text messages, email, Facebook, and Twitter right on the watch itself. You can also use it to control your device's music player, which worked seamlessly in the demo I saw at CES.
Pebble pledges to deliver continuous software updates to the watch, every few weeks or so, in order to implement every last feature promised in its Kickstarter campaign, and then some. Considering the already diverse feature set, including your choice of cool digital watch faces, that means your device will only get better over time.
The Pebble watch is shipping to Kickstarter backers beginning January 23, after which it will be available to the public. It costs $150 and comes in red, white, black, orange, or gray. It supports a standard watch strap, so you can swap in your favorite fabric, leather, or metal strap if you choose.