RRP: £200 Forget allusions to luxury and set aside preconceptions about crowd-funded tech: the Pebble Time Steel is a paired back bit of kit and all the better for it. OK, so it's still £200. But, for that, you get a smartwatch with a battery that's good for a reported ten days from a single charge, thanks to an always-on, backlit e-paper display instead of the usual AMOLED. A smidgen thicker than the Time, its shell is still sufficiently slim to make it eminently wearable. Admittedly, the Time Steel does lack the sophisticated finish of the likes of the Apple Watch and LG Watch Urbane, but its Gorilla Glass frontage means it's tough in its subtlety. As far as functionality goes, the Time Steel deals happily with notifications, calls, music control and the rest, as well as displaying calendar information with impressive clarity alongside a decent fitness feature set, under the Pebble Health moniker. It is lacking on the apps front compared to the Apple Watch, with nothing like the same array of third party offerings available, but it's still relatively early days. In many ways, the Pebble Time Steel is the truest alternative to the Apple Watch: it's not so much a competitor as something completely different, eschewing crystal screen clarity in favour of battery longevity, and electing for a standard casing over expensive build materials. It's a package for those wanting an everyday, functional smartwatch. The best bit? It plays nicely with both Apple and Android phones, without preference.
Happy-snapping worldly wordsmith. In between snapping street shots, tapping out stellar prose and having more hair-brained ideas than a barber with a bachelor's in business, you'll find him fumbling with the latest fitness fads and dreaming of a debut in F1 (he's a late bloomer, OK?).
