Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was an early adopter on Kickstarter for the Pebble and long time user, so I'm a big believer in wearable tech. My only issue with the Pebble was its utilitarian appearance. Rather than pony up for a Pebble Steel I opted to try the Martian and have been very happy with it. -Functionally it has been great. #1 surprise has been battery life, it's been amazing and can go 2x as long as the Pebble did between charges. -Alerts have been very reliable. A hiccup here or there in terms of consistency but frankly, the Pebble was the same way too. -The companion app on iOS is very nicely done. It's very easy to customize your experience - which alerts you want / do not want to get on an app by app basis (text, phone, FB, What's App, Maps, and all kinds of other apps you have installed). And also custom alert styles (combinations of long and/or short alerts) - It's nice to be able to simply shut off your connectivity & alerts to your phone but still have a functional standard watch. There's a few downsides, but all of them minor IMO: - I found the watch band to be uncomfortable and lacking in appearance. Wound up replacing it with a nice leather band which looks very sharp with the watch. Problem solved! - Not water proof - I have got used to taking it off before showering but it would be nice to be able to have some level of water resistance built in. - Watch face itself is not backlit which makes seeing the watch face in the dark very difficult. You can push a button and get the time on the LCD screen but it would be nice to have a backlit screen (although I'm sure this would put a big dent in battery life) - Proprietary USB charger. (Pebble's is proprietary too). Would be nice to have had a standard USB adapter. Pebble certainly has a larger ecosystem with a ton of 3rd party apps at your disposal. But in all honesty, I never really used those 3rd party apps much with Pebble because it's so difficult to see & navigate things on a tiny watch screen. So even though Martian doesn't have these, I don't miss it at all. If you want the benefits of wearable technology without feeling like you are a dork wearing an old school calculator watch on your wrist you should definitely give the Martian a try. It's a highly functional, reliable and attractive looking alternative at a very reasonable price point.