Why buy a steel Rolex for more than $3,000 when you can buy a steel smartwatch for $250?
Pebble, a smartwatch startup, is hoping that consumers will see the logic in that.
The company is taking preorders for its Pebble Time Steel, with a steel chassis instead of plastic. It’s the most expensive product so far from Pebble, and it doesn’t even ship for another six to eight weeks.
“Take care of life and business right from your wrist,” says the company, listing off the type of features that are standard in smartphones, such as voice phone, calendars, music and apps.
But it offers another feature that isn’t typical of smartphones: 10 days of battery life.
Pebble has produced several different smartwatches since its record-breaking Kickstarter debut in 2012.
Products include Pebble Time for $200 and Pebble Watch for $100, bright plastic gadgets that look like Swatches from the future.
There’s plenty of smartwatch competition, of course, from Sony, Motorola, Apple, Android and Samsung.
This is not Pebble’s first steel smartwatch. The company released Pebble Steel last year. It’s much cheaper, at $150. Especially compared to Apple, which charges $600 for steel smartphones.