I brought myself a Pebble Smartwatch after Christmas last year and I think it’s time to write just how much I love it. The case I want to make for owning a smart watch is that I don’t feel like slave to my phone. If I get a message or notification, I can simply look at my wrist instead of having to dig my phone out. I can always feel the vibration of the watch while sometimes I won’t feel my phone or think it vibrates when it hasn’t. Overall, wearing a smartwatch makes owning a phone less of a distraction.

The Pebble is on the lower end of smart watches in that it cannot call or text people and the black and white e-paper display, but the trade offs are worth it. For starters, I only have to change the watch once maybe twice a week on average. Honestly, if I want to call or text to someone, I’ll just pull out my iPhone.

The watch is durable. I wear it to work, banging it on things all the time, and it only has a few scratches. I’m right handed, but I wear my watch on my right hand because it feels natural to me. Water doesn’t bother the Pebble either since it doesn’t have a microphone or camera.

My favorite feature: I love hooking my phone up to speakers and controlling the music with my watch. There are other remote apps available too, but I only use the music one. I can’t forget to mention all of the watch faces and being able to change the look of it. So cool.

The firmware updates that have been released over the past year have made the watch even better. One of the updates was low battery notification. For me, when it warns I’m at 20%, it’s a clear indication to change the watch at the end of the day. (The watch has always lasted the rest of the day, even if I get this warning first thing in the morning.) There was another update where pressing a button was able to clear the notification from my phone. Pretty much every software feature I wished the watch could do when I first bought it has come out.

The Pebble smartwatch is great buy with its remote capabilities, notifications, and days of battery life.