- Pebble has presented the Pebble Index 01, a new smart ring
- It consists of “a button and a microphone, a bit of memory and a Bluetooth chip.”
- Record voice memos and use an on-device LLM in the open source Pebble app to interpret instructions or transcribe.
Core Devices, the company relaunching the original Pebble smartwatch, has revealed the Pebble Index 01, a smart ring very different from the Oura Ring 4, Samsung Galaxy Ring, and the rest of the best smart rings on our list.
Without heart rate sensors or motion detectors, it is not a health tracker. Instead, it’s designed as “external memory for the brain,” using a button-activated microphone to send voice memos to the Pebble app.
Once the voice memo arrives, the device’s LLM in the Pebble app (an open source app so you can read the code and see how it works) interprets the instruction similarly to most voice assistants: as a voice memo, timer, alarm, or reminder. Raw audio can also be played within the app, and you can set the note, alarm, timer, or reminder to play on a Pebble smartwatch or other device.
Otherwise, there’s no real output on the ring: there’s no speaker or vibrating motor, just a small RGB LED. A blog post by Pebble and Core Devices founder Eric Migicovsky reveals that users can “set up single or double button clicks to control whatever they want (smart home, Tasker, etc.)” and can “add their own voice actions via MCP.” MCP stands for “model context protocols,” a framework that AIs use to perform actions and connect to external systems.
Priced at $75 (around £56 / AU$113), the Pebble Index 01 is available in black, gold and silver, in eight sizes. It’s also not designed to be recharged: the battery reportedly lasts for years, and the device can be sent to Pebble for recycling.
Back to basics
In essence, it is a very simple device. It’s just “a button and a microphone, a bit of memory and a Bluetooth chip,” according to Migicovsky, along with the battery needed to power it. There is also no personality attached to the LLM in the app, like those found in Siri or Alexa; You simply record, transcribe, answer questions, and organize without inserting yourself into the process.
“We made a lot of decisions, moving toward the idea of being a reliable external memory for the brain,” said Migicovsky, who spoke with me from New York. “If you take it off and you don’t have it, you’ll fall back into those other habits. If you’re recharging it, even for half an hour or all night, you forget to put it back on.”
That push for frictionless use is why Migicovsky chose a button to activate it, rather than a more modern system like lift-to-talk or a wake word like an Apple Watch. “If there’s any friction in the system, a wake word or whatever, you’ll stop using it.”
Migicovsky isn’t wrong: People get frustrated when sensors don’t respond the right way, as you end up shaking your wrist or repeating the same thing to Alexa. On the other hand, I use my Garmin Venu 4’s voice assistant to execute simple commands like setting timers and reminders once a day, because it’s button-activated and reliable. For Migicovsky and his company Core Devices, “reliable” was a must, closely followed by “fun.”
“For me, a gadget is something that I don’t take too seriously, that brings a bit of joy to my life. It’s something that excites me: I love reading magazines and blogs about gadgets, it’s fun and cheerful and brings a bit of positivity.
“In the tech world right now, there just aren’t enough chances to get it. The company I started, Core Devices, is basically going to build cool devices that I want and sell them to people like me.”
Migicovsky tells me that he has been using the Pebble Index 01 for months and it has reportedly become part of his routine, easy to use with gloves thanks to the button and less cumbersome than a smartwatch, making it capable of one-handed operation in a very natural way.
For now, however, we’ll have to wait for Marc to find out if the Pebble Index 01 can earn its place as a simple and reliable device in a world of complex devices.
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