Ionic nice, but missing Pebble Time

[EricIonic]

I have the Pebble Time, but knowing the TBD demise of the Pebble platform, I decided to purchase an Ionic. I've had it for about 12 hours total (minus 7 hrs of sleeping) and find myself missing Pebble Time for these reasons:

• Notifications Onscreen: Unless I'm missing something, I have to tap or activate the Ionic screen to show me notifications or even swipe up to get the latest. I liked the fact I could get notifications onscreen right away on Pebble, then decide whether to dig further or not. 
• Timeline: I loved that I could be running from meeting to meeting with Pebble Time and hit the down button to see my next meeting and room number. It was nice when I had full arms and didn't want to put anything down to fish out my phone. 
• Timeline: It was great to hit the down button on Pebble Time to see my day meetings and personal events. Something sorely missing from Ionic. 

Overall, I may actually return my Ionic and wait it out with Pebble Time. It will save me $300 🙂

[mglotz]

I completely agree. I have used practically every smart watch and have been a happy Pebble Time user for the past few years, always going back to the Time. I was anxiously awaiting the Ionic, but my first impressions aren't great. 

+ Good design, better in real life than in ads, pleased with the fit and feel.

- Notifications: huge miss here. They are difficult to use and don't show up. 

- Calendar: critical feature for any professional, I don't think I can live without

- Media controls: I want to be able to control my phone media player from my watch, can't seem to do that from the Ionic

- sync: hard to tell if it's connected, and the phone app says it hasn't synced in an hour. Unclear if syncing is working or faulty. 

Net - I'm disappointed and likely going to return. It's just not providing the value. 

[mitwess]

you can control your media from your phone, it's just very clunky/dodgy/unpleasant. you have to go in to settings on your ionic and select bluetooth, click on it twice till it's in pair mode. then you have to pair it with your phone in your phone's bluetooth settings. then after x seconds it will start working (i.e. often not right away). then you have to at very least repair it in your phone in the future when you want to use this functionality, and sometimes you have to redo the pairing on the watch as well. and to make things worse, the artist/song info usually stops working after the initial pairing. so if you need that, you have to repair it from the watch and phone every time you start a music session. insane you say? yes, i agree. garmin manages to make all this automatic (on the fenix 5, vivoactive 3, even the vivosmart 3), i.e. it just works without any need to pair anything.

[Escodaiichi]

I tried to check one out at Best Buy, but they didn't have a functioning display model. Just the same, I need interactive messaging functionality before I'll even consider buying it. The clerk said I could buy it, try it, and return it of I didn't like it, but if it isn't giving reliable message notifications and the ability to reply, even just with presets, it's a no-go for me. Still, it might be fun to buy it, confirm my disappointment, and return it just so fitbit can add that negative stat to its quarterly reports. They don't seem to be listening to us, but they will listen to negative dollars.