You picked a horrible example. Rolex Sea Dweller is amongst the thickest of dive watches because it's designed to be taken to extreme depths (depths no human will ever descend to in a diving suit).
Well, that’s true, but you went to the other extreme of the spectrum: Piaget’s specialty are ultra thin watches, I don’t think it’s a much better example.
Mechanical watches under 7mm are already considered thin; more usually they are 9-11mm. Quartz are easily thinner.
I think smartwatches currently around look thicker because of case and lugs design. For example, the Sea-Dweller is 18mm, but the side of the case is not flat all the way like the 360, the case back is actually inset, so it’s less noticeable.
IMHO it has one killer feature the Moto 360 doesn't - e-ink (which brings with it always-on display, bright-light readability and power savings benefits). For that reason alone I'd be way more likely to pick up one of these than a 360. I also like the design a lot more (huge bezel and all), but that's even more subjective.
It doesn't use e-ink. It uses a Sharp Memory LCD (http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com). I think Pebble calls it e-paper because they promised e-ink in their first kickstarter but were unable to deliver on that. No one else calls it that. I assume a custom e-ink display was too expensive. The first Pebble used the same display as one of the early Nike watches, which made it a lot cheaper.
The original Pebble uses a Sharp LCD. The Pebble Time uses JDI display. I have no idea what display the Time Round uses: do you know for sure it's a Sharp unit?
I'm not positive they still use the Sharp brand, but I'm pretty sure the display technology is the same: LCD backed by SRAM in the display. You don't need to continuously update the display. Once you write a frame or part of a frame, the processor can go to sleep.
Given that they claim 10 days of battery life for the Steel, maybe we should expect the Round, which has a claimed two-day battery life, to only get one.
The "2 days" battery life makes me reconsider. The Moto 360v2 can get nearly the same (not in ambient mode), but it has a better screen that you can even see in the dark... The only reason I would want to get a pebble vs the moto is that it has a longer battery life (a week or so?), but this thing gets only slightly better battery life, yet costs nearly the same, eh, to me it's just not worth it.
I never had a problem charging a smartwatch while I sleep every night. Personally sleeping with a watch is uncomfortable . The battery life selling point is pretty weak, considering that you still need to be tied to a phone with a shorter battery life in order to receive notifications.
