Pebble is on a roll—happily skipping along a calm lake, if you will. The resurrected smartwatch company recovered its trademarked name a few months ago, shipped all its new Pebble 2 Duo watches, and is about to start shipping the Pebble 2 Time, which alone received more than 25,000 preorders.
But the company is already moving on to some new hardware: the Pebble Index 01.
Unlike every other Pebble product, this isn’t a watch, but a smart ring. And unlike most other smart rings, the Pebble Index doesn’t measure your heart rate or track your sleep. Its purpose revolves around memory; it’s a tool to remember things. There’s a physical button on the ring. Wear it on your index finger, then use your thumb to press and hold the button as you speak into it. The Index can remember an important tidbit, save a reminder, start a timer, or create a calendar event. Preorders start today with the Index priced at $75, and it’s expected to ship in March.
Another company very recently announced a similar gadget; whisper into Sandbar’s Stream Ring to have it record your stream-of-consciousness musings. But where Sandbar’s product leans heavily on AI processing and requires a subscription, the Pebble Index veers in the opposite direction. “I’m not as interested in the AI persona,” Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky tells WIRED.
Ring a Bell
The hardware is simple because Migicovsky wanted to ensure it works 100 percent of the time. There are no haptics or vibration motors. It’s just a physical button and a microphone, one that Migicovsky assures will be able to pick up your voice even in loud environments. The stainless steel ring comes in three colors—matte black, polished silver, and polished gold—and eight sizes. Plus, it’s water resistant. It has some internal memory to save your audio clips—even offline—but when your phone is in range, it’ll sync the files to the Pebble app. The Index works with both Android and iOS.
There’s no way to recharge the ring. Migicovsky says he didn’t want yet another gadget to charge every day, so instead, the Pebble Index has non-rechargeable silver oxide hearing aid batteries designed to last 2 years with average use. Once the device’s battery is nearly dead, users will receive a notification in the app, and the idea is you’ll buy a new Pebble Index—an idea that’s easier to get behind knowing the ring costs just $75, though the price will jump to $99 after the first batch. (You’ll also be able to send your old Index to the company for recycling.)
When your audio is sent to your phone, an open source speech-to-text AI model processes it locally to convert your voice notes to text. Then, an on-device large language model will categorize the audio, deciding whether it’s a reminder, a timer, or a general note. A feed shows all your memory logs, and you scroll through it to find and listen to each clip. None of this data is ever sent to the cloud; it all stays on your phone. “These are your innermost thoughts,” Migicovsky says. “You don’t want to send them anywhere.”
By default, all of your musings with the ring are handled by the Pebble app. So if you had it set a reminder, you’ll get one from the Pebble app. However, you can customize the destination if you prefer to use your own service. If you use the Notion app for notes and tasks, for example, you can set it up so that your reminders and thoughts will be sent there.
Broad Strokes
The open source nature of the Pebble app means there’s no limit to customization. You press and hold the button to log a note, but you can have a single press trigger an action. Migicovsky says he set his to play or pause music, and a double-press switches tracks. But you can set it to take a photo remotely or activate a smart home routine. There will be an actions category in the Pebble app store where folks can publish their custom actions.
With a double-press and hold, you can go a step further with a secondary suite of actions. These actions are sent to a ChatGPT-like bot to help you answer basic everyday questions like, “What’s the weather?” or something you’d type into Google Search. These more open-ended results, naturally, will require an internet connection. Migicovsky says they won’t work all the time, and this capability is unavailable by default. People will be able to write and publish their own Model Context Protocol (MCP) actions, expanding the use of the ring.
As for the output, if you have earbuds, you’ll be able to hear the results of your queries. If you have a Pebble smartwatch, you may be able to see those weather results populate on the watch face.
But these additional capabilities are what Migicovsky classifies as “opening the side door and letting people have some fun.” Fundamentally, the Pebble Index is designed for one thing: recording your thoughts. He’s been wearing a prototype for three months and says there’s no way he can go back. “This is no longer a tech product; it’s an extension of your brain.”
Unlike the limited-run Pebble 2 Duo, Migicovsky plans to churn these smart rings out. “I have a good feeling about it,” he says.
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