October 17th, 2025

Pine64 PineTime: A Review.

Simple. Basic. Functional.

A Review of the Pine64 PineTime:

A couple years ago, in late July of 2023, I had bought a PineTime smartwatch. I had always wanted to try a smartwatch, and figured I’d try an open-source device first and see what I thought of it. Two years later, I’m still using the same PineTime.

I bought the watch with my expectations set on the lower side. Pine64 devices can oftentimes not function entirely like they should, due to their developmental nature. I purchased my PineTime for the price of $50, counting shipping and all. It arrived in the short span of about one week, surprisingly fast, since it was coming all the way from China.

Setting up the watch was fairly simple. I connected it to the charger to let it charge, and installed Gadgetbridge on my phone so I could connect to it. Connecting the watch to Gadgetbridge was fairly simple, and once paired, it synced its time with my phone, ensuring that it had the right date instead of some day in 1970. As per Pine64’s instructions, I did update the firmware to the latest.

Initially my experience wasn’t as good as I thought it would be, though it turned out it wasn’t the watches’ fault. Me being me, I turned on all the bells and whistles of the device. Raise to wake, heart rate monitor, and a Bluetooth connection to my phone. Every time I looked at the watch, it’d try to check my heart rate, and since there was no “lower to sleep”, the screen stayed on for a full ten seconds each time I looked at it. I got about a couple days of battery life with that. I ended up disabling the heart rate monitor, as it took forever to detect my heartbeat and wasted the battery. After that, it was much better. I ended up charging the watch every few days. It still wasn’t getting the weeks’ worth of battery advertised, but I was happy with it.

Skipping ahead over the two years, it’s more accurate for me to review it on the latest firmware (InfiniTime 1.15) as opposed to the old firmware. While everything functions nearly the same, it has improved, and as a result means the watch is better than it was then.

Phone-connected functionality:

I initially bought the PineTime with two things in mind: To tell the time, and to track my steps. And, as a result of that, I needed a way to store those steps somewhere. Since the PineTime can connect to an app, I connected it to Gadgetbridge, Pine64’s recommended app. Connecting it is fairly smooth. Simply follow the on-screen instructions and you’ll have your watch paired. Gadgetbridge does have its own instructions for getting the app to work the way it should, and you should read those too.

After pairing, the watch synced its time with my phone, and, the next time I took some steps, it added those to Gadgetbridge. Gadgetbridge supports more advanced devices than the PineTime, but only step tracking and heart rate seems to work right now on the PineTime. Gadgetbridge only shows step data from when the PineTime is connected to it, so keep that in mind.

PineTime next to my phone with Gadgetbridge on it. It is worth noting that Gadgetbridge is Android-only.

Notifications work well as well. I did have to set Gadgetbridge to not show the app name in the title (click the gear on your device, then click “App name in notification” to disable that), as it would take up the space from the header of the notification, and, as such, would mean part of the info I needed would be missing. Other than that, I had no issues whatsoever.

The only real issues I’ve had with Gadgetbridge are the random, and rare, disconnects. The watch did not want to pair, and I ended up re-pairing the watch through Gadgetbridge, which got it to connect again.

Watch functionality:

Besides the phone-connected functionality, this watch has other functions. I tried the heart rate monitor. It took around ten seconds to find a heartbeat on me. It works, but I wouldn’t leave it on in the background, as it does eat through your battery life.

The watch also has a plethora of built-in apps. The built-in games (2048, knockoff Pong, and Drawing) work fairly well considering the limitations of the hardware. There’s also a dice-rolling app, which seems to function fine as well. The navigation app isn’t that great, but I suppose if you’re ok looking at your wrist while driving “it works”. All it does is show you the next direction from your map app.

The time-keeping apps are fine as well. Alarm is an alarm. I’ve tried it, it wakes me up, and it can conveniently be turned off easily without really waking up (I do not like wake-up alarms). It also has a stopwatch, which does its job fairly well. It can be stopped simply by pressing the side-button of the watch, without having to fiddle with the touchscreen.

Timer is an app I use all the time, and also has an issue that causes me to use my phone as a timer most of the time. When you set a timer, it allows from 1 second to 59 minutes and 59 seconds. That is not the problem. While it works as a timer, it also doesn’t alert me well enough that the timer is done. Instead of nagging me the way my phone does, with a noise and the phone vibrating, the timer simply buzzes once. One small, tiny, “bzzt”. That’s it. Not even a “dismiss me” screen. I have unintentionally missed timers set on my watch because I didn’t feel it go off. I only use it as a timer for my tea, since it’s usually a five-minute timer and I won’t miss it since I just set the timer.

There are other apps on here as well. Weather is one that I haven’t bothered with. They have instructions on how to get Gadgetbridge to work with it, but it isn’t worth my time. There’s also a metronome, and while it does work, I haven’t used it while playing music. And there’s the music control app, which works, but thanks to the small touchscreen, can be a pain to use. Pulling my phone out of my pocket is the easier option.

And, of course, the litany of setting this thing has. Out of all of them, the ones I use seem to function fairly well. Raise to wake works most of the time, and so does lower to sleep, a new addition that saves battery. I also have mine set to buzz once every thirty minutes. That works well and doesn’t seem to impact the battery life. Other than that, I haven’t tried many of the other settings, since most of them really are along the lines of how long the screen stays on (mine is 5 seconds) and watch faces. The other watch faces are nice to have, though as of the last time I tried them (probably on the 1.14 firmware), some of them would go blank every time the thirty-minute thing would go off.

And as for any issues I’ve had with these settings, the only setting that has caused me problems was the “chimes”, which, as I stated above, go off every thirty minutes. I have had it go off during times where I was using the stopwatch, and it would cause the stopwatch to reset. This gets old after it happens a couple times. It would be nice if stopwatch prevented the watch from doing stuff like that, but it doesn’t.

Battery life on the watch has been great. Thanks to the newer firmware, the life has gone from around five days to a bit over a week now. I usually have to charge it once a week to keep it from dying, and usually that can be done while taking a shower and the such. It is waterproof, though I’d rather not tempt fate by wearing it in the shower. My brother said he did notice a battery life improvement when I updated the firmware on his watch, which he bought earlier this year.

Durability:

I initially was concerned about this watch. Glass screen on my wrist might not be the best idea. And though it has taken a beating, with times where I’ve accidentally banged it on a counter, or scratched while doing something, it still works great, and doesn’t have any issues. The paint around the edges of the display is wearing off, but it still works. My brother has treated his worse than I have treated mine, and his works, despite the damage giving him some lovely dead pixels.

The same cannot be said for the watchband. My brother’s watchband has held up, but I have had to replace mine twice. The initial watchband failed, and I replaced it with a cheap, but very similar watchband, which also failed. I ended up getting a fabric one instead, which seems to have held up much better. Pine64 has a list of “known to work” bands, and the fabric one was on that list, and has held up well.

The charger isn’t great either. My original charger had a pin get stick, and my replacement has had the cable come out a bit from the charger, exposing the red and black wires providing power (my brother has had his charger do the same). Since I only use it once a week, it’s not that big of a deal.

The PineTime's charger. Note those two wires sticking out. It shouldn't be like that.

Conclusion:

Overall, the PineTime makes for a great smartwatch, if you’re willing to deal with its limited functionality and the issues I have listed in my review. I’m happy with mine, and it has done well. I can recommend this watch, but set your expectations accordingly and be willing to spend extra on another watchband.

The purchasing process was fairly smooth when I ordered mine, but I figured I’d add a warning on this: The PineTime ships from China. With the tariffs and whatnot causing the price of things to rise to unnecessary levels, I’m not sure how much it’ll cost nowadays. I paid $50. My brother ordered his this January, and it took longer to arrive since Pine64 had to find a way around the extra fees, which they did. I have no idea if there are any extra fees now.

The PineTime is a solid, open-source smartwatch and has withstood the test of time, both in doing its job well, and in holding up to the wear and tear it receives every day.

The Pine64 PineTime.

Gaby.