Well now, users would notice if the screen has to constantly flicker like their Kindle instead of looking like a colour Casio screen. Meaningful user-facing distinction there.
I never had one, but doing some quick googling, it looks like at least some models had an e-ink display. Certainly several commenters seemed to think it did.
An excellent one at that. It boggles my mind that others didn't follow suit.
I've got a Bangle.js 2 at the moment and while I mostly like it, the screen is nowhere near as nice. Transflective is still very obviously what I want in a watch though, even the best oleds don't even come close in visibility.
> It boggles my mind that others didn't follow suit.
Most fitness smartwatches (Garmin, Coros, Wahoo) used the same display technology for years, called it MIP displays. Nowadays they are switching to OLEDs.
The vast majority I've seen are black and white, with a color layer on top that is disabled when in "low power / sunlight readable" modes. And many of the smartwatch-focused devices (rather than Garmin's super pricey and gigantic "hiking for days without a phone so it solar charges and has gps and..." watches) only use OLED, even if the brand has MIP screens in some other product lines.
I haven't seen anything even close to what pebble's color watches did. Banglejs is by far the closest, with 6 colors and a much more muted screen in general.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_d...