First Pebble smart watch orders to begin shipping Jan. 23

The company behind the watch announced at CES on Wednesday that Pebble will start shipping on Jan. 23, and all Kickstarter backers should receive their hardware over the course of six to eight weeks. The device raised more than $10 million in funding last year to make it a reality.

About 85,000 people backed the project when it was in the concept stage on Kickstarter. It will take time to deliver to all of those customers, as only about 15,000 Pebbles per week can be manufactured in its current state.

The face of the watch is a black-and-white LCD display, while the device itself receives text messages, phone calls and other notifications from a smartphone connected over Bluetooth.

The Pebble sells for $149 and is available in black, grey, red, orange, and white. Customers who didn't contribute on Kickstarter will start receiving watches once the initial backers have been shipped theirs.

The 1.26-inch Pebble display has a resolution of 144 by 168 pixels. It's a higher quality screen than the top-lit 96-by-96-pixel screen found on the competing MetaWatch, which AppleInsider took a first-look at last month.

And unlike the MetaWatch, which relies on an awkward charging clip, the Pebble uses a magnetic charging cable that clips to the side of the device. This allows the Pebble to have a water resistance rating of 5ATM, good enough for swimming and washing dishes.

Messages and alerts will be sent from an iPhone or Android device to the Pebble via accompanying applications on the respective platforms.

The company also announced its own cloud tools that will allow users to create their own macros dictating when notifications will be sent to the Pebble. For example, users could have their watch notify them of severe weather alerts, or when a stock hits a certain price.