Pebble smart watch to ship January 23; Engadget goes hands-on

The long-awaited, iOS-connected Pebble smart watch will ship to Kickstarter backers on January 23. That's the word from the Pebble team during a press event this morning at CES 2013.

If you waited until after the Kickstarter closed to put in a pre-order, you'll wait a bit longer -- another four to six weeks. While some of us around the TUAW newsroom still wonder why anyone would want to go back to the 20th century by wearing a watch, it's good to see that these guys finally got the product to market.

The Pebble took Kickstarter by storm by raising over US$10 million, but development of the device has been slow. It looks like the wait was worth it, as the shipping Pebble is very polished.

Engadget's Myriam Joire filmed a hands-on demonstration of the Pebble, and she's impressed with how light the device is -- a little over one ounce -- and how nice the e-paper display looks. That video is below. We're also providing a link to Engadget's liveblog of the event, which just wrapped up.