 There are two smart watches worth buying today, the Pebble and Google's new Android Wear platform. But if you're looking for one, which do you buy? The Pebble, which has been around since the beginning of last year, has an easy to read black and white display and a fairly traditional digital watch design. The steel version is the one you'd want. It costs $250, but it's all metal and comes with both a leather and a metal wristband. The two Android Wear watches today, the $200 Samsung Gear Live and the $230 LG G Watch are plasticky and geeky looking compared to the Pebble and certainly don't look as nice as a classy dress watch. Both Android Wear watches have full color displays that light up when you get a notification or move your arm up to look at the time. But they're not easy to see in the daylight and they suck down a lot of battery power. You need to charge these things every day with your smartphone or you'll have a dead, useless gadget on your wrist by the next day. The Pebble on the other hand can last about 4 to 5 days between charges. Android Wear and Pebble can both show you all of your notifications on your wrist including email, text messages, and social alerts. But this can get quite noisy especially if you have an iPhone and a Pebble since every notification that hits your phone is now going to come to your wrist. There's other things that you can do too such as control music with your phone and count your steps with a pedometer. One of the coolest things about the Pebble is the ability to customize the watch faces on your wrist. You can do everything from a traditional analog design to text based displays to standard digital watch face. You can also install different apps to extend the capabilities of the watch. Moving on Android Wear, the real promise here is the integration with Google Now to show you relevant information when you need it. Are you at the airport and need to get your boarding pass out? No worries, your Android Wear watch is displaying it right on your wrist. You can also control the thing with your voice to send messages, perform Google searches, and more. Android Wear also supports apps so developers can make it work with their existing smartphone apps to do things like order pizzas, call a cab, or turn your smart lights on and off or more. If you use an iPhone, you really have no option except for the Pebble. But even if you use an Android phone, Android Wear watches are a tough sell at this point. They're still too plasticky, have to be charged too often, and are too clumsy to use to really be beneficial to most people. If you must buy a smart watch today, you're better off getting the Pebble. It looks nicer, lasts longer, and is easier to use than the Android Wear watches. But that doesn't mean you have to do anything right now. Chances are smart watches are going to get a lot better really quickly. They may very well be the next big personal gadget, but it's going to take some time to figure them out before they're on everyone's wrist.