At the beginning of March, Pebble officially introduced the Pebble Time Steel, the company’s more high-end Pebble Time variant.

While its presence on the Kickstarter page was practically a foregone conclusion by the time the device was unveiled in the first place, considering how quickly the Pebble Time project was funded, it was still a nice addition to the wearable family. While Pebble Time backers saw shipments begin at the tail-end of May, and even pre-orders go live at Best Buy at the end of June, time Steel owners have had to wait a bit longer.

Luckily, it’s about over. Pebble has announced that its Pebble Time Steel will go intoproduction this week, and the company plans to have shipments kick off by the end of July. That’s for the folks who backed the Time Steel project out of the gate. For those that backed it a few days later will more than likely see their tracking information populate sometime in early August.

Pebble intends on shipping its initial Pebble Time Steel orders with both the leather and steel bands for the wearable. However, for later shipments the steel band will ship out to backers at a later point in time. It’s still a nice deal, though, considering the steel band won’t be sold with the Time Steel, but as an extra accessory at some point in the future.

Did you back the Pebble Time Steel? Do you think it’s a worthy competitor to the Apple Watch?