Google Pixel Watch review

introduction

Last year, Google and Samsung joined forces to release a unified version of Wear OS – a more efficient, refined version that would remain exclusive to Samsung Watch devices for nearly a year. Now, with just a handful of Wear OS 3.5 smartwatches, Google’s Pixel Watch will be considered the gold standard for Wear OS smartwatches.

The Google Pixel Watch is Google’s first wearable Pixel offering, which promises a smooth and refined experience and hopes to be considered “the Apple Watch of the Androids”. Pixel Watch also brings the future of Wear OS as a platform, and many will be watching it to see if it brings an OS advancement.

Pixel Watch introduced features that Wear OS already had before Wear OS 3.5, but the operating system has been completely redesigned with greater refinement and better attention to detail in animations and sounds. The watch is made to be comfortable to wear all day and to look inviting and useful.

Google Pixel Watch specifications

• Body: Dimensions and weight (without strap) 41 x 12.3 mm, 36 g; Case in matte or polished stainless steel (80% recycled stainless steel); Active band in fluoroelastomer with soft-touch coating
• Screen: 1.2 “AMOLED, 450 x 450 round display, 320ppi pixel density, 1000 nit peak brightness, 3D Gorilla Glass 5 dome
• Straps: Detachable proprietary closure; Small and large Active Band straps included – fits wrists of 130-175mm or 165-210mm round
• Features: 5ATM classification (IP68), continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, stress monitoring, sports and fitness monitoring, pedometer, notifications, inactivity reminder, phone search, weather, calendar, music control, Google assistant, music streaming, calls and notification Sync to LTE, Wear OS app, Fitbit fitness (default)
• Sensors: Compass, Altimeter, Blood Oxygen Sensor, Multi-Purpose Electrical Sensor (ECG), Optical Heart Rate Sensor, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Ambient Light Sensor
• Software: Wear OS 3.5, pair with Pixel Watch app
• 32GB eMMC; 2GB SDRAM
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi b / g / n 2.4 GHz, NFC, LTE and UMTS (LTE model only), compatible with Android 8.0 or later
• Battery and Charging: 294 mAh; USB-C magnetic charging cable (50% in 30 minutes), 5W charging
• Colors: Obsidian, Charcoal, Gypsum, Lemongrass, Hazelnut

Fitbit integration is new to Wear OS and debuts on the Pixel Watch with a more comprehensive suite of health and fitness tracking features than Google Fit. Pixel Watch comes with six months of Fitbit Premium, which offers advanced health tracking features and access to an entire library of exercise videos and mindfulness content like guided breathing and meditation.

The Google Pixel Watch starts at an expensive $ 349 in the US ($ 399 for the LTE model), which makes it $ 50 cheaper than the Apple Watch, which starts at $ 399. However, at its price, Google stands preparing its customers with high expectations from the watch.

Let’s see how things stack up on the Pixel Watch. Here is an unboxing of the LTE Matte Black / Obsidian model.

Unpacking

The Google Pixel Watch comes bundled with a USB-C magnetic charger and a spare active strap for smaller wrists. The big one is pre-installed on the Pixel Watch.

Google sells other types of wrist bands. There is an elasticated strap, a textile strap, a textured leather strap and a two-tone leather strap.

Design and comfort

For Pixel Watch, Google has opted for a sober and minimalist look. The watch is round, with its protective glass layer formed into a dome that elegantly wraps around the circumference of the Pixel Watch. Meanwhile, the watch case is made of stainless steel, which is made up of 80% recycled material.

The finish of the watch case will depend on the coloring. Our review unit is Matte Black with Obsidian Active strap, and it’s the only combination that doesn’t have a glossy finish. There is also Champagne Gold with Hazel Active strap and Polished Silver with Charcoal or Chalk Active strap.

The bottom of the watch case is domed and smooth, with some decorative lines throughout.

There is a speaker grille on the left side and the rotary knob on the right. There is a button right above the dial and there is a microphone on either side of the watch case.

The Active strap is flexible and feels soft to the touch. is made of fluoroelastomer, a fluorocarbon-based synthetic rubber material that is highly resistant to thermal stress, keeps oils out and is hydrophobic. This material is generally used in difficult chemical applications.

Pixel Watch uses a proprietary mechanism to attach and remove the wrist strap. Google likened its action to installing and removing a camera lens from its body: a small button next to each side of the strap is pressed to release the strap by rotating it along the curve of the watch.

Interestingly, there are four pogo pins behind the top fascia. This is a back door or Google may have plans to release accessory bands with additional features. Four pins indicate that both power and data should be accessible through these.

Google Pixel Watch comes in a single size option which is on the smaller side. It exudes a sleek, minimalist vibe with its round, domed look. This shape is reminiscent of Google’s other home products, most notably the Nest thermostat and Nest Home mini.

The shape of the Pixel Watch makes it very comfortable to wear every day and sleep on it at night. It is easy to forget that you are wearing it thanks to its lightness and comfort. Its sleek, sleek design means it won’t snag your clothes or get in the way when you’re working with your hands.

Screen

The Pixel Watch uses a sharp and vibrant circular AMOLED display and the 3D dome that protects it is made of Gorilla Glass 5. It measures 1.2 inches in diameter and has a resolution of 450 x 450 px – this means a pixel density of approximately 320ppi.

Google Pixel Watch supports a brightness boost of up to 1000 nits and even supports DCI-P3 color space with deeper colors and higher contrast. The screen supports adaptive brightness Although small, this screen is super bright and easy to see outdoors.

The display supports always-on sunlight enhancement and is configurable to work in any orientation on either wrist.

Performance and connectivity

Google Pixel Watch is powered by the Exynos 9110 based on the 10nm process. This is the same chipset as the Samsung Galaxy Watch, Watch Active, and Galaxy Watch 3. On the Pixel Watch, it’s paired with the Cortex M33 coprocessor, which handles low-power tasks like always-on display updates and background heart rate tracking.

The Exynos 9110 is a dual-core chipset clocked at 1.15 GHz, which uses Cortex-A53 cores. Graphics are handled by the Mali-T720. The LTE modem supports 150Mbps down and 75Mbps up. There is also support for GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo.

This chipset is four years old at this point, which makes us wonder if Google intended to release the Pixel Watch much earlier or if it was done to reduce production and make up for supply chain delays that began in 2020.

Pixel Watch software and app

Wearing OS 3.5

Pixel Watch runs Wear OS 3.5. If you’ve been using a Wear OS smartwatch for the past couple of years, everything will look familiar. From the main watch face screen, open for the notification, swipe down for the quick settings panel, but the Google Assistant no longer has a dedicated feed page – it didn’t need one anyway – so swiping left or right will will move the clock squares.

Otherwise, everything else is pretty much exactly what Wear OS was before. There is, however, more refinement in the UI, everything feels snappier and more streamlined, and there is more attention to animations and transitions between screens. There is also a lot of customization for all the included watch faces.

Notifications arrive faster and more consistently than before, and now it takes one or two fewer taps to reply to a message.

Voice input works better than previous versions of Wear OS and works more reliably than before. However, it won’t add all the punctuation for you, as it does on Tensor-powered pixels with assistant voice typing. This means that when paired with a Pixel 6 or 7, the Pixel Watch will need you to verbally speak the punctuation marks while your smartphone does not.

Wearing OS 3.5 on the Pixel Watch doesn’t make a drastic change, but it does modernize the user interface with a necessary overhaul for years.

The rotating dial works smoothly and makes it easy to navigate the watch, but we found it didn’t work in a couple of third-party apps. While it doesn’t affect functionality, it’s worth noting and could be fixed with an app update.

Pixel Watch app

The Wear OS app no ​​longer exists. Starting with wearables running Wear OS 3.5 and above, it will be up to each manufacturer to have their own companion app. In the case of the Pixel Watch, this is the Pixel Watch app.

The setup process isn’t too different, but the app has a more comprehensive set of features and options for setting up the Pixel Watch, customizing watch faces, adding accounts, accessing the Watch Play Store, and l app installation and you can manage the Pixel Even the eSIM of Watch. You can also manage Google Assistant settings, add Google Accounts, and add cards to Google Wallet from within the app.

Pixel clock setup

Pixel Watch app

One thing that’s missing in both the Pixel Watch app and the Pixel Watch is a menu showing battery usage. There is also no support for the Pixel Watch app on iOS. There are other Wear OS offerings that work with iOS (Fossil confirmed it will continue to work with iOS devices), but Google has decided not to offer the Pixel Watch a limited experience and would rather not compete with the Apple Watch.

Health Tracking and Fitbit App

During the announcement event, Google made sure to highlight that the Google Pixel is equipped with the most accurate and fastest heart rate tracking system Fitbit has ever made. It can calculate heart rate at a sampling rate of once per second. This means that you will never have to wait to see your heart rate and there is no delay in reading a sudden increase in heart rate during activity.

The Pixel Watch has an onboard ECG. For those interested in heart health, an ECG test can detect when the wearer is experiencing abnormal heart activity and can help in the early diagnosis of heart conditions. Keep in mind that this test is not passive, the wearer must open the app, touch the dial with a finger and remain still for 30 seconds.

Although Pixel Watch is equipped with a blood oxygen sensor, it is not possible to take a blood oxygen measurement. Normally, watches with this type of sensor can detect blood oxygen levels during sleep or during the day. This information has been shown to be useful in the early diagnosis of COVID-19 infection and respiratory problems such as sleep apnea.

Pixel Watch supports automatic training tracking and will record an activity as such after it has been performed for at least fifteen minutes. This is in addition to the usual stats tracking suite – steps, heart rate, and sleep. Stress management and sleep heart rate stats are locked behind the Fitbit Premium paywall.

Coming from Google Fit, the default fitness experience on the Pixel Watch is a significant change. However, you can still use Google Fit on the Pixel Watch if you prefer.

If you’ve used Fitbit in the past, you’ll be familiar with the app layout. The Today tab shows all the fitness tracking stats for that day, and you can also scroll through the previous days. You can also customize this screen, reorder or remove items from this screen. There are some pockets of information that aren’t available and tapping them would ask you to purchase Fitbit Premium.

Fitbit today

There is enough free content for the person who is looking to improve their overall health. The Discover tab shows suggested workouts and features available in the app. Many of the tips are free, but there are a few here and there that require Premium membership.

Fitbit card Discover

There are guided programs to improve sleep, prepare your body to become more active, change your eating habits, and introduce a new style of fitness. All of these programs take place over several days (some a couple of weeks). They don’t have the Premium label on them, so you may want to engage in a guided program only to find that you still need a Premium membership.

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The app’s Community tab allows you to view a feed of other friends using Fitbit, people can share their workouts or other fitness results, even sleep results if you really want to show your friends how badly you slept.

Fibit community

The last tab is just a Premium tab and is available exclusively as a landing page for people to find where to subscribe to Fitbit Premium.

The Fitbit platform offers a premium subscription that offers additional information on overall fitness and health and additional health tracking statistics. There’s also access to wellness reports, stress management analysis, a library of workouts, guided breathing, and video meditations and recipes.

In the US, Fitbit premium costs $ 80 per year or $ 120 per year at $ 10 per month. We haven’t tested the premium service yet, but each Pixel Watch comes with six months of free Fitbit Premium.

Fitness monitoring

There are 40 training modes, and the watch’s built-in GPS is capable of tracking those involving distance to go such as running or cycling. We have mainly tested it in cycling, walking and yoga.

The heart rate monitor the Pixel Watch is equipped with is excellent. There is no delay in calculating heart rate and it certainly isn’t delayed during a workout. With previous smartwatches, I have experienced very inaccurate heartbeats during workouts, especially when switching from jogging to walking. Even with sweat running down my arm, which is particularly hairy, the Pixel Watch has always been able to give me an accurate reading that I could predict when it went down or up.

We love that the Fitbit workout app allows you to configure your watch to enable the always-on screen during a workout, even if it’s not globally enabled. This makes it much easier to take a look at the training stats at the expense of additional battery drain.

Battery life and charge

The Google Pixel Watch is equipped with a 294 mAh battery, regardless of whether it is an LTE model or the Wi-Fi / Bluetooth variant. Google advertises the Pixel Watch can last “All day,” which is another way of saying it won’t last much longer than a day.

This is pretty much the case. Pixel Watch is a wearable device that you can expect to charge every day and may need an extra charge during the day at times. If you intend to monitor your sleep, you will need to make sure you have enough juice to survive the night. Based on our tests, 15% to 20% should be enough to keep track of a night’s sleep and still have a small percentage before having to throw it on the charger in the morning.

Battery life isn’t strong at all. The overnight sleep tracking will use between 8 and 15% with the always on feature disabled or up to 30% with the always on view enabled. Fitness tracking will consume quite a bit of battery and even more if GPS is enabled for training.

Streaming music via Bluetooth directly to the watch will drain a lot of power. In our streaming test on a pair of Pixel Buds series A from Pixel Watch on LTE, the watch ran out of battery by 20% after about 30 minutes of streaming. If you plan to stream music over LTE and track your workout with GPS, you can expect to lose about 50% of power after such a workout. This is, of course, the most energy-hungry activity you can do with the Pixel Watch.

In most cases, the Pixel Watch should exceed 24 hours, if the always-on display isn’t enabled and as long as you don’t stream music to your Bluetooth headphones via LTE.

In our experience, the Pixel Watch recharged quickly whenever it was launched on the charger. It almost makes up for the below-average battery life, but not quite. The watch heats up significantly when on the charger but thins out when higher percentages are reached.

Google advertises the Pixel Watch can charge up to 50% in 30 minutes. In our tests, we were able to get 47% battery after 30 minutes with the charger from a fully discharged battery. A full charge took 1:22 hours, just around the 80 minutes advertised by Google. When it is completely exhausted, the watch automatically turns on again after being charged up to 10%.

Although Pixel Watch uses a magnetic charger, Qi is not officially supported. This means you won’t be able to charge your watch using a regular wireless charger, nor will you be able to use reverse wireless charging on the Pixel or any other smartphone to charge your watch. You can only use the included charger to turn on the Pixel Watch.

Verdict

Google Pixel Watch is an attractive and stylish Wear OS watch with a lot to offer. At $ 349, the price is higher than Apple’s $ 249 entry-level Apple Watch SE. Although the Pixel Watch is priced in the premium range, the experience feels entry-level in its current state.

The Pixel Watch definitely looks like a first generation product, but it still lacks features. For example, the Pixel Watch includes hardware for detecting blood oxygen, but it hasn’t been enabled on the Pixel Watch.

Pixel Watch performs exactly as before, with the biggest Wear OS update being a cleaner and improved user interface and a much fancier experience than before. However, the Pixel Watch doesn’t provide anything new a part from that. A Google rep confirmed that the Pixel Watch will receive feature dips in the future, although a timeframe has not been provided. Remember, Pixel phones get feature drops every three months.

At $ 349 in the US and even more in other markets, the Pixel Watch is a tough sell. While it does more things full-featured smartwatches can do in a sleek, premium package, it’s still far from the same kind of experience Apple Watch users have come to expect.

If style and sleek aesthetics are enough to sell this watch for you, that’s great for Google. The truth is, Fitbit sells fitness watches that offer more fitness tracking sensors and multi-day battery life for a lower price than the Pixel Watch. Which one you choose will depend on whether you prioritize fitness tracking or having a smartwatch companion to do things with your smartphone on your wrist.

We can’t recommend the Pixel Watch, not in its first generation. While it’s a nice watch with Pixel branding and Fitbit integration, that’s all it has to offer. The skinless version of Wear OS is a welcome upgrade, but the high price, poor battery life, and metallic speaker make it hard to recommend.

Professionals

• Elegant and sinuous look with slender lines.
• Wear OS 3.5 offers more beautiful watch faces with a clean and snappy user interface.
• Fitness tracking is an improvement over Google Fit
• Very comfortable for everyday wear.
• It recharges quickly.

versus

• Weak speaker for phone calls.
• Battery life barely lasts a day with light use.
• Not compatible with Qi wireless charging.
• Expensive.