While Google has provided the software for smartwatches, known as Wear OS for years now, in 2022, Google’s ventured into the world of hardware, releasing the Pixel Watch. This creates an interesting dynamic between Google and their competitors.
Often when big technology companies move into a space, they can have a first-mover advantage, but here Google is years behind and needs to work hard to catch up to its rivals. It is interesting that while Google’s flagship smart phones are priced aggressively, this Pixel Watch lands around the middle of the pack.
The Pixel Watch has a nice design and is packed full of features, so now it’s time for the full review.
Design
The design of the Pixel Watch feels very familiar and comfortable with a circular touchscreen watch face, a digital crown and detachable watch bands. The watches we wear on our wrists have been circular for decades and now that we’re in the era of digital display electronics that can be configured to almost any shape, I think Google played it way too safe with one.
The Google Wear Operating System is built for round watch faces and many other OEMs certainly go down that path, while understandable, this is from Google, a company known for its big bets on something different.
The watch itself is small in size, which is certainly relative to the size of the human wearing it, but as a 6’2′ man, the watch looks small on my wrist.
The screen itself is 41mm in diameter and while that may sound ok, when you accommodate for the fact that content on our mobile devices like notifications, is really designed for rectangular displays. This means as you scroll through content on your watch, you really only get a small section halfway up the display, to see the full width of text, the rest is cut off on the left and right at the top and bottom of the display, so you pay a lot to have that round watch face.
Apple’s flagship smartwatch offers a 49mm rectangular display that is streets ahead on functionality due to the design of the watch.
Features
Being a Google device, naturally, you’d expect it to allow you convenient access to Google services, without removing the phone from your pocket.
The Google Pixel Watch allows you to access Google Maps for navigation, Google Wallet for tap-and-go payments, Google Assistant for issuing voice commands as well as convenient access to Gmail and Calendar.
Back in January 2021, Google completed their $2.1 Billion acquisition of the fitness brand, FitBit and has since integrated those services into its portfolio. This was clearly a strategic move for which they likely already had plans to manufacture their own watch.
If you buy the Pixel Watch, you’ll find built-in apps like Fit Breathe, Fit Goals, Fit Heart Rate, Fit Workout, but also Fitbit ECG, Fitbit Exercise and Fitbit Today.
When you first launch these, it’ll launch the Fitbit app on your phone to get you signed in, but then acts as a data collection device to power your FitBit health progress over time. Your Google Pixel Watch will come with a 6-month FitBit Premium Membership, but after that, you’ll be up for A$14.99 per month or nearly 2x Twitter Blues.
One of the main features of any smartwatch and a key driver for people buying a smartwatch over a legacy watch, is its ability to keep you updated. These updates come in the form of notifications that would normally be occurring in your pocket, buzzing away without the ability for you to discern between critical updates and trivial ones.
When it comes to which applications support WearOS notifications on the watch, I experienced dozens and dozens of the apps I had installed, being supported. This can of course also be controlled through the Watch app, along with watch faces, settings and much more.
Customing watch faces is something you can definitely spend a lot of time on. Another form of personalisation for the Pixel Watch is the bands, available in both Active and Woven styles, these start at $69 and $89 respectively.
When it comes to the end of the day, I found you will need to throw the watch on its wireless charging dock. I skipped on this a couple of days and found the watch ran out of battery mid-way through the next day, so the battery life certainly isn’t the almost 2 weeks available elsewhere.
For those active types, you should know the Pixel Watch is water resistant up to 50 meters, meaning you can go for a swim, or even take a shower without worrying if the device can withstand it, it can.
Issues
The watch works really well as a device to keep you informed as you move through the world and really adds value at times when you can’t or don’t want to consult your phone for information.
Something I really struggled with is the size of the display, with a 41mm diameter watch face, the display is far too small and in next year’s revision, they at least need to offer multiple sizes.
With a larger digital display, and potentially a square shape, the content on the screen and touchpoints become far more usable and reduce the amount of scrolling to get through a list like your notifications or settings.
In some of the photos in the review, you’ll see it next to a Huawei watch and it looks tiny in comparison. Much like people’s personal preference around phone sizes, there really isn’t a one-size fits all answer to this problem, so multiple options make the most sense.
Price and Availability
The Google Pixel Watch is available now in a choice of 3 colours, Matte Black, Champagne Gold or Polished silver. You can personalise your watch by switching out the band to a leather, or woven band, rather than the plastic one that ships with the device.
The Google Pixel Watch costs A$547 for the Bluetooth/WiFi version I reviewed, or A$649 for the 4G + BT/WiFi version. This makes the Pixel Watch competitively priced, given the premium end of the market is held largely by Apple Watch. The Apply Watch Series 8 starts at A$629 and can run as much as $839 depending on your configuration. If money is no object, The Apple Watch Ultra costs A$1,299.
Overall
Google’s venture into the smartwatch hardware industry is definitely likely to ruffle some features, particularly among those OEMs that build smart watches on Google’s software and didn’t expect them to compete directly.
Being the maker of both hardware and software, Google does have a unique opportunity to go head-to-head with Apple’s very successful Apple Watch which is now many, many generations evolved, so there’s lots of catching up to do.
The detachable band is a really nice engineering solution, the only problem is, people won’t switch bands often enough to really appreciate this mechanism. After using the fairly inflexible plastic Active Band, I think I’d definitely spend the dollars to switch it over to a woven band, but wouldn’t invest too much if the display size is addressed in next year’s models.
A large screen would fit my wrist better and provide more pixels for content on the device. While you can’t go crazy, we have seen a growth in smartphone display sizes thanks to the extra utility that offers.
The big strength here is the number of apps that are supported by Wear OS (currently running version 3.5) and I was surprised to even see my SolarEdge solar inverter app also had watch support.
Reviewing notifications, particularly a quick SMS, Teams message or similar is definitely the largest use case I found for it, but answering the occasional phone call via Bluetooth, and controlling my Google Home devices like smart lighting is also a very neat inclusion. For those people that live really active lifestyles and want to measure everything, this definitely has a lot to offer.
Perhaps my favourite reason to have a smartwatch in 2022, is the ability to get your MFA codes on the watch, it’s a really convenient method and given you all should have turned on MFA wherever it is available, entering these codes is a frequent activity these days.
Overall I’m impressed with Google’s first effort here, but they do have some work to do to lead the industry. Lots of potential, time to iterate.
For more information, head to Google.