A Few More Thoughts About the Google Pixel Watch

When you think about it, the Apple Watch and Google Pixel Watch don’t really compete with each other directly, because the former only integrates with iPhone whereas the latter only integrates with Android. But just as the Pixel smartphone lineup was a response to the iPhone, the Pixel Watch is a response to the Apple Watch. And each plays a role in defining an ecosystem that Google hopes does, or will one day, compete with Apple’s.

Taking that line of thinking a bit further, the Pixel Watch does of course compete with the Samsung Galaxy Watch family, just as the Pixel ecosystem competes with the Galaxy ecosystem. The difference is that pieces are interchangeable on the more open Android side of this debate: you could, for example, use a Samsung Galaxy smartphone with a Pixel Watch.

This all puts Google in an interesting and awkward position. On the one hand, it is on Google to create a competitive ecosystem that will attract users to its brand. But one might argue that Android already has that ecosystem, and that the open nature of Android has created this Frankenstein’s monster in Samsung, which makes high-quality hardware, plus software and services of its own. So the bar is even higher.

But as any Pixel would probably admit, Google has struggled on the hardware side. And while this isn’t the place to rehash that sordid history, the online giant has only recently achieved a level of quality that I would describe as being generally competitive with Apple and Samsung. They’re not there yet, not really, but fans will put up with a lot—trust me, I’m patient zero here—and so we can forgive a few lagging issues. Those unfamiliar with Pixel as a brand or ecosystem will perhaps need more convincing.

And I am surprised to tell you that the Pixel Watch will help in that regard. This isn’t just a belated, me-too response to the Apple Watch, which first shipped in 2015 (the year before Google shipped the first Pixel smartphone), or the Galaxy Watch, which first shipped in 2018, though there is an element of that. It is also a unique offering with its own differentiating features, the most obvious being its integration with Fitbit. And it gives off the same premium vibe as the Pixel 7 Pro I’m using.

There are other interesting similarities, other ways in which the Pixel phone/Pixel Watch dynamic mimics that of the iPhone/Apple Watch dynamic. For example, the display on my Apple Watch Series 8 is crisp, bright, and colorful, and easily readable in any situation, and so it makes sense as a sister product to modern iPhones, which likewise have terrific quality displays. But the Pixel Watch is a bit of a step down in that regard.

That is, it’s not as bright, even with the brightness setting pegged at the highest level, but it is bright enough that I can just read it out in the bright sun with my sunglasses on. And like the Pixel phones, it struggles a bit with adaptive brightness: when I lift my wrist to wake up the display while outside, it comes on dim and then ever-so-slowly lights up to hit the maximum brightness it really needs to be using in that situation.

Curious about this, I looked up the respective specifications of each device to see whether, as I expected, that the Apple Watch can display more brightly. Apple describes its display as an Always-On Retina LTPO OLED display, while Google uses an AMOLED display with DCI-P3 color, and I had to look this up, but the short version is that Apple’s display technology is “better” in that it offers a high refresh rate but can also help save battery life by variably changing the refresh rate. Oddly, both can output up to a very bright 1000 nits, however. So I can’t explain why the Apple Watch is so much brighter, especially given that it’s set to something like 2/3 of maximum brightness while the Pixel Watch is up all the way.

To be clear, this isn’t a big deal: it may be somewhat amusing that I have to wait a second when I raise my wrist outside so that the Pixel Watch’s full brightness can finally come on, allowing me to see the screen clearly. But this kind of thing is part and parcel of the Pixel experience, honestly. Pixel fans just expect stuff like this, I guess.

Charging is another example.

While the iPhone and Apple Watch both charge very quickly, the Pixel Pro 7 and Pixel Watch both charge more slowly. Why this is so is unclear, and I’ve expressed my frustration many times in the past that Google should at least give Pixel smartphone owners the option to charge more quickly. I’ve also expressed my opinion that perhaps they don’t because they can’t, that there is something odd about its Tensor chipset that prevents this. The device does get very warm under certain conditions, for example, and I bet charging quickly is one of them. (Only semi-related to this, my Pixel 7 Pro has been losing its battery life more quickly than usual over the past two days, and I can’t figure out why.)

But the Pixel Watch also charges more slowly than the Apple Watch, a lot more slowly, I’m starting to realize. It must be the chipset. The Pixel Watch doesn’t use a Google chipset, it uses an Exynos 9110 SoC with a Cortex M33 co-processor. I had a vague memory that this chipset is a bit of out date, and looking it up, I can see that it debuted in 2018, which almost certainly explains its lack of fast charging. By comparison, the Galaxy Watch5 does support fast charging (the Watch4 did not), and its Exynos W920 SoC dates back to 2021 and uses a much smaller manufacturing process (5 nm vs. 10 nm). It’s just newer and offers better performance and efficiency.

I don’t know if Google was just trying to save money there or whatever, and I don’t think the Pixel Watch performs slowly. But an updated chipset and a bigger display—and, yes, faster charging, plus general Qi wireless charging support—would make for an impressive upgrade in a Pixel Watch 2.

Whatever. The point of this is simply that the Pixel Watch is to the Apple Watch as the Pixel smartphones are to the iPhone. They are all premium devices, and while the Apple versions outclass the Pixel versions overall, the Pixels are at least in the ballpark. They are competitive enough. And they provide those that loath Apple—or just prefer Android—with a viable alternative. I suspect the Google Pixel Buds family does the same for earbuds, though I don’t have much experience with Apple’s AirPods and can’t really weigh in on that part of the ecosystem.

What that all means to me, since this is very much about whether I choose the Pixel Watch or go crawling back to my Fitbit Charge 5, is that I’m pleasantly surprised by this device. I like the size, I like the display, and I like the functionality. There are pros and cons that I will continue to evaluate, but coming off of several months of Apple Watch experience, the Pixel Watch is familiar and similar in all the right ways (and in some of the bad, like one-day battery life). It is perhaps a minor step down, but again, in that same way that Pixel pretty much always is. And I do prefer Android and Pixel to Apple. That’s just me.

More soon.