Google Pixel Watch Mini-Review

The Google Pixel Watch is a terrific smartwatch with useful integrated Fitbit functionality. But the battery life is lousy and its slow charging speed undermines the entire experience.

So yes, I’m now 0 for 2 in my recent Pixel ecosystem reviews, having previously tried the Google Pixel Buds Pro only to find its active noise cancelation (ANC) to be inadequate for my needs. But I’m not sure why I feel the need to qualify that: ANC is a key reason, for me the key reason, to spend more on earbuds, and there are better choices out there. I wouldn’t want to wear Pixel Buds Pro on a plane, for example. So why even bother? (Spatial audio, I guess. But that’s still early days and most music services don’t support it yet.)

The Pixel Watch problems hit similarly, and I can already hear the obvious response to my complaint: just don’t use it to track your sleep, so you can charge it overnight. And … yeah, sort of. But if I did use this thing to track movement-based exercises that engage its GPS, I’m not sure it would make it through the day regardless. And isn’t sleep tracking a key reason to use such a product? Even the Apple Watch works well for this, despite only having a day of battery life. A reliable day of battery life with fast charging.

And that’s the real problem: where I adapted to the Apple Watch’s need for daily charging, doing so was possible because it charges so quickly. The Pixel Watch does not. And so yesterday, I decided to track just how slowly it charged after having previously observed that it took about 2 hours to get to a full charge. The device was at 41 percent when I attached it to its magnetic charge, and it took an hour and 10 minutes to get to an 85 percent charge (adding 44 percent). At the two-hour mark, it was at a 96 percent charge. That’s two hours to add 55 percent. Yes, I know the second half of a device charge tends to be slower than the first half, but that’s even more true for Pixel devices. It’s not good.

And sorry, Google, but these things really matter.

And that’s a shame, because the Pixel Watch is otherwise a surprisingly strong (if belated) response to the Apple Watch. Indeed, I prefer the Pixel Watch to the Apple Watch in many ways. And that starts with the form factor, which manages to achieve a Goldilocks “right size” middle ground between my Apple Watch (a bit too big) and my Fitbit Charge 5 (a bit too small), an effect that I think is helped by its delightful round shape. I went with basic black, but I suspect the champagne gold case would be an even classier look.

From a usability perspective, Google got almost everything right, too. This includes the hardware controls, a crown with an infinite spin that doubles as a button and a less-useful secondary button that basically just shows you recently accessed apps, and the software, which is about as intuitive as is possible: if you’ve used a Fitbit tracker or smartwatch, or an Apple Watch, it’s quickly obvious how everything works.

This simplicity and obviousness is what I remember from my years-ago experiences with what is now called WearOS, so it’s nice to see that Google didn’t change things too dramatically. From the home screen, you can swipe up to view notifications, down to access quick settings, and left and right to move between the tiles you configure, where tiles are either apps or specific app views. (For example, Fitbit has multiple tiles, for things like Exercise, Steps, Heart rate, and so on.) You can also tap on specific items on the home screen—in my case, Steps, Weather, and Heart rate—and clicking the crown always brings you back home. (Unless you are home, in which case it shows you all the apps/tiles.)

The positioning of this product is interesting.

Where Fitbit’s smartwatches are really just trackers with larger displays and a small selection of smartwatch-type apps, the Pixel Watch again seems to land in a nice Goldilocks place, this time for functionality. That is, it’s a real smartwatch, with a real apps and services ecosystem, and it arrives with a mostly completely fitness-tracking ecosystem that I know and understand.

Yes, there are a few missing Fitbit features, but only one of them, the lack of any SpO2 monitoring, is problematic to me. But it does automatically track walking and similar activities, contrary to my initial report, albeit without using GPS, which I don’t need anyway. The Apple Watch is more … just more. It benefits, I guess, from the attention that developers always pay to Apple platforms, but it’s also all a bit much.

I like almost everything about this device. The reminder chimes are pleasant and nicer and less annoying than those on Apple Watch. The messages app lets me read entire text messages and not just a subset (as my wife experiences on her Fitbit smartwatch). And the performance is terrific, and not what I had feared given its years-old SoC and my Apple Watch experiences. I even like the mobile app.

And that’s the thing: I went into this expecting to find an immature product that was uncompetitive and not ready for prime time, and I instead discovered that I like the Pixel Watch quite a bit. And would be keeping it were it not for the battery life/charging issues. Which I realize one might argue makes it uncompetitive and not ready for prime time. But let’s be fair here: Apple Watch has the same battery life issue, it just features (much) faster charging.

So, yes, I’m sending it back. But I will seriously consider a Pixel Watch 2 if it just solves the charging problem. It’s that close.