Google Pixel Watch 2 First Impressions

This morning, I finally found the time to unbox and set up the Pixel Watch 2 that arrived alongside my Pixel 8 Pro.

And that took a lot longer than I’d expected, and involved an incredible amount of configuration. In all, it took over 45 minutes from the moment I opened the box until the Pixel Watch 2 was ready for my wrist. Ouch! Talk about making a bad first impression.

There’s no good reason to step through the entire process, and to be honest, I don’t really want to relive it. But I did take almost 50 screenshots of it, which should give you some idea of how arduous and time consuming this process was. So here’s the short version: You should know what you’re in for if you buy this thing.

The Pixel Watch 2 comes in a small, Apple-like box that unfolds like origami to reveal the watch itself in the middle, the charger on the right, and a longer strap on the left.

I have big wrists, so the first thing I did after unboxing it all was to swap out for the longer strap. And as I recalled from my original Pixel Watch experience, I like the button push/sideways slide method that Google developed for doing that. It’s easy to learn and hard to do by mistake.

Then, I placed the Watch 2 on its charger to power it on. The initial boot was longer than expected, given the improved hardware in there, but this is hopefully not something I’ll experience regularly. When it finally came on, it told me to continue on the phone. So I started with the Fitbit app, which forced me to remove my Charge 3 to add the Pixel Watch 2. (You still can’t use two Fitbit trackers.)

But that was a mistake because you also can’t add a Pixel Watch 2 to Fitbit directly, you have to use the Pixel Watch app first. (I had let the Pixel 8 Pro install this app when it prompted me when I set up the phone, knowing I’d be going through this later.) And that worked: I paired the watch to the phone, signed into my Google account, copied the sign-on to the watch, stepped through a series of instructional and promotional screens, and was finally prompted to connect the watch to Fitbit.

OK, back to Fitbit. After an interminable wait connecting the watch to Fitbit—this is often a problem, in my experience—I perhaps foolishly agreed to the free six-month Fitbit Premium subscription, stepped through an incredible number of screens explaining how magical my world has become, learned about safety features and Google Assistant, created a lock PIN, configured Google Pay, selected (and deselected) watch apps, installed a software update (which, yes, contributed to the downtime), dealt with a variety of permissions prompts, was prompted to update the Fitbit ECG app on the watch (using the Play Store app on the watch, no less), and then was finally allowed to actually the use the damn thing.

Woof.

I was ready to just move on with life, but I did spend a few minutes swiping through the available watch faces in the Pixel Watch app, each of which can be customized with color schemes, layouts, and complications. I settled on a simple face (“Large Scale”) with a large time display, a single large complication (I chose heart rate), and a pleasant “Avocado” (green) color scheme. One advantage of the watch over my Charge tracker is the screen, and this is much easier to read.

And then my day finally started. This week is a mess: I have less than a week between our flight home from Mexico City this past Tuesday and my flights to Seattle early next Monday, and I have lots to do every single day in between. Today’s schedule involved leaving the apartment right after First Ring Daily and driving 40 minutes to a doctor’s appointment, so I had to shower and dress before the podcast, with no time for a walk. And after being out all morning, I have a meeting at 3:00 and then a Hands-On Windows podcast recording from 4:30 to 5:30, followed by a birthday dinner with my sister and brother-in-law. So there just wasn’t a lot of time.

Complicating matters, I’ve not yet swapped the eSIM out of my iPhone and into the Pixel 8 Pro. So I headed out into the world today with the iPhone navigating me to an office I’d never been to before and the Pixel Watch 2 on my wrist. The iPhone’s Fitbit app correctly switched over to the new device, and I have limited watch options—reminders to move, main goal, and high and low heart rate notifications—that I can configure from there. But it won’t sync (possibly because I never paired it to the iPhone). But that’s OK: I will be moving to the Pixel 8 Pro full-time as soon as I can find the time to deal with T-Mobile and their idiotic and manual eSIM swap process.

As I write this, it’s almost 2:30 pm and I’ve done nothing even remotely resembling exercise, so the Fitbit app has little to tell me beyond what I already know. The Pixel Watch 2, like its predecessor, is small and cute, and though it’s not actually any smaller than my wife’s Fitbit Versa 4 smartwatch, it sort of seems smaller because of the circular shape. Subjectively, I like this look better than the Apple Watch.

Obviously, the battery life will be an issue: My Charge tracker was averaging about six days of battery life, and the Pixel Watch 2, like its predecessor and the Apple Watch before it, will need charging every single day. It’s at 69 percent now and it was 100 percent full at 9:00 am. I will have to figure out when to charge it because I’m curious about its sleep-tracking functionality, something I feel has been a weak spot on Fitbit for a long time. The good news? It charges faster and can add a 50 percent charge in 30 minutes.

On that note, the Pixel Watch 2 should also be faster than its predecessor, but I never really had issues with that, and so far I can’t tell anything. It should also offer more accurate health tracking, thanks to new sensors and an improved AI heart algorithm. A new electrodermal activity (cEDA) sensor will apparently notify me when I’m stressed, so I can expect to see that happen. And a new skin temperature sensor will allegedly improve sleep monitoring. We’ll see.

There are new safety features too. The OG Pixel Watch had Emergency SOS and fall detection capabilities, the latter of which I triggered one time tripping up the stairs. But the Pixel Watch 2 adds proactive safety features like Medical ID, Emergency Sharing, and Safety Check, and in addition to configuring these things early on, I listened to a Made by Google podcast episode on the way home from the doctor that explained how they work. But I hope to not have to test any of that.

Pixel Watch 2 is also billed as “the only smartwatch with all of Wear OS 4’s capabilities,” which is kind of curious. Ultimately, the Pixel Watch 2—like the Apple Watch—is probably more than I really need, but I’m willing to give it a go. And this time, there’s no hard stop on evaluating it since I got it for free. I’ll just use it—or not—for as long as I’d like.

So here we go.