Google's frat Pixel smart watch
This is Google's frat Pixel smart watch We have the Google Pixel phones and the Pixels buds and a Pixel tablet coming later That could be fun to But yeah, this is their first crack at a Peel smart watch So know I'm not the only one who was very curious just waiting for this thing to see what it would look be what features they would include, how well it would work together what the design would be And I also know that I'm not the only on who's disappointed in a lot of this stuff. Tartak about it So when you first buy a Purel Watch for $350, you get a small 41 millimeter circular smart watch It comes in this one size but there's three colors, black, silver or gold, the black being the best in my opinion because it is matte black while the other two are very much glossy And the front glass carves way mor into a dome shape made of Grass 5 It's like a sleek little pebble Well, not a Pebble smart watch, but a literal pebble, a very lightweight pebble And there's only two buttons, the crown that rotates and pushes in and then a button right above t The crown, think, is really good. It sticks out enough. It's usable everywhere It has haptics when you scroll with it nice and clicky The button above it, not so much. It's pretty amall, doesnt have much travel It's all clicky, but because of the domed glass, it's pushed fairly far back, close to your wrist Luckily, you don't really use it that mach And then connecting the watch hands at the top and bottom happens through this clear me push and slide system it's clever I say, because it can connect bonds in this really seamless lacking way without any lugs or bully connections And the first party watch bunda do a really good job of lookingke they just put out of the side of the watch which is pretty cool. You might not care about this at all if you never change watch banda, but as somebody who changes watch bunds every single day to sleep in different band I just get used to this motion a lot. And so find it good when it's gond And this is also something very important to get right in the first generation because you don't really wanna have to change it three years in, because that makes everyone's watch bands that they just bought for the past three years incompatible So they re trying to keep this for a long time So hardware wise I think this thing is actually pretty beautiful I love the simple circle You can evily dress it down and keep it subtie, or you can just go sporta band or fabric band It seems to fit right into a lot of different places it's stainless steel It's water resistant to 50 meters And the back happens to be pretty simple to It's just the heart rate sensor, blood oxygen sensor, and an EDG And upfront, this 1,000 mit CLED display with a mostly black background through most of the software su it just feels like a black decorating on your wrist It's nice The only thing I wish is that it was bigger or if there was a larger version So don't even have that big of a wet but this thing, it's pretty small which some people will like but just wish i had a larger screen This watch is a 41 millimeter watch but that measurement is just of the actual outside of the casing When you actually get a look at this thing: the bezels are pretty substantial, and so the screen is down to about 29 millimeters across Now I don't actually hate these bazos. thank's like the notch on a phone A lot of people who don't actually use t can make a hig deal about 'cause if you just look at em they look ally but the mostly black background throughout the U coos a good job of hiding om, and you really only see them when you're looking for them, or if you set a photo as a watch face. Dut I really think a bigger watch would feel even more modern for the computer on the wrist meds like me. and it would also solve the number une problem of this hardware, which is battery le because the battery life is sh It's bad: It's just not good at all So on stage, Google said... What did they say? Up to 24 hours was then clam which probably should have been the first red flag. 'Cause if you think about 24 hours in itko 8:00 am. one day to 8:00 am the next day So one day and one night, but that's the maximum It's up to 24 hours So the always on display is off by default out of the box Iturned that on, and it's literally measuring your heart rate overy single second all day every day, every single second That's a lot of heart rate measurement So just for context, the Apple Watch, for example to checking periodically through the day and every five seconds while you're sleeping So now here, I'm getting more lika 18 hours tops which is not quite enough to go all day and then do a full night of sleep tracking So if you wanna co sleep tracking like me, burcally you have to charge it be a day every day, sometime in the moming when you wake up and then again sometime in the afternoon before you go to sleep, or it's just goona die. (chuckles) The thing drains about 20 to 25% battery just during one might of sleep tracking Now, mering your heart rate every single second to the second is actually sick Like it's pretty cool There a complication, they showed it on stage 100 of just the watch telling you every second, updating what your heart rate is I've never seen anything like it's the most accurate heart rate tracking I've ever tried in a wearable It's great for tracking workouts, heart rata ravery This to the Fitbit proviess going to work, no doubt but the other smart watches that are now years. the Samsung Galaxy Watch and the Apple Watch Series, they've all realized by this point that the way you save battery by pinging all these serveurs less offers Like the Battery Saver mode on the new Apple Watch Interally is just pinging heart rate and GPS less and turning off things like the always on display and the blood oxygen readings that are going on all the time in the background That's how you save battery So the fact that this watch does it all the time can be cool, but also can muke your battery all the time When i go to Bedtime mode and just tum on like the Sleep mode, it dont says stopping those heart rate measurements It continues to measure my heart rate constantly I will say, though, the saving grace that makes it unable is that it does change up very fest. It does come with this plastin pack charger in the box with a pretty weak magnet that feels like it could easily fall off also very first gen facing but could go from the 10 to 40% in like 15 minutes, which is amazing, and it can go from zero to 100 in about an hour. But okay, all that being said, the must clumsy thing about the Pivet Watch for sure is the fact that's also a Fitn of let me rephrase that Fitbit button watch so much n's the bolted onto the side. So where a Wear 05 3.5 here, it's ti It's pretty familiar You've got your watch face with a swipe down to get to all your customizable quick settings That's nico And then you swipe up to get to your notifications Your list of apps is one click of the crown away but your recent apps is behind that secondary button that I find I almost never use Then you can swipe sideway between a predetermined set of tiles that you can organize in the phone sop and these are like these big quick shortcuts to screens that you might use a lot Ongoing background things will show up at the bottom So if you have a notification, thewa alittle dor for your notification det If there's music playing it show a little animation for that And if you're in the middle of something like a workout and a new notification comes in show the logo down there for that too So to control any of the normal watch faces and complications, which I really like a lot of em you go through the Watch opp Makes perfect sense, but then for the fitness stuff, that where Fitbit, which foogle acquired in 2019, comes into play So when you set up the watch, you actually make a Fitt annount and start you with six months free of Fabit Premium, which is a subscription service So as a smart watch, I've mostly enjoyed using it It's been fine Like it's smooth It has a good performance but it does feel disjointed sometimes in ways where like you'd expect it to sync more things with the phone, but it doesn't Like for example, when I put my Pixel phone my Pixel phone in Do Not Disturb mode, the watch does not go to Do Not Disturb mode It keeps buzzing It has its own separate Do Not Disturb mode, basic stuff It feels like it should work together more than just being a Bluetooth accessory connected to your phone but then you do a bunch of fitness stuff, a bunch of workouts or whatever, sleep tracking, and then the watch dumps all of that fitness data into the Fitbit app Now there is still a Google Fit app, by the way. The watch doesn't really talk to it at all So what does that mean- for the future of the Google Fit app? I don't know, your phone can still talk to it and dump step counting in there, but then you're using two different apps to track fitness So I don't know (chuckles) And then even throughout the watch UL Q 回 all the Fitbit stuff, it's in there but it also just feels like they just dropped it in there on top Like instead of ECG, it's Fitbit ECG. and instead of exercise, it's Fitbit Exercise And then you start using these features, and the free six month trial. Before you realize, a ton of the stuff its collecting and that you're using like the breathing rate, heart rate variation sleep stage tracking, and sleep scores, all of that goes behind Fitbit $10 a month subscription paywall when the free trial is over It feels like you can see the are of the thinking where Google wanted people to use a Google Watchy so they bought Fitb And then as they integrated it they realized oh people love the Fitbit name, and they still want a Fitbit, so you can't remove that name or that branding So people now get the Google Watch that has Fitbit in it, and they use the Fitbit app but then there's also Google Fit in the background that they hopefully also choose to use sometimes, and they all don't really talk to each other. Now at this stuff, it doesn't make the rest of the parts of the water worst to use It all still works. It adds to this first gen feeling here where you can tell that there is a lot that can get better And this is the funny thing about reviewing products that you're hoping to be good. You end up sounding really harsh like a disappointed parent or something Basically, I think this whole Pixel Watch thing has a lot of potential, and I really do enjoy parts of it Having Google Assistant on my wrist everywhere in awesome Downlooding music to stream offline the turn by turn navigation with Maga the Voice to Text to respond to notifications, all that is great but they clearly still have some first gen earnings to do like the the charge the heart rate monitoring. that is constant that doesnt se to have any adjusting absity. the Fitbit integration, even the connectivity problems. I've had a little bit of connectivity us with mine here and there, but some of my tends who are also reviewing this watch right now. have had a nightmare at a time just keeping it connected to their phone. So I let them talk about that in the reviews So I was hoping this would be some amazing watch straight from the start, which I should know battar Like first gen stuff is never amazing right from the go