This is the pixel watch by Google. Why do I say that? Because for years there were rumors about a pixel watch, we hoped there would be a pixel watch and now, finally, there is its a smart watch running, wear OS by Google. No surprise there, weve seen where OS on the Samsung Galaxy watch. Five that I reviewed, but that was with Samsungs customizations theyre, one UI that made it sort of ties and like which was Samsungs old OS. So this one is a little bit different, a little bit simpler and all that sort of thing now. One thing that we have to watch out for here, because this is a mature industry, almost 10 years old at this point for smart watches right and when you jump in this light, is this going to seem a little out of date? Were gon na find out? Now well looks wise. This is certainly not out of date. Now I can understand. This is certainly a Quantum Leap from the Apple watch Ultra. We recently reviewed for those who, like big heavy utility, oriented or masculine watches, traditionally whats called masculine anyway. This is the opposite. Isnt, this is a very minimalist, very rounded pebble, like Zen looking watch, I think its very pretty, but I can understand if you want something a little more Hefty Macho might not be your thing now, where you do have a benefit of coming late into the industries. The early smart watches a lot of them, not the Apple watch, but a lot on the Android ones we saw they were very big and very heavy because component miniaturization, you know now, every year they can make things smaller, so the RAM chips, the squeezing in the Gps, Bluetooth, Wi, Fi cellular all of this stuff can take up less space, so this doesnt have to be a big honking launch.
That said, its available in only one size, 41 millimeter, which is usually considered the small wristed persons watch or the womans watch size. So for some of you, it might seem kind of small, I mean if its me, I have a 152 millimeter wrist, which is around six inches pretty small and you do get two band sizes in the Box. It comes bundled with this sport band here. Well, talk about the Bands a bit more later so thats, something to keep in mind its smallish, its minimalist. Its got, no sharp edges whatsoever in terms of design. I, like the look of Samsungs Galaxy watch 5, which to me looks pretty chill and organic, but this is a whole lot even smoother. There are just no right angles anywhere. The glass face is domed, which might look really pretty, but it is thus more vulnerable to damage because its the thing thats sticking out right, no bezel, certainly protecting it and a very high piece of Gorilla Glass. 5.. They call it 3D because its curved, but its Gorilla, Glass, 5 itll, be scratch resistant, but Im, I would say, if youre the mountaineering type, you might crack it the case for the price, which starts at 350 dollars and its only 50 bucks more. If you want to add on 4G LTE is recycled, stainless steel, they say its 80 recycled stainless steel. I assume the other 20 is not recycled stainless steel as opposed to some other metal.
I dont know so anyway, it that casing should be pretty durable and its a nice shiny finish. You can get it in four different colors, which you can see on screen right now, its a little bit of a two tone body on it. Obviously, just because you got the black of the glass and then whatever casing material is, the underside is also very dumbed. Im Im, not sure why, but it is so. You best want to use the puck charger that comes with the watch. Now I did put it on one of Samsungs: dual use Chargers that can charge cheap smartphones and also Samsung Galaxy watches. And if I pushed it down, it would work and it would charge but theres so much curvature that obviously youre not going to charge it by putting a weight on top of your watch right. So he bears that Comfort wise. I, the the dominess of the underside, where all the senses are, it doesnt feel uncomfortable and the way the lugs are designed, not that it actually has lugs. It has a mount much like the Apple watch Style. I want to design its got a good deal of radius to it. So that means, if you have a smaller wrist, it will curve around the wrist instead of sticking out and then getting pulled down. Yay the bands on this uh theyre, very capital esque, shall we say, and Google clearly didnt hide some things that watch os does on Apple land and all that sort of things in terms of user interface.
Elements like the power on power off long lozenge buttons, though you dont, slide those you just tap on them, but anyway, the the standard. Sport bands are a lot like Apple watch, bands or floralastomer as well, which is good, theyre, hypoallergenic, theyre, relatively speaking, breathe for something that is well a rubbery plasticky sort of material right. The clasping mechanism is a little bit different and more complicated. In fact, when you turn the watch on one of the things it does, it gives you instructions on how to actually put the watch on your wrist, which you wouldnt think would be necessary. But anyway, I, like the bands, pretty well theyre 50 bucks for this kind of band. This sport band here uh pricing is similar to Apple, actually, in some cases more expensive. They have Milanese coming the stainless steel Milanese mesh, which I always like that will be out in Spring of 2023 and those will be 130 dollars where Apple charges, a hundred dollars, making leather bands for 80 bucks, which is 20 bucks cheaper than Apple and then theres. A stainless steel, traditional mens link, sort of thing that cost two hundred dollars. Lastly, there are woven bands, sport bands that are sixty dollars, so this is a decent selection. Im sure third party ones will show up the band attachment method is unique, Ill, give them that its less fidgety and doesnt require a little thing on fingernails and all that sort of thing like Samsung Galaxy watches, do to swap them and its not as easy as The push button on Apple watches, to be sure there is a little bit of a push button on the edge each band and on one side, and while Google says that they were inspired by the way you put dlsr lenses on camera lenses, I mean Im a Photographer I put lenses onto my sleeve trust me.
This is not like that really its more fiddly and a bit more difficult, mostly because the button is a little hard to depress. You use the band to kind of depress. I dont know it could be easier. It could be worse, that is what it is when it comes to buttons. Just like the Apple watch and the Samsung Galaxy watch, we have a digital crown and it feels nice. I, like the crown and its easy enough to operate, and you have a side button as well serving the same functions as on those other two watches for the most part, the digital Crown to get back home or to see all your apps, the the right smaller Button is for things like initiating Google pay, which the supports and multitasking and all that that little side button is really hard to press in part because its on the underside of the curvature of the watch and its very stiff, and it makes an audible click. When you click it too, like you can hear it in the room its weird, so I kind of stopped using that button as much as I could in terms of performance youre looking at a four year old, dual core processor, on board here that we saw in 2018 Samsung Galaxy watches, so that could be unnerving but Apple. You know they like to add their own little clever, co, processors, and they have this cortex Pros co processor that can handle some things like keeping track of your heart rate, without using as much power as the main processor would, for example, this is an shall we Say not mature platform, so some performance hiccups could also have to do with that more than just the hardware, but I did see occasional animation, stutters and things like that, not egregious, but it reminds me of like several years ago in Smartwatch land when they just were Not that responsive and fasting on the occasionally only times it can be very Zippy when youre navigating through anything on the watch.
You have two gigs of RAM, which is more than usual, though, for a smart watch and you got your 32 gigs of storage. So you know any data, your keeping about activity tracking all that sort of thing: music, podcasts, Spotify stuff. You know local storage youve got that going on the watch. Face selection is cute pleasing you have informational ones. You have simple ones, and you have complications again not like. Unlike the Apple watch, you can add more information to they work. For me, Im a simple woman. I dont need the worlds fanciest watch faces or a choice of 500 to be happy with that. In terms of apps and the interface its its streamlined, its simple, but not in a bad way, I think in a good way I mean. Obviously we would love to see more apps for this. There are a variety of fitness, apps and stuff like that, and youve got your Basics. Youve got your timer youve got your world clock. You know the core stuff that you need notifications Top Notch. Google does that just great? If you want to talk to Google, you can do that. You just press that stiff side button there and you can talk to Google so that stuff is good uh. The one thing now pretty much all smart watches use a companion fitness app, whether its Samsungs Health app Apples, Health app in this case, because Google bought Fitbit several years ago. We have the Fitbit app, which is popular enough, and I would call it for the average persons exercise needs fine.
It. The user interface to me looks maybe a little like it could stand a refresh, but the data that you want is mostly there, but if youre, more hardcore, theyre, obviously more hardcore Alternatives, even Samsung and Apple have gotten more hardcore in the data they present and track. And all that sort of thing, and obviously Garmin and other fitness watches, but its okay, but the bad part, is and thats why. I would like to re review this in a couple of months, and I might because well get to hold on to this. I wheres my data that kept happening so when it comes to not notifications, boom theyre theyre there instantly for smart stuff, but but Fitbit. So I do sleep tracking. It automatically detects sleep. You dont have to tell it Im going to sleep at least were not back in 2016 or something with that and I wake up in the morning, and I look at it five minutes after I woken up, and it still says you havent been sleeping and Im Like, oh, no man, I got ta, do a review wheres, all my cheetah being tracked and then 10 minutes later he said hey, you have been sleeping, but I cant tell you much about it yet Im like oh snap, we are back in 2016. and then I Look at the phone and it says yeah I got some data here, Im crunching it and then within a half an hour.
I came back to the watch. Okay, Im hoping that this gets better within a couple of months of software updates right, because that integration is not real firm. Likewise with exercise tracking, so it doesnt have much in the way of automatic exercise detection. But if youve been walking the predefined time is 15 minutes Ill start tracking. You can change that to five minutes. Ten minutes. Whatever you want um, it does not the greatest job. You wont get any GPS data when it does automatic tracking, then theres. When I wanted to test it using the rowing machine right, I mean thats only slightly obscure, not very much so. The watch showed like 12 exercise types, workout types at first and there is no way to add more and Im like this is supposed to support 40 types. I waited overnight, 16 hours later, all 40 are on the watch. Without it saying I got an OS update or anything like that, so that wasnt it its these these early adopter kind of problems that I would like to see cleared out before. I can totally recommend this watch to people who are certainly Fitness addicts in terms of sleep tracking, its pretty good. Now I didnt use theres a Fitbit premium subscription. You do get six months to try it if you wish to, but I just stuck with the core standard features there and you do get sleep tracking and it does show you your different sleep stages and as to which is the most accurate.
Who, who knows, unless you go to a sleep study room to double check on GPS? I had no problems with speaking of OS updates. I did get an OS update immediately out of the box that addressed some GPS issues. So if you see some really early reviews before that, update came out and they said the GPS was wonky thats, not a problem anymore. As far as I can tell, it worked just fine as a standard single band GPS going out in a run with a good view of the sky. That sort of thing it does have a heart rate monitor. Of course it does not do the oxygen blood oxygen. Sensing it has the hardware, so maybe it will do it in the future. You can do an on demand ECG. There is no afib notification, however, as for other Creature Comforts, of course you have Bluetooth here. Primary way of communicating with the phone, like I said, LTE is optional. You can choose your carry. What that uses an East End, like all smart watches, do, and it has a lovely 1.6 inch OLED display that has 1000 its a brightness. I found it easy enough to see an outdoor Sunshine. Now you can do the lift awake thing and it brightens up. I found it was a little slower to do that when I was exercising Outdoors, so I was kind of trying not to stumble while lifting to wake again. Software can tweak that sort of thing it hasnt always on display – and this is where I feel like were going back to like 2016 again, where yay they just started always on displays, but they really tank the battery life they always on display will tank the battery Life here, so I actually wore it for sleep tracking and I assumed, like some other smart watches.
We Shall Not Be Named that when you detect your sleeping, it basically turns off the display, so youre not distracted by bright light in your eyes. Every time your hand goes anywhere near you and to save power. Well it it left the always on display on overnight it went from 100 charge to 54 for an eight hour sleep session. So that gives you an idea of always on display when we use a lot of battery power, thats too bad its a 294 billion amp hour battery and it charges. It takes about 80 minutes for like a zero to full charge. But you can get a pretty decent charge in about 30 minutes or so bringing at least up to 50 from nearly empty, but anyway yeah I mean I must have. I want to have always on display. Sorry so I guess Ill just live with it, but it would be hard certainly to go a full day without charging it up at some point, if you wanted to wear it at night for sleep tracking, so thats the pixel watch by Google finally, and it and Its got Cutting Edge, looking design and miniaturization its got some lovely bands, and it has some kind of out of day problems. Things like syncing, just with the fitness data and the fitness app and all that sort of thing so clearly its a work in progress. Right now it is their first attempt – and I will do a follow up on this one, because I think it probably will get better Im Lisa from mobile tech review be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more cool Tech, videos and thumbs up.GJRGMttyLtw
