Well talk about the speakers and the microphones, the interfaces, the design and everything else that Ive actually damaged on some of these watches as well. So theres a lot to talk about, but I want to break this down into a couple categories. The first category I want to talk about is the physical design. Okay, so lets go kind of back and forth between these starting off. The first win for the Galaxy watch is that it comes in two different sizes. We have the smaller version, as I have right here, which is more in line with the pixel watch about the same size and then theres also a 44 millimeter version that has a larger display, just kind of a scaled up version of this. And so, while the pixel watch is only available in 41, millimeters which for most people is probably okay, I personally really like smaller watches so Im happy with that. But if you have a larger watch or if you have an impaired Vision or if you have maybe larger fingers that its hard to use smaller displays, all of those would be reasons that you cant use. The pixel watch its just too small for some people out there. The Galaxy watch also allows for a standard 20 millimeter strap. So on the back. We have you know this classic little dual pin strap. You can push a little pin pop it out and put on any strap. You want. The Galaxy ones do look best because they have a little fishtail on the end, whereas the pixel watches at least right.
Now you can only use the proprietary pixel bands now eventually there will be third party straps out there, but what I would really like to propose – and maybe somebody can even make this – it would be so nice if there was like a little lug adapter that you Can put onto here and then use any of the other 20 millimeter straps that a lot of people already have from previous watches now going to a win for the pixel watch is actually the stainless steel build of this. I really like the stainless steel design. I think it looks nice, it feels really nice youre, durable, but in a weird way, Ill talk about that. What I mean by that in a second but stainless steel, in my opinion, just looks and feels a lot nicer than the aluminum were getting on. The Galaxy watch now aluminum is still a fantastic material, but its going to be a little bit softer and a little bit more prone to damage. In addition to that, we are getting a nice physical rotating device on Pixel watch. Being the rotating Crown, I think, having something that physically rotates is better than the digital rotation were getting on the Galaxy watch, but you can debate which rotations better like do you want a rotating crown or do you want a bezel, because the Galaxy watch has a Touch bezel, you kind of swirl around the outside and you can navigate the interface its nice, its good to use.
I mean, obviously, if it was a physical rotating bezel. I think that would be better, but its still there as it is getting back to that durability. Thing I said this is this is really where the plot kind of thickens. Here, I think its really interesting on the spec sheet. You would say the Galaxy watch should be less durable than the pixel watch, because it has aluminum versus stainless steel. But if you look at where the stainless steel actually is its almost entirely pressed against your skin and thats, not where you care about durability, where you care about durability, is everything above that which is the glass which is actually much less durable than the Galaxy watch. The Galaxy watch has a much more durable display and its also protected being a flat display with a nice chunky bezel around there. I never thought Id say nice, chunky, bezel, but its good when youre trying to protect the display – and as you can see here, I was rock climbing. I dont know why I I swear. I always do this and I damage the top of the of the watch. But that didnt impact the screen at all, because we have that aluminum up there, whereas on the pixel watch. If I were to create the same damage on this, it would very likely impact the display, maybe even crack the whole thing, because, first of all, its less durable glass and, second of all, theres, absolutely no metal on the top.
That is going to protect that. So, for that reason I would recommend, if you get the pixel watch, maybe you could mitigate this by getting like a little metal little guard right there. You can glue on Im, not really sure, okay, so thats the physical design. With these, you can leave, leave a comment, let me know which one you think looks better, but moving on to the displays, the displays are very similar youre, getting about a 1.2 inch display on both of these being the smaller Galaxy watch. Of course, the larger one has a larger display, but the pixel, I would argue, has a much better handling of the bezel around that. So neither one has a fantastic screen to body ratio theres a large black bezel around each of them, but because the pixel has that kind of waterfall Edge and its very, very curved, very high gloss as well. You really dont see that edge nearly as well as you can on the Galaxy watch, and on top of that, almost all of the the watch faces on the pixel are black on the outside. So you really dont see it, whereas on the Galaxy watch, a lot of them are white or other colors that make it incredibly obvious where the screen ends and where the bezel begins, but as far as the displays themselves go theyre, both very bright theyre, both AMOLED. Maybe you get a little bit more glare on the pixel watch, but again I can see them both very you know really well, especially when youre working out, I dont have an issue with that.
Getting into the fitness and the heart rate tracking and the overall accuracy of these well well start off by talking about what they both have. They both have an ECG. They both have spo2 sort of the pixel watch has spo2 sensors, but doesnt really show you that yet, but thats coming soon it gets confusing, but they both have a heart rate sensor and a lot of the other Classics wed like to see like GPS, accelerometer blah Blah blah stuff, like that Samsung, has some cool things added to their watch like a body temperature sensor, which also is not really used right now, for these companies love to add stuff that isnt ready when you get the watch, but something that is ready when you Get this watch is the body composition, so youre able to tell what your body fat percentage is and stuff like that. Not super accurate, but a ballpark estimate, which I think is a nice thing to have here, but lets talk about the accuracy when it comes to just a regular workout running your biking, okay, so starting off with the heart rate data. I compared these two watches to a known, accurate, Polar h10 heart rate, strap and and, as you can see in the beginning, the pixel watch for the first couple minutes. Just like my previous test. It was off, it was always low, but then, as soon as it locked on at about the five minute mark, it was completely locked up with the heart rate sensor the entire time, which is incredible.
It was one of the most accurate heart rate sensors Ive, seen on a watch just not for the first couple minutes. The Galaxy watch, on the other hand, Im not really sure what was going on here. It really struggled the entire time. There were sections where it was kind of close, but for the most part it was really inaccurate. Now I know that this was a bike ride, so its a little bit trickier for the watch, but pixel really had no problem with this. If you look at a previous run, I did with the Galaxy watch, it was slow in the beginning. It was. It was a little bit low on the end as well, but in the middle it was a little bit more accurate. So there are situations where it can be more accurate, but in general I think its safe to say. The pixel watch is way more accurate with heart rate and then the GPS was a completely different story, but also really interesting. So the pixel watch in the beginning, squiggles around a lot Im, not sure why that seems to be a bug. It happened on every workout did with this and then it added about an eighth of a mile before I even started going. But then, once I started going, it was pretty accurate for the most part. Now the Galaxy watch on the flip side, instead of adding an eighth of a mile actually subtracted an eighth or mile, because it didnt lock in the GPS.
Until I went about an eighth of a mile, and so the reason for this is because the pixel watch allows you to initiate GPS, but not start the workout and then just hit start after you lock into GPS. Whereas the Galaxy watch you hit start and it starts looking for GPS after you start the workout. I dont know why they do that. Then, looking at the duration of the workout uh in general, they were both fairly accurate. They both squiggled around a little bit but really really pretty close to where the trail actually was. So I was happy with the GPS overall, so I really like that. Google integrates with Fitbit and you get the Fitbit daily Readiness score and other things like that, but its so unfortunate that theres a paywall there. You have to pay to get some of that stuff to get more advanced sleep analytics to get that daily Readiness score. You have to get Fitbit premium and even though theres like a six month free trial with that what happens after that, you have to pay a couple dollars a month, just to see stuff that your watch is already reading for you, the Galaxy watch doesnt have any Paywalls and one final benefit with the workout in that realm – is that it also has Auto workout detection. So if you start running your biking, itll figure it out and automatically start tracking your workout, okay and then lets take a look at these theyre, both technically running.
Wear OS, but its a completely different version of War OS. So if you look at these, they both have a watch face. You can tap and hold it change the watch face if you swipe down on either one of them. You get your little drawer of Quick Settings instead of being laid out. Laterally like we see on the Galaxy watch its vertical on the pixel watch. If we swipe up from the bottom uh, this is very different on the pixel watch youre getting your notifications on the Galaxy watch, youre getting your entire app drawer, and this is a benefit I think they. They did a good job of this, where you can use the digital bezel to navigate here. But if youre on the home screen, you can use your digital bezel to navigate through the tiles on the pixel watch. The rotating Crown can bring you up and down, but it doesnt ever bring you through your little tiles your little widgets there. Additionally, when you look at the App Drawer, I think they did a better job on Samsung here as well, where, instead of having just a long list that looks really boring like an infinite scroll, Samsung has kind of a three tier or a three column list. I think its just a little bit easier to find your apps on Samsung, but the pixel watch has plenty of advantages in itself, including a very deeply integrated Google Assistant, that I think works really well, but also is very, very quick.
So if you just tap and hold the top button, you can ask it any question: you want itll, bring it up almost instantly and that can be setting timers for you or asking questions about the weather the world. Whatever any questions you have, obviously it does that very well now you have Bixby by default on the Galaxy watch, and you can change that if you want, but I just find that its a little bit better, a slight advantage on the pixel watch. Thats obviously Googles main priority there. We also have substantially differing features between two of these, so the Galaxy watch, like I said, has body compass position. Pixel has Google Assistant, the Galaxy watch has wrist gestures, to dismiss calls and launch apps, and things like that. The pixel watch at least right now, doesnt have that the Galaxy watch also allows you to customize multiple data screens, while youre on a workout so running, for example, whereas the pixel watch allows you to customize it, but only one data screen, so I dont know why They dont, let you have more its kind of not the best layout. Sometimes, when youre running you want to go to the next screen and see what your lap lap data is versus the overall run data things like that can be a little bit more useful on the Galaxy watch, but I think thats going to be a common Trend When we get into the actual apps, the Galaxy watch also has a more advanced run coach built into it, so that you can just start running and and itll.
Tell you like when to speed up when to slow down and its not just for running. It works for other workouts as well, and theres no paywall associated with that. But speaking of the apps like I said, this is really where you see a pretty big difference where it seems like the Samsung Health app, which is where you get your health analytics from the Galaxy watch, is a lot more like Nitty Gritty details. Theyll tell you more analytics about your run, including, like your overall air time like when youre a contact Time versus when youre up in the air, your step, asymmetry, your legs, bring stiff and its all these different analytics. That can be really useful in improving your form and how you run and figuring out what you need to work on on the flip side, if you look at the at the pixel watch, this is meant to be a little bit more streamlined a little bit less Of a like a fire hose of data and just show you like how well youre doing gamify it and thats, why its a great fitbits always been great for getting people to lose weight and otherwise just kind of get involved in getting fit in it and getting Fit and so they make it as simple as possible like for your sleep score, they give you like an animal that youre associated with, and things like that. You can dig a Little Deeper, but nowhere near as deep as youre getting with the analytics on the Galaxy watch.
As far as the apps go for customizing, the watches, I mean Galaxy wearable app and Google pixel app, really not that different from my perspective, but really the health is going to be. The big difference, like I mentioned, youre, also getting some advantages with the Google pixel watch in terms of the internals being 32 gigabytes of storage versus 16 on the Galaxy watch. That means you can download like more music or pictures or apps, and things like that on. Your watch as well as you also have two gigabytes of RAM versus one and a half again the pixel coming out ahead there. They both have Bluetooth 5 but 5.0 on the pixel 5.2 on the Galaxy, not a huge difference. They both have optional LTE. They both do have Wi Fi and NFC for contactless payments. The default, of course, is Google pay on the pixel watch, but you can still get that on the Galaxy watch and as far as the battery goes well, this is an unfortunate one for the pixel watch. So the pixel watch is really like an 18 hour battery life, which means youre not even getting through a full 24 hours. You probably want to charge it while you sleep unless you charge it at some point during the day the Galaxy watch I find you can definitely get through a full day, a lot more easily, really maybe a couple hours into the next day. So maybe a one and a half day watch from my experience, not like the 40 hour battery that some people are saying unless you really trim down a lot of the features but the battery life, you are getting an edge on the Galaxy watch.
That again, I really wish that we had that on the pixel watch, Googles, usually so good with their software optimization, but here it just, I dont know thats how it is okay. So , which is actually the better watch here well, the pixel watch gives you Fitbit on board, which is, in my opinion, better for weight loss and generally just getting into shape the Galaxy Health app is better for more advanced workouts and more advanced athletes. You get more premium metal on the pixel, but a tougher display and more protection on the Galaxy, so durability. The Galaxy watch pulls ahead there, the Aesthetics, thats kind of a toss up. I think I really like the way the pixel watch looks is a little bit. Sleeker kind of a pebble design, maybe Im just in the honeymoon phase of this watch, but I like how it looks youre getting deeper Google integration on the pixel watch, but deeper Samsung immigration on the Galaxy watch. That means you can have like seamless, switching for Galaxy earbuds, for example. The Galaxy also has standard straps, so you can switch out to a lot of different straps that already exist on Amazon and you have the digital bezel on there. You have a lot of hidden features like I said, with wrist gestures and things like that and above all else, theres no paywall and its a lower price youre. Looking at 280 dollars at the time of launch versus 350 thats the base model for each of these.
So if you are a value Hunter without a doubt, the watch 5 from Samsung is a no brainer, but the Google experience is hard to quantify and I wouldnt underestimate the pixel watch. So, between the two of these, which one do you think, is better leave a comment below for me personally, I will keep wearing the pixel watch because its so early and I need to learn more about it. Ive only had it for a little while now I plan to wear it at least another month, but let me know what you think between these two watches.1aHk_pA_Now
