First, a bit of context here: Ive jumped between Samsungs tizen, watches and wear OS over the past few years and most recently I was wearing a 5th gen fossil HR and if you know anything about the state of wear OS 2 watches youll know how rough that Experience was compared to the newer Ware OS 3., its hard to quantify this, how much better it is compared to where wear OS was just a couple of years ago and thats just as well, because its taken what seems like forever for the pixel watch to actually Arrive giving Samsung almost a year and a half of effective platform exclusivity. But for me and the way I use smart watches, the weight has been worthwhile and so, with the benefit of a couple of months of use and some new software updates its time to take a look at why I love the pixel watch and the one two Places where I think theres still some work to be done, take a step to subscribe and well jump in Music and what youre expected to wear all the time is, first and foremost a fashion item, and the pixel watch definitely does not disappoint in this department. Sure you can say its just a round Apple watch and from a distance thats kind of true, but Google has still nailed it. In my opinion, from a design perspective, the pebble like aesthetic is simple, futuristic and elegant, while being neutral enough to be worn by any gender.
The large glass Dome makes gesture input, feel natural and its framed simply by this stylish stainless steel casing something I dislike about. A lot of smart watches is how they try and look like a traditional timepiece and often in the process just end up looking cheap by comparison. It reminds you what the watch isnt, not what it is. The pixel watch, like the Apple watch, doesnt try to be something that it isnt, that same design philosophy is what I loved about the original Moto 360 all those years ago. That seems like it was forgotten by a lot of smart watches that have come and gone since then Im currently using the active band that came with my pixel watch. While I wait for the nice looking good pricey metal bands to become available its fastened. Similarly, to an Apple Watch kind of an attached via a push and slide mechanism, thats kind hard to capture on camera that ensures that no lugs are needed in keeping with the watches Ultra Clean, uncluttered appearance. Physically. This thing is a lot smaller than I was expecting good news if you have smaller wrists but less ideal for information density, a tiny watch means a tiny display, plus the relatively large bezels of the pixel watch means its sometimes harder to glance at a message or An email than, for example, Samsungs, larger Galaxy watches, but the bezels, if you like, arent something that you really notice otherwise, because the design of most of the watch faces and the wear RS 3.
5 itself. More generally theyll disguise the boundaries of that OLED quite effectively. Ive. Never had any trouble seeing the display even in bright Daylights, though it is January right now and right, direct sunlight, isnt exactly in abundance in this part of the world Music, as a wireless veteran, the layout of the software here is pretty familiar to me. The watch face lives in the middle. Then you swipe right or left to hop through your tiles down for settings and up for notifications. Whats less familiar is the level of Polish and performance in this product, far smoother and Superior design wise compared to any previous war. Os watch it shines an even brighter light on how decrepit that old software was towards the end. Meanwhile, the crown brings up your app list, and this upper button here is used for multitasking at once for recent apps or twice to launch back into the most recently used app, and you can use double tap of the crown to launch Google pay, even though I Still feel like kind of an idiot reaching over to pay with my watch, the crown itself calls to be used for vertical scrolling, of course, and the haptic feedback that accompanies that is pretty close to the sharpness of the nudgers produced by Apples. Taptic engine its subtle, but always noticeable. This is where we get to my particular use case for me. If it takes more than a few seconds to accomplish something on the watch Im just going to pull up phone instead, so I tend to have just a small handful of apps that I actually use with any regularity, otherwise Ill just be checking the time the weather May be quickly replying to a message and despite the small display size, the pixel watch is actually great for this kind of use, even Googles, tiny keyboard here, isnt horrible to use despite the screen size, Google assistant is of course built right in as well, and I Found it really useful for the occasional times where I want to start the timer or something or set an alarm, and maybe my phones in my pocket.
Fitbit is another one of my regular apps and, of course, a big Focus for this device, which is the first Google branded product to have type Fitbit integration, mostly Ive, just used it for tracking runs, as opposed to actually viewing any of my information in the Fitbit App on the watch, if I want to do this Ill, just use the much larger display on my phone. The Fitbit exercise. Ui, though, is great and Ive noticed the distance tracking for runs to be a bit more accurate than the old Fossil watch. I was using before a lot has been written about the Fitbit features. This watch doesnt have, for example, it cant, detect, atrial, fibrillation or irregular heartbeats and other features youll find on an actual Fitbit Fitbit like automatic starting of exercise, tracking blood oxygen and skin temperature. Monitoring are absent too, so the Fitbit branding youll, find on the box perhaps sets expectations a bit high, but for the kind of exercise tracking I do day to day I find it perfectly fine and for the design and software experience I get with the pixel watch. I find its a worthwhile trade off whats less great is you need to subscribe to Fitbit premium to get insight into stats beyond the past week, those six months of Fitbit premium are included with the pixel watch, as well as the way Google fit integrates with it. Since Fitbit has replaced fit on the watch itself, Fitbit can sync to Google fit through the Health Connect app, but its not always clear how much Telemetry is shared between the two, for example.
Gps information for runs is less detailed in fit than Fitbit, whereas that detail was available in fit through older wear OS watches help connecting Google fit in its current form also seems like kind of a stopgap solution, and I cant help thinking that Google Fit itself has All the Hallmarks of an app headed towards the Google graveyard thats, not a huge deal if you dont, have historical data tied up in Google fit. But if you do like me, theres still no official way to transfer that over to Fitbit, which pretty obviously seems to be Googles. Platform of choice for Health Data going forwards. Battery life is another area where this watch was criticized in a lot of early reviews and granted. I havent been using my pixel watch on LTE, but for me its been perfectly fine. I never had it run out of juicing under a day and typically ended with 20 or 30 remaining at around midnight thats, with typical use for me, involving taking off the charger at 7am, using to track a 30 to 40 minute run and the rest of the Time mainly using it for notifications, timer checking the weather that kind of thing thats not hardcore use, but I did have the always on display, enabled and was using it obviously both indoors and Outdoors. The pixel watch didnt give me the kind of multi day longevity that you can get out of some of Samsungs larger watches, but its cleared the admittedly quite low bar set by older, wear OS 2 watches like most variables.
The pixel watch charges over the magic of magnetic induction and on the few occasions where I did forget to charge it overnight, I was always able to take it from around 10 to about 50 or so in the time it takes to take a shower. But there is one knacking annoyance with the way it charges, despite using Qi, good luck using anything besides the official Google charger to power it up, it wont work on the back of a phone even with the strap removed and no other Qi, cable or dock. I tried would work either, so if you lose that one cable thatll be another thirty dollars in three to five days, waiting for delivery. So, after more than two months with the pixel watch, this is Comfortably my favorite Android Smartwatch, ever in almost 10 years of wearing them. It does somewhat feel like Im under using this watch, though I havent used LTE with a pixel watch just because Im, never in a situation where thats useful and its not really worth the extra cash to add it. To my plan, I could use navigation through Google Maps on here, but its almost always more convenient to just pull out my phone and in terms of calls Im generally using it to decline, robocalls as opposed to actually making or taking calls from people. I know I guess what Im saying is: Im a pretty basic Smartwatch user and chances. Are you in the majority are too and thats fine for what I need out of a smart watch and for what a lot of you probably need too.
The pixel watch has all the bases covered and looks great, while doing so so Im going to keep using this watch with my Android phones for the placebo future and well see how it holds up over time. One thing I know from previous wireless devices is: these have been prone to bit rot and performance issues over time. So hopefully that wont be the case this time around Ill revisit the pixel watch when it gets its next major software update or when the watch itself reaches save the one year mark Stick Around And subscribe to see that and the meantime, if you have a pixel Watch drop a note in the comments.vl_4Zurh-AE
