When Google announced a Pixel Watch was coming… I was so excited. A Pixel alternative to the
Galaxy watch line, with FitBit integrated tech. Sounds great! But this watch didn’t
meet all my expectations. Hey smores, I’m Shannon Morse, welcome to Morse Code!
It comes in 3 colors, Champagne Gold, Matte Black, and Polished Silver, with silicone active
watch bands included, alternative bands can be bought separately. Let’s talk about the bands.
The band connector is a proprietary type of mount, which has a small button for quick
release and easy replacement or installation of additional bands. That can make it really easy to
style with different outfits, but also annoying because you can’t use regular 20mm bands from
other smart watches with this one.. unless you do a little hack. You have to buy one of the $80
leather bands which come with a square end that connects to the watch. You can then use a spring
bar tool to remove the leather band and replace it with other 20mm bands. I find it pretty annoying
that they don’t just sell an adapter mount with a 20mm connector and kinda force you into
buying the $80 leather bands if you want better customization, because the current options for
Pixel watch bands available from third parties and from Google themselves are pretty slim pickin’s!
My other gripe with the band is the silicone fluoroelastomer material used. I know from
my twitter thread that I’m not the only one who deals with this issue,
but the Active watch band really irritates my skin to the point where I don’t want to wear it,
similar to what happened with the band on the Samsung Galaxy Watch I also reviewed…
so I’m forced to buy another watch band in order to use my Pixel Watch, but again,
options are limited. This wouldn’t be such an annoyance if the mount was compatible
with the nicer leather bands I’d already bought for my older galaxy watch because then I could
just use them on this watch… Annoyances. For what it’s worth though, if this kind of material
doesn’t affect your skin, then it’s a great, soft feel watch band that shouldn’t be bothersome.
The Pixel Watch is $349.99 for the wifi / bluetooth model or $399 for the 4G LTE,
wifi / bluetooth model.
It’s has a relatively small display and casing at 41mm, which works great for my small wrists
since I often find smartwatches are big and bulky and heavy. This one weighs 36 grams.
Android and fitness smartwatches tend to be overly masculine as well, so I appreciate this cleaner
aesthetic and smaller form factor that’s much more appealing to me, though some folks have commented
on the big bezels around the active display, which is all encased under the glass dome.
Most of the apps I used on here have black backgrounds anyway, so I don’t really notice
the borders at all. I also have small hands so maybe it’s easier for me to use such a
small display because of that. It is touchscreen, it’s very responsive, no issues whatsoever in the
few weeks I’ve used it. It also has a dial on the side that can be pressed in to access all apps or
turned to scroll the display. You can also use the flush button just above the dial to find recently
used apps or hold down to access assistant if you don’t want to use the trigger phrase.
The display is corning gorilla glass 5, 320 ppi,
AMOLED and can hit up to 1000 nits brightness. It also has an always on display option,
which I generally keep disabled as I prefer to use gestures to turn it on.
The watch does have water resistance built in,
along with haptics for notifications and triggers - and I am very happy with the
haptics and vibrations. I have found after using this for several weeks that the notifications
I get on the watch give me enough info so I don’t have to check my phone as often.
I found that I do have to charge the watch every day. I prefer to wear it while I sleep
to track my sleep cycle, so I charge it in the morning while I’m getting ready for the day.
I leave it on the charger for about an hour while I do my normal morning routine (yeah,
hair and makeup take a long time my dudes), and by the time I’m done its back up to 100%
battery. Generally, the battery will be down to around 25%-30% by the time I put it on
the charger so after 24 hours of use so this thing will definitely NOT last more than a day
and a half on one charge. Again, I don’t use always on display, but I do use tilt to wake.
The Pixel Watch uses WearOS.
One big thing for me on this Pixel Watch was the fitbit integrations, since Google bought FitBit,
this thing comes with fitness tech built in, and it integrates with the fitbit
app. It also comes with a trial run of FitBit premium. I’d advise using the trial service,
and right after you sign up, immediately going into your account and cancelling
the service. It’ll still keep your trial active til it expires but that way you
won’t forget about it months down the line and have to pay for the premium service.
FitBits app includes several fitness options: You can track exercises, like hiking, biking,
golfing, climbing, etc. I tracked a 2 mile hike and the steps, elevation and gain, time,
heart rate, distance and more were included in that data - I live near mountains now so
I do track my elevation gain on hikes - so I find this data very useful. The sleep data
is accurate in my opinion. I’m a light sleeper and the data it’s giving me is
in line with my expectations. I was also very intrigued by the ECG app, which by the way,
you need to update your watch and the fitbit app in order to get access to the ECG app
to take advantage of that feature. There’s an ongoing heart rate monitor and you can see the
full data in the fitbit app. This is so handy. I was able to see when a giant spider spooked
the shit out of me and I literally jumped over a sofa to get away from it. My heart rate spiked.
I did have an issue with a third party watch face from Facer,
this really cool Star Trek LCARS watch face. When I installed this on my Pixel Watch,
it looked so freaking cool… but it also caused the heart rate tracker to flatline or lose connection
and have missing data. I determined the watch face to be the issue because the
monitor had errors right after installation. Removing the watch face fixed this problem.
You can find a lot of the same Google Play apps for the Pixel Watch that
you can find for other Android smart watches, so I won’t go through those,
although if you want a “favorites” video, let me know down below.
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Google Assistant is so useful on the Pixel Watch. You can trigger it by speaking the wake phrase,
or by holding down on the flush button. You can then ask it all
the normal questions that you could ask your phone or home devices. The built
in speaker is not particularly amazing, but it does the job for simple prompts.
The media controls work while the phone it’s connected to is in airplane mode,
but it’s disable if the watch is in airplane mode.
Google Pay works on the Watch. It requires you to use a screenlock on the watch in order to
sync your card and google pay account on the watch, but it totally works. For some reason,
when I tested it, I didn’t have to unlock the watch to use pay, but it worked flawlessly other
than that. If that’s how it always works, some folks may prefer it for convenience sake, but
I’m a security nerd so I would prefer it require the watch to be unlocked each time to use it.
So, to wrap this up, I’ve got a cool app recommendation for you. The Google Camera
app allows you to control your phones camera from the watch. Download the Google Camera
app on your Pixel Watch and open it, it’ll automatically open the camera app on your
phone. You can set your phone up on a tripod and take multiple photos from far away, and see a
preview of each photo taken on the watch. It gives you a 3 second countdown to take
the photo and it vibrates when the picture is taken so you know when it’s done. Don’t
have a photographer? Here’s a rudimentary way to get your Christmas card photos.
So, I was not expecting to love my Pixel Watch as much as I do.
I love the cleaner interface compared to the Galaxy watch,
I love having seamless integrations that work so smoothly with the Pixel phone.
Other than the proprietary band connector, the battery life and the bezels,
I really like this Watch. I would definitely recommend gifting one
of these to Android users for the holidays if you wanna spend a fancy dime on someone.
Leave your questions below. I’m Shannon Morse Bye yall!