Most people don’t think of Google when they think about smartwatch makers, but the latest Pixel Watch might change that. A surprising number of updates are coming to the Pixel Watch 4, and I was impressed by how these changes add up to make it less of an iterative update than I initially expected.
Of all its new features, I found the Pixel Watch 4’s satellite communications capability, repairable design and improved charging speeds most compelling. Other changes, like the brighter, curved display, dual-chip architecture, upgraded haptics engine and speaker as well as Wear OS 6 and other software features are less exciting, but will matter more to the day-to-day experience. The redesigned Fitbit app, which will have a new AI experience at its core, will also impact your daily use more.
At first glance and from a recent hands-on, I’m intrigued by the Pixel Watch 4 and how the individual improvements might add up to a more meaningful overall experience.
Satellite connectivity for emergency communications on a smartwatch
I want to jump right into the new feature I’m most interested in: emergency satellite communications. Google says the Pixel Watch 4 is the first standalone commercial smartwatch to support this feature, and that probably largely has to do with the chip that powers it.
The Snapdragon Wear 5 Gen 2, which Qualcomm announced today along with the Wear 5+ Gen 2, is the first wearable processor to offer satellite support, according to the company. It’ll use Skylo’s Narrowband Non-Terrestrial Network (NB-NTN) and allow for “two-way emergency messaging directly from the wearable device.” It’s worth noting that this will only work on LTE models and in the contiguous United States, though.
In a recorded demo of the feature at a hands-on event, I saw what it would look like on a Pixel Watch 4 when you try to connect to a satellite to send a message. Now, to be extremely clear, this was a pre-recorded video that played on loop on the device. All I did was hit play and watch. Still, it was nice to get an idea of what the process would require. It looked like you’d need to follow onscreen instructions to move your wrist around while the system searched for an available satellite to connect to. It was reminiscent of existing versions on phones. Whether it’s ultimately reliable or effective is something I can’t say until I get to actually test it.
Improved charging dock and faster recharging
In contrast, I did get to see for myself just how quickly the Pixel Watch 4 recharges. On paper, the company says the new watch can go from 0 to 50 percent charged in 15 minutes or less. I sat next to a Pixel Watch 4 for ten minutes as it sat on a charging dock, and saw it go from 70 percent to 90 percent in that time. That’s impressive, and though that math doesn’t appear to match what the company promised, there’s a fairly straightforward reason.
A Google representative told me that past 80 percent, the charging changes from CC (constant current) to CV (constant voltage). Without getting too much into the technicalities of what’s happening, basically when CV kicks in, charging speeds slow down. This is a fairly standard battery optimization measure for most modern devices.
If the Pixel Watch 4 were starting off closer to 0 percent, it’s possible that it would have recharged to 50 percent in 15 minutes, but I don’t know for certain. I’m also not sure whether the fact that the demo unit was connected to a portable battery instead of a wall socket made any difference in this case. I am, however, glad to see that it was able to get 20 percent of juice in just 10 minutes — just about the time it takes for me to get ready for the gym every morning.
Google also redesigned the charging dock. Instead of a puck that sits under the watch (like you’ll find on almost all smartwatches today), the Pixel Watch 4 has a cradle that it can sit sideways in. The charger itself has a smaller footprint: instead of a round disc, it’s a rectangular dock about the size of a double A battery, with a groove in it to accommodate the watch. You can place the Pixel Watch 4 in there, knob side up with the screen facing either direction. When it’s connected, the watch will show the time and charge level and I could see that information from about six feet away. It’s basically the iPhone’s Standby mode but for a watch that’s propped up on its side.
I’m not sure how much easier it is to drop a watch sideways into a cradle as opposed to straight onto a disc, but I do think having the charge level be viewable from a distance is helpful. I’m also glad that Google spent time thinking about faster charging and making the device last longer, since those were complaints we had with previous models. To be specific, the company says the new smartwatch lasts 25 percent longer than its predecessor, thanks to a dual-chip architecture and efficiencies via Wear OS 6.
New curved, brighter display
Google says the Pixel Watch 4 has all new hardware on both the inside and out. In fact, it went as far as to say it completely redesigned the Pixel Watch and that this is the biggest update to the device yet. One of the most visible changes is the display. Not only is it 50 percent brighter than the one on the Pixel Watch 3, but the screen itself is domed this time, not just the glass at the top.
I didn’t really see a difference at first, but when looking a Pixel Watch 4 and 3 side-by-side, the new model was noticeably brighter, and watch faces seemed to stretch a bit closer to the edge of the case. Since the interface uses a black background, though, it was hard to tell whether the bezel was thinner.
There are quite a few new features that I didn’t get to test, which I’ve collected in a list at the bottom of this article. For now, it’s probably more relevant to talk about things like Gemini on Wear OS 6, Raise to talk (to the assistant), the redesigned Fitbit app and the AI-powered updates.
Raise to talk to Gemini and AI-generated message replies
The Pixel Watch 4 isn’t the first watch to launch with Google’s latest wearable platform (that honor belongs to Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 series). But it does have an exclusive feature to make interacting with Gemini a bit easier: Raise to talk. Unlike on the Samsung wearable, where you have to verbally invoke the assistant or long press the knob on the side, on the Pixel Watch 4 you can bring your wrist to your face and Gemini will be ready for your requests.
When it recognizes the gesture, the Pixel Watch 4 will show a small animated icon at the bottom of its screen to indicate it’s listening. But on my repeated attempts to trigger it, the system only registered that I had brought my wrist up about half of the time. Granted, I was using a watch that belonged to a Google representative and was a bit loose on my wrist, so the accuracy might improve with a better fit.
I did notice other Google executives perform very deliberate movements to get the watch to listen and even then it seemed like Raise To Talk required multiple attempts to work. This is something I will have to wait till I get a unit in the real world to evaluate the efficacy of, but for now I am intrigued by the potential convenience but skeptical of the actual performance.
Senior director of product management for Google Wearables Sandeep Waraich later explained that the system is currently tuned to recognize more deliberate movements as a way to avoid false positives. Waraich said that over time, and possibly by the time the Watch 4 is on shelves in October, the motion required to trigger Raise To Talk should require less exaggeration.
When I did get Gemini to hear me, it responded fairly quickly to my question about activities to do in New York on a hot summer day. Again, I’d need more time with the device to judge how useful this would be in the real world.
There was another feature that had much more potential to be helpful though: AI-generated quick replies to messages. I only saw a quick demo on a Google rep’s watch, but in response to a message saying “How’d the basketball game go?” the system suggested responses of “We won,” “We lost, but it was fun” and “It was great” with a basketball emoji. That’s much better than the canned prompts from before that were more likely to be “Yes,” “No,” “Call me later” or some other generic variant. It did take a second for them to load, though.
A Google spokesperson at the event told us that this is possibly the first time an on-device language model has been deployed on a smartwatch, which might be noteworthy but it’s not anything that will materially impact the experience.
I will say that while I didn’t get to dive too deeply into the rest of Wear OS 6 with Material 3 Expressive on the Pixel Watch 4, we do already have a review of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 up and in it we cover some of the changes to the platform. On Google’s smartwatches, I liked how the new software made better use of space in things like the Weather and Search cards, with an improved balance between putting more information within one page while still retaining a generous size for buttons and text.
A closer look at the redesigned Fitbit app
One of the places any Pixel Watch owner will be spending much of their time is the Fitbit app, where their collected health and fitness data will be presented. I spent some time with a preview version of the redesigned app, which will be available in October to Premium users in the US. Aesthetically, the app looks quite different, with a customizable dashboard of stats at the top of the main page (aka the Today tab). At the bottom are new tabs “Today,” “Fitness,” “Sleep” and “Health.”
Though the font feels more reminiscent of recent Android and Material designs, existing Fitbit users will find the color scheme familiar. Purple is still what your sleep progress bar’s color is, while your steps are still shown in a teal bar. But below all those visual representations of data is a card with a prompt to chat with the new AI Coach, followed by what Google calls a “stream,” and a floating blue “Ask Coach” button at the bottom right.
The stream is separated into Upcoming and “Your day so far” sections, with the latter populated by cards summarizing your progress on areas like sleep and fitness. In a small demo, Google’s director of product management for Fitbit and Health Andy Abramson walked us through the new product. He showed us his app, where a card titled “Less sleep than usual last night” said he had about 4 hours and 28 minutes of estimated sleep. It summarized the amount of time awake and interruptions during that period, and then asked “Given the shorter duration, how are you feeling energetically this morning?” A card further down, titled “Your body is well-balanced today” and tagged “Readiness,” talked about Abramson’s readiness score, what it means and showed a chart on his performance this week.
You can choose to continue conversations by tapping into each card, or simply ignore them and continue scrolling down the stream. Tapping through the tabs at the bottom brings you into similarly laid out pages with information specific to your activity, sleep and vitals (as measured by the wearable). That last one will show your heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen and other stats, followed by sections called “Health areas,” “Detection and self screening” and “Personal info.”
This presents a combination of information your fitness tracker collects, as well as data you enter. This all feeds into the new AI Coach, which will be a paid Fitbit Premium feature, that is meant to be your Gemini-powered “personal health coach.” It’s still a fairly new tool that’s going to be in limited preview as Google continues to assess its efficacy and evaluate necessary tweaks and guardrails, but at least it seems like the company is well aware of the potential pitfalls it might encounter in the development of any AI tool for health.
In a press release announcing the new personal health coach and the Fitbit redesign, Google said “We’re committed to building our personal health coach with leading industry experts and through scientific research.” To that end, it’s partnering with Stephen Curry “and his performance team” and “also working closely with our Consumer Health Advisory Panel, a diverse group of leading experts in medicine, AI and behavioral science.”
I remain skeptical of AI’s trustworthiness in general, but if there’s one thing Google and Fitbit have it’s an abundance of data from the years of experience they have in collecting health data from wearables. AI seems like a suitable method to make sense of the madness, as long as it’s done mindfully. And it does seem like the Pixel Watch and Fitbit teams are thinking carefully about their approach. I will need to wait till I get to use the new app and AI Coach on my own to see how personalized and useful it is, of course.
Repairability plus a list of other updates coming to the Pixel Watch 4
There were quite a few other updates I didn’t get to test during my time with the Pixel Watch 4, including the AI-powered activity recognition system, improved sleep-tracking and overnight skin temperature-sensing, as well as the accuracy of the new dual-frequency GPS. I didn’t get to check out the feature that streams your bike workout stats to your phone in real time so you can see the details more easily when your device is mounted to your handlebar.
I also didn’t go about measuring if the Watch 4’s vibrations were indeed 15 percent stronger than its predecessor’s, and I wasn’t able to verify if the speakers were clearer than before, either.
In addition, I can’t vouch for the durability of the Pixel Watch 4, which is rated IP68 for dust- and water-resistance and has a custom Gorilla Glass covering and aluminum housing. I doubt I will be putting those ruggedness claims to the test, but it’s heartening to know there is a respectable level of protection here.
The good news is, even if you do manage to break the screen somehow, you won’t need to buy a new Pixel Watch 4. It has a repairable design that allows you to remove the display and battery in case those parts need to be replaced. Again, I didn’t break out my screwdriver and fix a Pixel Watch 4, but I did scrutinize the (very small) screws along the case in the groove where the straps attach to the device. Theoretically, though, I applaud the notion of repairable devices and am pleased to see Google take this approach.
The Pixel Watch 4’s pricing, availability and value
One more thing that’s laudable: The Pixel Watch 4’s price remains unchanged from the Pixel Watch 3. It starts at $349 for the 41mm Wi-Fi model, and you can get the larger size or LTE-connected variants for more money. The smartwatch is available for pre-order today, though it’ll only start shipping and be in stores on October 9.
While I continue to recommend you wait till we can publish a full review before investing your hard-earned money on any device, I do think the list of improvements Google is bringing to the Pixel Watch series is a long, thoughtful and meaningful one. For a smartwatch that has faced its fair share of challenges across the generations, the Pixel Watch 4 finally feels like it’s both maturing and carving out a space for itself.
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