Taking Time with Google’s Pixel Watch 4

I was skeptical when I got my original Google Pixel watch, but was super excited to get the Pixel Watch 4. After 3 years with the Pixel Watch, I learned that having a digital watch was useful when tuned to help you, but not overwhelm you and become intrusive. This winter I got the Pixel Watch 4. I’ve waited a few months to really see how it has improved or perhaps take a step backwards in some way, so let’s see what I’ve learned.

My Technology Ecosystem & Watch Requirements

A big part of a digital watch is how it integrates with the rest of your technology world. I have a Google Pixel 8 phone, an Apple MacBook Air, and an Apple iPad Air. The best technology always wins with me. In terms of the combination of these, you might think they don’t work well together, but they do. I’m not really bought into the Apple cloud ecosystem and instead rely on a mixture of things: Gmail, Sonos, iTunes, Dropbox, and MS Office. All of these work fairly well across these devices and give me a best of breed approach and the ability to change to a new innovative solution when I want to.

In terms of watch requirements, I have these key things I really need:

• Messaging notifications: SMS, What’s App, and MS Teams at a minimum
• Fitness tracking and integration with Strava
• Reliable and intuitive alarm clock functions – no Jean Paul moments!
• Decent battery life – 2 full days minimum, how about 3?
• Size matters – I don’t want some giant thing on my arm
• Swappable wristbands with washable options
• Cool watch faces that are easy to switch around and read

In terms of fitness, I do a lot of rowing on my Ergatta water rower. I have 2,000,000 meters as a goal in 2026 so a seamless integration with my rower, including automatically detecting rower exercise events is very important to me. It helps me to validate the data coming from the Ergatta, my Polar OH1 heart montior, Strava, and Intervals.icu. The watch can then also capture all the other activity, leaving the pure rowing data separate for training purposes with Intervals.icu.

Initial Reactions to Google’s Pixel Watch 4

As with all Pixel devices, these things are really engineered with quality in mind. Every physical aspect of the device and its packaging is top notch, well thought thru, and makes for a nice on boarding experience. Switching from the old watch to the new was very simple. Grab your phone, open the Watch app, turn on the new device, follow the prompts, and then remove the old one. I was done in 10 minutes, but there were a few updates to apply.

The ergonomics of the watch are both familiar and nice. The face is bigger than the original Pixel and I was a bit worried about that, but its fine. Not too big. The screen is brighter and also goes fully out to the edge, unlike the Pixel 1, which had a significant bezel. I tried to capture that in the picture below. The sensors on the back of the watch have a different layout. The charger is a completely new design and uses pins this time. I’ve added a side-by-side with the old watch to give a sense of the size difference and also a gallery of shots showing the size, thickness, and the changes in the charger.

So the watch is definitely bigger in diameter, but not too much in terms of thickness. The screen is much crisper than my picture shows – click on the image to get the full size and less blur. Not sure why, but my phone was having trouble getting a decent shot that was in focus. The watch has the “expedition” face installed. I like this one because I can see weather and fitness data on the same screen with the time. The screen is significantly brighter than my original pixel. The resolution is also quite a bit better, especially for photos. Images in notifications are very clear – I have a Beako bird feeder that takes pictures of the birds eating seed and they are super nice and clear.

The rest of the ergonomics of the watch are great. The weight is good. The size is good. The band is basically the same rubber band that has come with all earlier models. Its a good band, but I workout a lot so a cloth band that is stretchy is better for me. Switching between bands in easy. I also sweat a lot so a rubber band gets funky after a while.

Does the Pixel Watch 4 Perform?

Yes! It does! Snappy performance when switching screens, responding to notifications, and switching between tasks. AI/Gemini functions do seem a bit sluggish, but this is not a core feature for me. This watch includes a full Fitbit device inside. Pixel Watch 4’s Fitbit functionality seems to be a big upgrade to me! For one thing it does automatically identify rowing! The old one did not. All of the Fitbit functions seem to have ben optimized to be more accurate. The Strava integration also seems to work very well so I am super happy with this aspect of the functionality of the watch.

The embedded sensors for RHR, BR, SPO2, etc. work much better (more reliable) and are much more accurate when I compare with other devices I have from OMRON and Polar. My only complaint about Fitbit is that this device runs all its calculations based on age and heart rate. I have a naturally very low RHR and heart rate so all the calculations are off for me. It is too bad Fitbit does not pull in power data from fitness equipment and use this instead of heart rate when it can. Of course this is all about Fitbit and not the Watch per se.

The cellphone call integration is nice. There needs to be more granular control over what phone applications can send calls over to the Pixel Watch 4. I never want an MS Teams call to come to my watch, but I do want regular cell calls and What’s app calls. I have not found a way to deal with this.

Saving the best for last –> battery life!!! Yay! I get 3-4 days of battery life and it is closer to 4 than 3. This is just fantastic! I tuned down a few notifications, but generally I don’t have to do that to save battery life like I had to with the original Pixel Watch.

When you need a charge, that is also drastically improved. A full charge takes 30 minutes-ish. The original watch took forever. An hour or more. This one also goes from zero to 50% in very little time. I didn’t time it, but its amazingly fast. I liked the original charger, but I have to admit this one is better and easier to use. Its also better than the Gen 2/3 charger with the four pegs.

Ok, so Everything Can’t be Perfect, Right?

Correct!

There are some oddities in the UI design. For example, swiping up normally brings up notifications, but occasionally brings up the “change watchface screen”, which then resets the screen choice to the first one in the list. then you have to go back to the mobile app and put the face back to the one you want. Super annoying!

Sometimes I’ll get some screen lag. Not sure why, but I’ll tap the screen and find myself tapping again because nothing happened. Not often, but it happens.

The Alarm Clock snooze vs. off button size is a pro/con thing. They made the “off” button really small so you really have to squint to find it – I wear glasses so that is a con. The pro is that you know you have to squint and get your glasses to turn it off, which means you are less likely to hit snooze by accident, which I did sometimes on the original Pixel.

Finally – I like bedtime mode, but why can’t the stupid thing know when I’m up. After 2-3 hours of wandering around, working out, and walking, can’t it realize I’m up and ask me “Hey, are you awake?” so that I do not have to explicitly take it out of bedtime mode.

Final Verdict – Love It!

I love it! Great upgrade! The battery life is amazing, we’ll see how it holds up over time, and the charging speed is doubly awesome. The size is good and the fitness integrations I need work very well. All of the messaging integrations I need work well. Keeping MS Teams calls from coming thru on the watch is something I am looking for a solution to.

The Google Pixel 4 is a great digital watch for folks that are either Google-ites or people that use a variety of services across providers. For folks bought in on the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Watch is probably the way to go.