Google Pixel Watch 4 Review: The most pleasant smartwatch surprise of the year!

There’s a new Google smartwatch in town, and this time around, it’s actually a pretty decent offering. The fresh new Pixel Watch 4 actually addresses most of the criticisms we had with the Pixel Watch 3 and the previous models. 

The new wearable keeps the design mostly unchanged but improves pretty much everything else. First up, we get a super-bright 3,000-nit screen. Then we get a very thin bezel that makes the display super-immersive. 

There’s also dual-GPS now, which should fix metropolitan navigation woes. Google has also rethought the inner design, which has made the smartwatch much more repairable now in the off-chance you happen to need an internal fix. 

Finally, we have much better battery life and charging speeds that sort of one-up both the latest Galaxy Watch and the base Apple Watch Series 11. Google Pixel Watch 4 Price and Availability

The Pixel Watch 4 price remains unchanged: $350 for the smaller 41 mm version and $400 for the larger, 45 mm size. You also have the option for LTE cellular connectivity, as usual. One nice extra is that you get two years of watch data free with any LTE model you purchase.

Overall, this price is about on par with the Galaxy Watch 8 and quite a bit cheaper than the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic.

Pixel Watch 4 (41mm): grab at Amazon

The Pixel Watch 4 is here, promising longer battery life and advanced health and wellness features. The new timepiece with a 41mm case is now available at Amazon without any discounts.

Buy at Amazon

Pixel Watch 4 (45mm): get at Amazon

The Pixel Watch 4 with a 45mm case brings improved battery life, more accurate health and wellness metrics, and an ultra-chic design. The wearable is available at its standard price right now.

Buy at Amazon

What is not so usual is the delayed launch. While Google unveiled the watch on August 20th, the actual release date took place a couple of weeks ago. Was the wait worth it? Seems like it, but let’s dive deeper and explore!

Pixel Watch 4 Specs

For those who enjoy staring at lists of numbers and pretending to understand what they all mean, here you go:

Diameter: 41 mm / 45 mmHeight: 12.3 mmWeight: 31 g / 36.7 g (without band)Case: AluminumDisplay: Custom Gorilla Glass 5 displayWater Resistance: 5 ATM / IP68Chip: Snapdragon W5 Gen 2Co-processor: Cortex-M55OS: Wear OS 6RAM/Storage: 2/32 GBMax Brightness: 3,000 nitsGPS: Dual-band GPSBattery size: 325 mAh / 455 mAhBattery life: 30 hours / 40 hours AODDesign and Display

While the Pixel Watch 4 still looks like a perfect, minimalist pebble, Google has tweaked some elements.

First, let’s talk more about the repairability changes. Cracking the glass on a previous Pixel Watch meant that watch had to go to the garbage. That is no longer the case. The Pixel Watch 4 is serviceable, meaning that swapping the battery or the display is now possible. Finally! That not only reduces electronic waste, it’s just sensible design.

All of that comes with unchanged water and dust protection ratings. The Pixel Watch 4 is rated IP68 or 5 ATM, and it is officially rated waterproof up to 50 meters. However, Google says the watch is not waterproof and should only be used in very shallow water, so diving is a no-go with this one. After all, it’s not a rugged smartwatch with a dedicated dive computer functionality, like on the Apple Watch Ultra, for example. 

The two sizes the watch comes in haven’t changed. You first have the minuscule 41mm version that we only recommend for very small wrist sizes, and then you have the 45mm model that would be more suitable for medium and larger wrists. We have the 45mm model in for review, and it strikes a perfect balance between compact size, battery life, and screen real estate available. 

Next come display improvements. Last year’s Pixel Watch 3 bumped the max brightness to 2,000 nits, fixing one of the big issues of earlier watches. Now, with the Pixel Watch 4, you can hit 3,000 nits of peak brightness outdoors, on par with the best watches out there. That’s great in terms of outdoor legibility and ensures you don’t have to squint with your eyes or shield the screen with your other hand. 

With a 16% smaller bezel, the screen also extends further towards the edges. A curious little detail: Google calls this its first Actua 360 display, meaning that the whole display is now domed (not just the glass), which creates a very stylish and unique look.

Google keeps on using the same quick-swap mechanism it invented with the very first Pixel watch. It’s a bit different from other quick-swap systems, but you quickly get used to it. In my experience, it’s not as easy to swap the strap on a Pixel Watch 4 as it is on a Galaxy Watch or an Apple Watch. The fit is a bit tight, and taking out the strap takes that much extra force.

The Pixel Watch 4 is available in four different colors for the 41mm version: Iris, Lemongrass, Porcelain, and Obsidian, which is a pretty familiar list of colors. The larger version is available in Moonstone, Obsidian, and Porcelain. 

Software and Features

The Pixel Watch 4 comes with Wear OS 6 and Google’s latest Material 3 Expressive UI. This quirky design scheme means individual elements are better optimized for the round form factor. Notifications are more glanceable, you have richer colors, and the themes are based on your watch face colors.

I just love the level of color customization you can achieve with any of the Pixel Watch preset watchfaces, with tons of available color combinations. My favorite watchface here is the Concentric one, with the Terminus color combo—it just looks so great on the Moonstone color version of the watch. 

There are twelve watch faces that are slightly more exciting than before. These strike a good balance between visual appeal and providing a decent amount of information at a glance. 

On the bright side, we get AI-powered replies directly from the watch, so you can sound like a vaguely helpful robot when responding to messages.

You also get Gemini on the watch with support for Raise to Talk to Gemini. That is one big advantage the Pixel Watch has over an Apple Watch, for example. The assistant does function rather well and responds fast to your queries, though that could vary depending on whether you get the cellular version or rely on your phone to process the data. 

New this year on the Pixel Watch 4 is a dual-chip architecture, which we have seen before on most of OnePlus’ own line of smartwatches. Google says the Pixel Watch 4 is 25% faster and uses half the power, which is honestly great, but the real benefit of that system comes in battery life, which we will touch upon shortly. In real life, the Pixel Watch 4 definitely feels much snapper than before, so it’s a win-win scenario. Health and Fitness

While the heart rate sensor on the Pixel Watch 4 is the same as on previous models, software optimizations allow for more accurate readings, which should help in everyday life and workouts. Of course, we have to test those claims for our final review, but they do sound promising. The watch also tracks your blood oxygen and can take your skin temperature. All of those health-related metrics are available in the Fitbit app.

Another welcome feature is streaming your bike workouts to your phone in real-time, useful when you have your phone mounted on the bike handlebars (with this Google is catching up to Apple Watches and iPhones that have had this feature for a while).

Google is also bringing AI powered Activity Recognition. It will track your activity in the background even if you have not manually started a workout, then it will detect and classify it, and show you a summary after the workout. Neat!

Personal AI Health Coach

But here is one more reason to wait: Google has a new personalized AI coach that might be a complete game-changer.

It’s coming as a preview in October as part of Fitbit Premium.

 
Think of this like having a personal trainer, but one that actually lives on your wrist. It starts with a quick chat about your goals, what equipment you’ve got, and what kind of workouts you like. From there, it builds you a personalized plan with detailed workouts and weekly progress targets.

And the best part? It’s not just a one-and-done plan. The coach adjusts everything in real time based on your data. Say you wake up feeling wrecked after a bad night’s sleep, instead of pushing you too hard, it’ll tweak your plan for the day with say a light stretch or just rest so you can recover and still stay on track.

Plus, life happens, right? Maybe you’re traveling, super busy, or you pulled a muscle. You can check in with the coach any time, tell it how you’re feeling, and it’ll instantly adjust your workouts. It’s like having a trainwhohat actually listens instead of just yelling, “one more rep!”

The Fitbit app has also got a big overhaul, with the big functional change being that you can now ask any health and fitness questions in the app itself. Things like “How to improve VO2 Max?” or “How do I fight jetlag?” are questions that you probably already know the answer to, but it’s nice to have a robot tell you to run and sleep more instead of your own exhausted consciousness. It’s a bit more personalized than asking Gemini the same thing, as rest assured the assistant will go out of its way to drown you in data. 

Sleep Tracking

Google has improved the sleep tracking with the Pixel Watch 4. While you sleep, a next-gen skin temperature sensor can identify changes, and this info is useful to tell you when you are under the weather. The accuracy seems to be improved, though take this as anecdotal experience on my end. I didn’t wear another smartwatch to bed in order to compare the data, so we’d assume the detection has improved. 

Dual-band GPS

The Pixel Watch 4 is the first Google watch with dual-band GPS. This was probably the most requested feature for runners in big cities like NYC where tall buildings interfere with single-band GPS signal. The accuracy has improved a bit in comparison with the Pixel Watch 3, but what’s noticeable here is just how quicker the new smartwatch is to establish a location. 

Satellite connectivity

The Pixel Watch 4 also arrives as the first standalone consumer watch to support satellite connectivity for emergency communications.

For those long hikes or times when you are off the grid, satellite connectivity allows you to send an urgent message with your location.

This feature will only work in the US and it will only be available on Pixel 4 LTE models, keep that in mind.

Battery Life

If there is just one paragraph of this review worth reading and showing to your Apple Watch-toting friends it’s this one: the Pixel Watch 4 has two-day battery life. Not exactly groundbreaking when you compare the battery life of this device against the OnePlus Watch 3 or any other smartwatch coming from China, but that’s an improvement when comparing that battery life against the previous Pixel Watch, the Apple Watch Series 11, or the Galaxy Watch 8. All of those last less on a single charge than the Pixel Watch, which is a win for Google’s dual-chip architecture.

For the dual-chip part, you have got the popular Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 processor doing the heavy lifting, plus an ML powered co-processor running lighter tasks to ensure much better efficiency. 

Here’s what Google says the Pixel Watch 4 should last:

41 mm model: 30 hours with Always-on Display, 2 Days in Battery Saver Mode45 mm model: 40 hours with Always-on Display, 3 Days in Battery Saver Mode

And in my personal anecdotal experience, that seems to be the case. My first stint with the Pixel Watch 4 lasted two full days, with constant wearing and sleep tracking, always-on display off, but lots of tinkering with the watch and playing around with the new features. My second stint with considerably less tinkering around lasted two days and some change. It’s possible that I could eke out even more battery life out of the thing if I adjust my usage, but I don’t see the need to. Two days is perfectly fine for a full-blown smartwatch. 

Charging Speeds

The second part of the battery experience is just how fast you can top up your watch. And here too, we have some major improvements. First, this new charging dock is much more comfortable and stylish than just a charging puck. And charging is as easy as just dropping the watch on the dock. Good job, Google!

Second, this watch charges super fast! You get 25% faster charge times than previous generations. A zero to 50% top-up takes just 15 minutes, and a 0 to 80% takes 30 minutes on the bigger sized version and just 25 minutes on the smaller one. A full charge takes 45 minutes on the smaller 41mm version and 60 minutes on the bigger one. Excellent!

Conclusion

This one stays on the wrist (Image by PhoneArena)

As a die-hard OnePlus Watch 3 fanboy, I didn’t expect to like the Pixel Watch 4 that much. In fact, I went in this review expecting not to like anything at all about the Pixel Watch, but the improvements spoke for themselves, and I was quickly blown away as to how much I like wearing and using this device. 

It has a spectacular design language. Aside from the durability concerns I have (hitting that screen on a sharp edge will do quick work of it), the domed display is mesmerizing, and using it actually feels great. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that with a slightly more elegant strap, this one wouldn’t feel out of place at a cocktail party. 

The battery life also surprised me pleasantly. Previous Pixel Watch smartwatches had so-so battery life, thus I didn’t expect anything better, but the genius use of a dual-chip architecture has once again proven to be the winning move, delivering excellent battery life. 

The Fitbit integration is great, every bit of available information is laid out well, and the health-related features are sensible, without going out of their way to measure exotic metrics that have little relation to our everyday lives (looking at you, Galaxy Watch antioxidant index). 

Overall, the Pixel Watch 4 is a pleasant surprise. You should definitely consider getting that one over the Galaxy Watch 8.