Google’s smartwatch hits its stride
The Pixel Watch 3 answers two common complaints that even we had about its predecessor, a small screen area, and short battery life. Now, for the first time, the watch comes in two sizes: 41- and 45mm models with the larger option on test here.
Google’s smaller model this year costs from £349/$349.99 while opting for the bigger size will set you back at least £399/$399.99. The question is, can it compete with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7, Apple Watch Series 10 and OnePlus Watch 2.
Same look, but bigger
The design is the same as the Pixel Watch 2, with a deliciously rounded glass surface at the top (which is custom 3D Corning Gorilla Glass 5) and shiny chrome aluminium at the bottom.
You get a comfortable, flexible rubber strap and a slightly curved underside that gives all the sensors the right touch on the wrist without it being uncomfortable. It’s sleek, uncluttered and so typically Pixel-style.
The larger dimensions sound like a lot, but 45mm is the overall diameter of the case, and the design, with no protruding detail apart from a crown on the side, still doesn’t make it feel very big.
After just three days with it on my arm, including sleeping, changing, training and showering, I’d almost forgotten it’s there.
The Pixel Watch 3 is still IP68 and 5ATM rated for water resistance making it safe for things like taking in the shower and swimming.
Brighter and longer lasting
The bigger screen makes for clearer watchface and interface, like typing with the on screen keyboard.
Its crisp OLED screen with over 300 pixels per inch resolution means you can’t discern individual pixels. And a peak brightness of a whopping 2,000 nits means there’s zero problem using the Pixel Watch 3 in bright sunlight.
The other thing that larger dimensions mean is that it can fit a bigger battery. There’s a 420mAh battery here, compared to 307mAh in the smaller 41mm model and 306mAh in the equally small Pixel Watch 2.
At the same time, there’s energy optimisation with the new Watch OS 5 and with an improved dual-chip solution that can pass more tasks to a low-power side processor instead of using the fast Snapdragon W5. It’s not as advanced as the OnePlus Watch 2 in this respect, but with the larger model I tested, the battery life is still relatively good.
Google still only promises 24 hours, but it does much better than that. I get two days of use between charges with default settings – auto brightness and Wi-Fi when the Bluetooth connection to the phone is dropped, but without LTE connection.
If I time it right, I can get two nights of sleep tracking on a single charge.
What can hamper battery life are individual third-party apps, and GPS during navigation or exercise sessions.
The GPS is otherwise quick to connect, but unfortunately does not have dual band functionality as you might expect at this price, so the precision can sometimes sway.
By default, the display is set to always-on, with a dial that illuminates many OLED pixels. If I switch it off, the battery lasts for a day of frugal use. It’s clearly better than other smartwatch competitors like the Apple Watch and Galaxy Watch, but not best in class.
The battery charges quickly with the included magnetic locked charger, taking about an hour and a half to reach 100%.
It’s the same processor and the same amount of memory and storage as in the Pixel Watch 2, so it’s not a leap up in performance. But it was snappy before, and keeps up well even now; smartwatch apps aren’t generally that demanding.
Wide range of functions
For communication, it’s one of the best smartwatches you can have on your arm, with excellent notification flow, phone control, messaging and email with the option to reply in multiple ways, and many watch-customised apps available for social media, email services and much more.
You can easily control media players or music streaming on your phone, or run multiple standalone ones with direct streaming, make voice and text notes with the mostly reliable voice interpreter and keep track of your calendar, to-do list, Google Maps navigation, payments with Google Wallet, chat with Google Assistant (maybe Gemini in the future) and other everyday tools.
Add to that innovations like UWB (Ultra-wideband) support, the ability to become a remote control for a Google TV, integration with Nest cameras and new offline mode for Google Maps, and the feature set is more complete than ever.
There are few smartwatches that I think live up to the epithet “smartphone on the wrist” but the Pixel Watch 3 comes close.
A great system with a small design flaw
Wear OS 5 doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of layout and navigation to before. It’s relatively straightforward, with customisable “card” widgets on side swipes, and quick settings and notifications with up and down swipes.
You have two buttons, one of which is the digital crown that can be used to scroll through apps and messages etc.
The only problem is that Google doesn’t really seem to care that its watch has a round screen, so Wear OS occasionally feels like it was designed for a square one. That means a little extra scrolling and pointing to see everything in some situations.
Like last year’s model, the Pixel Watch 3 has a large set of activity and health sensors, from compass, altimeter/barometer, gyro and accelerometer, to heart rate, blood oxygen and echo-meter, surface temperature sensor and ceda sensor to continuously measure body reactions.
Fitness tracking
Health tracking and exercise are handled by a separate Fitbit app on your mobile phone and once installed, set up with an account, paired and synced with the watch, you get a more integrated Fitbit experience on your wrist.
Separate Fitbit watches have now been relegated to the second tier, subordinate to the Pixel Watch, and Google can build on the service offering.
It’s still focused on health and everyday exercise, with excellent detailed sleep analysis, step and heart activity logging. But it’s getting better as an active training tool for various targeted activities. There aren’t a huge number of training programmes, but there are certainly enough for you to find one that suits you.
AI-generated running programmes that adapt to your daily fitness and progress curve, and also explain in detail why it recommends a particular activity, make it easy to motivate yourself to do more and better exercise.
Exercise sessions are logged accurately and the watch is good at giving you a pace and keeping it. As soon as I slack (and I slack often) I get a ping from my wrist about it.
In the past, some features of Fitbit have been locked behind a Fitbit Premium pay subscription. That’s still the case, but one of the most important features has now become free for Pixel Watch 3 owners and Fitbit users, the Daily Readiness score. It gathers a lot of different health data, sleep, stress, heart, and gives you an overall score that sums up how ready you seem to be to take on a workout on a given morning.
I’m grateful for that, as I have zero control over my body and can determine in advance what it can handle. Somehow Fitbit knows that.
Price & Availability
The 45mm version of the Pixel Watch 3 is not cheap, you have to pay £399/$399.99 or even more if you want LTE mobile data via eSIM.
Opt for the cheaper 41mm model and it will cost from £349/$349.99. You can buy it from Google and various retailers including Amazon, Currys and John Lewis. Head to the likes of BestBuy or Walmart.
That’s a hefty sum, but it’s also a very complete watch, with quality, functionality, style and comfort at the top. You get Fitbit Premium for six months, so you have plenty of time to try it out if it’s worth it.
Check out our list of the best smartwatches.
Specs
- Model tested: Pixel Watch 3 45 mm LTE
- Communication: 4G (optional), Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, gps, Galilieo, NFC, UWB
- Display: 1.5-inch round oled, 480×480 pixels
- Navigation: Crown with button 1 button, touch screen
- Size: 45 x 45 x 14.3mm
- Weight (with standard wristband): 68g
- Sensors: Heart rate monitor with SPo2 and ekg, accelerometer, gyro, compass, barometer/altimeter, light meter, cEDA, skin temperature
- Other: Microphone, speaker
- Operating system: Wear OS 5.0
- System circuit: Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 gen 1 / Cortex M33 co-processor
- Memory: 2GB
- Storage: 32GB
- Battery: 420mAh, about 2-3 days battery life
- Durability: IP68, 5ATM
- Compatibility: Mobile with Android 10.0 and above and Google Mobile Services
