The originalGoogle Pixel Watchwas my favorite smartwatch last year, but I’ve always felt that opinion was against my better judgment. Google’s first smartwatch looked fantastic and performed very well, but at a premium price of $350, its weak battery life just took too much babysitting to make it a solid recommendation for most people.
But it’s Pixel Season yet again, and the Pixel Watch 2, along with theGoogle Pixel 8series, have finally landed. It offers precious few upgrades from the original — those thick first-gen bezels are still here. But in managing to eke out honest-to-goodness all-day battery life with its always-on display active, the Pixel Watch 2 fixes most of what I didn’t like about the first generation. I still have complaints, but the Pixel Watch 2 is what the original should have been, and I’m happy to see it.
Google Pixel Watch 2
The Google Pixel Watch 2 is the sequel to Google’s first self-branded smartwatch. The second generation doesn’t reinvent the wheel, instead offering a handful of low-key improvements like a redesigned digital crown, Wear OS 4 out of the box, and a newer chipset that should offer better performance and battery life.
Price and availability
The Google Pixel Watch 2 is available for $350 for the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi model or $400 for a version with LTE, direct from the Google Store and Google’s usual retail partners like Amazon, Best Buy, and B&H. The watch comes in matte black with an Obsidian (black) band, champagne gold with a Hazel (gray) band, or Polished Silver with either a Porcelain (white) or a Bay (blue) band.
Specifications
Design and hardware
I will do my best not to repeat a thousand times in this review that the Pixel Watch 2 looks nearly identical to the first-generation Pixel Watch.There are a few minor changes: the Pixel Watch 2 has an aluminum case, while its predecessor used stainless steel. Still, the Pixel Watch 2doeslook nearly identical to the first-generation Pixel Watch. It’s got domed glass over its 1.2-inch AMOLED display that spills over the corners, making for a look that’s not quite like any other smartwatch out there, even two generations in.
Having exposed glass at the edges, the Pixel Watch 2 is definitely more fragile than watches with metal bezels. But over the past year, I’ve worn the very similar first-gen Pixel Watch more than any other smartwatch, and it’s held up very well; its only damage is a small scuff on the flat part of the glass. The Pixel Watch 2 is hardly ruggedized, but I don’t think its screen is that much more likely to break than the regularSamsung Galaxy Watch 6’s is.
The near-identical design extends to the Pixel Watch 2’s proprietary rotating band mechanism. Google’s first-gen Pixel Watch bands are compatible with the Pixel Watch 2, at least — though, oddly, Google says not all Pixel Watch 2 bands are backwards-compatible with the original Pixel Watch. And while there’s a large selection of its bands on the Google Store website, you’ll have no problem findingexcellent third-party Pixel Watch 2 bandsonline.
The Pixel Watch 2’s digital crown is the most immediately obvious hardware upgrade. Compared to the first generation’s, the new crown rotates more freely and smoothly.Wear OS 4also introduces inertial scroll (which sees scrolling content continue to move just a bit after you stop manipulating it) when scrolling using the crown. Combined with the new crown hardware, scrolling on the Pixel Watch 2 is a nicer experience overall.
The Pixel Watch 2’s display is a 1.2-inch, 450 x 450, circular AMOLED with thick bezels and a 60Hz refresh rate. It doesn’t match what other Wear OS watches offer on paper, but in real life, the Pixel Watch 2’s screen is quite nice: colors are vibrant, and the screen’s high enough resolution that you won’t see individual pixels from a normal watch-viewing distance. Practically every screen you’ll see in Wear OS has a black background, too, and the Pixel Watch 2’s display blends nicely with the curved glass around it.
I wish it got brighter, though. The Pixel Watch 2’s screen tops out at 1,000 nits — bright enough to make out in most lighting, but harder to see in harsh sunlight. For reference, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 has a 2,000 nit display, and theApple Watch Ultra 2’s display clocks in at 3,000 nits.
The initial version of this review incorrectly stated the Pixel Watch 2’s display refresh rate is 30Hz. It’s actually 60Hz — my mistake.
In fact, the Pixel Watch 2’s display lags the Galaxy Watch 6’s in a couple ways. In addition to the brightness advantage, Samsung’s watch comes with a bigger 1.3-inch panel and considerably thinner bezels (though the Pixel Watch’s hardware and software do a good job hiding the thicker bezels). I hope to see the Pixel Watch 3 make some real improvements here, but the Pixel Watch 2’s display isn’tbad.
Software and performance
The Google Pixel Watch 2 comes with Wear OS 4. It’s not the first watch to ship with the newest wearable version of Android, though — the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 and 6 Classic have offered Wear OS 4 since August.
Wear OS 4 isn’t the same big overhaul we saw with Wear OS 3 in 2021. Coming from the first Pixel Watch still running Wear OS 3.5, I don’t think I would have noticed anything was different on the Pixel Watch 2 with Wear OS 4, at least not immediately.
The biggest user-facing change from previous versions of the operating system the ability to moWear OS 4 watches from one phone to another without having to reset the watch, saving some hassle when you upgrade your phone. You also get access to a few additional apps with Wear OS 4, including native Google Calendar and Gmail apps (they’re fine, by the way).
Modern Wear OS is easy and even fun to use, though, with lots of rounded elements that look right at home on the Pixel Watch’s curvy screen. Interactive, widget-like slices of app functionality called Tiles live to the left and right of the home screen; quick settings are above, and notifications are below.
Your app drawer is accessed by pressing the Pixel Watch’s crown; double-tapping the crown opens Google Wallet. The discrete hardware button above the crown opens your recent apps with a tap or the Google Assistant if you press and hold. It’s all easy to wrap your head around, even coming from different watch software.
Google built the first-generation Pixel Watch around a Samsung chipset from 2018, the Exynos 9110, paired with a Cortex M33 co-processor. Despite that unconventional choice, the first Pixel Watch offered perfectly decent performance, keeping up with other wearable options running on years-newer hardware.
In the Pixel Watch 2, Google upgraded to the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 from last year, keeping the Cortex M33 co-processor and the same two gigs of RAM from the first-gen Pixel Watch. Performance out of the new loadout is really quick, and in the time I’ve been using it, I haven’t ever felt like the Pixel Watch 2 has kept me waiting on anything.
Opening apps, flipping through Tiles, switching watch faces, and anything else I’ve wanted to on the Pixel Watch 2 has been about as fast as I could hope for. I felt the same way about the first-gen Pixel Watch, too, so I’m not sure how necessary the horsepower bump was. Still, more performance headroom today means the Pixel Watch 2 should age better than the first-gen will — and the newer silicon really helps with battery life (more on that later).
You’ll use a couple of apps to interact with the Pixel Watch 2. To set the watch up and manage its general settings, you’ll need to download the Pixel Watch app from the Play Store. But you’ll need to use Fitbit for all the Pixel Watch 2’s fitness features.
Health and fitness
The Fitbit app breaks down your activity into several different factors: steps, distance, estimated calorie burn, and Zone Minutes. Compared to data from theOura RingI’ve been wearing while testing the Pixel Watch 2, Fitbit’s step and distance counts look normal. Fitbit estimates I use significantly more calories than Oura, though — up to 500 more daily. All these platforms are doing their best to guess how much energy we use daily. Still, the Pixel Watch 2 estimating my calorie use almost 20 percent higher than Oura does makes me wonder how useful Fitbit’s data would be for anyone who really wants to keep an eye on their energy expenditure.
The watch will automatically detect if you’ve been walking or running for 10 minutes and nudge you to open exercise tracking; for other types of workouts, you’ll have to remember to start tracking manually from the Pixel Watch’s Fitbit app. During exercise, the watch’s display changes to an updated workout UI that puts helpful information like duration, distance traveled, and heart rate front and center, with clever use of color to make it more obvious what zone you’re in at a glance.
The Pixel Watch 2 tracks your sleep like most fitness wearables do, and the Fitbit app breaks down when you slept and what stage you were in throughout the night, grading your sleep performance each night out of 100. Your score is based on factors like your resting heart rate overnight and time spent in deep and REM sleep stages. If you have a Fitbit Premium subscription, after wearing the Pixel Watch 2 for 14 nights in a single month, you’ll get a Sleep Profile that provides some deeper insights into your sleep, including, crucially, which animal’s sleep patterns are most similar to yours.
So far, my sleep data from the Pixel Watch 2 aligns well with what I’m seeing from myOura Ring, each tallying my time asleep about the same and even detecting similar patterns in my sleep stages. I haven’t had the watch long enough to get a complete Sleep Profile yet, though. Excited as I am to see what my Sleep Animal is, I’m more eager to see what the Sleep Profile feature does with my sleep data.
I’ve never been convinced by sleep tracking for sleep tracking’s sake; I tend to know when I slept poorly. But Sleep Profiles aim to give personalized guidance on how to get better sleep, ostensibly informed by the data the Pixel Watch 2 collects when you wear it to bed. I’m skeptical that this guidance will actually be helpful, but I’m interested to find out. I’ll update this review with longer-term impressions soon.
Fitbit also offers stress management features. Like the Fitbit Sense 2, the Pixel Watch 2 has a new continuous electrodermal activity (cEDA) sensor that monitors the electrical activity in your skin. Together with data about your activity, sleep, and the Pixel Watch 2’s improved multipath heart rate sensor, the cEDA sensor helps inform your daily Stress Management score. The Fitbit app tells you very roughly how this score is calculated, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t offer much advice on what to do if your score is out of whack.
For example, I can see Fitbit rates my “exertion balance” (one of three Stress Management factors) at 34/40 for this week, which should mean the amount of activity I’m getting relative to my fitness level has been pretty good for keeping my stress levels down. That checks out.
But Fitbit’s guidance in case you have a low exertion balance score is that you might be “exercising too much or too little.” You could use this simple guidance to draw your own conclusions about what you need to do in that case, but I feel like a fitness tracker platform as storied as Fitbit should be doing more to offer proactive advice. If Fitbit’s algorithms suggest taking a jog tomorrow — or taking a day off from exercise — could help me manage stress, why not just say so?
Battery and charging
Battery life was far and away my biggest problem with the first-generation Pixel Watch — with the always-on display active, the original often struggled to make it through a full 24 hours of wear. I woke up to a dead watch after a night of sleep tracking more than once. Thanks to some combination of the newer Snapdragon W5 chipset, an ever-so-slightly bigger 306 mAh battery, and Wear OS 4’s power optimizations, the Pixel Watch 2 can much more comfortably make it through a full day and night of use.
True to Google’s word, I’ve reliably been getting over 24 hours of use per charge. On my most recent charge, with AOD active, I got 25 hours and 12 minutes of use before the watch died, including about 45 minutes of GPS-tracked walking and running and a night of sleep tracking. That’s not revolutionary for Wear OS, but it’s a big step up from the kind of battery life the first-generation Pixel Watch delivers. It feels firmly good enough.
Google switched from the inductive charger it used with the first Pixel Watch to a pin charger for the Pixel Watch 2 — the first-generation Pixel Watch charger isn’t compatible. The new charger is moderately less convenient because you have to line the pins up correctly to charge. It’s faster, though. Google quotes charging time to get the Pixel Watch 2 from empty to full at 75 minutes.
My results have been a little weirder: my watch reaches 96 or 97% within an hour, then takes another 20 minutes or so to charge that last three or four percent. That seems like a quirk that could be ironed out with software updates, but even if it’s not, it beats the first-gen Pixel Watch, which took almost two hours to charge fully.
Competition
At a starting price of $350, the Google Pixel Watch 2 is competing at the high end of the Wear OS space. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 6 is the easiest alternative to recommend. For a lower MSRP of $300, the 40mm Galaxy Watch 6 offers a slightly larger display with thinner bezels, plus battery life that should last a bit longer than what the Pixel Watch 2 can manage. The Galaxy Watch 6 comes in two sizes, too, and even the larger, longer-lasting 44mm model is less expensive than the Pixel Watch 2 at $330. Like the Pixel Watch 2, the Galaxy Watch 6 is running Wear OS 4 — although it’s got Samsung’s One UI 5 Watch software on top, which changes the look and feel a bit.
If you don’t care whether your watch can make it through a full 24 hours on a charge, Google’s still selling the first-generation Pixel Watch for a discounted price of $280. You’ll miss out on the newer model’s stress and temperature-sensing hardware, better battery life, quicker performance, and refined crown, and you’ll have to wait a little while to get Wear OS 4. But the two watches look the same, so if you’re mostly after the look, you may get it a little cheaper by going first-gen.
Should you buy it?
I liked the first Pixel Watch a lot, but even I can see that it wasn’t necessarily an easy sell: it was more expensive than a lot of itsWear OS competitionand didn’t offer much to earn its price tag outside a unique look.
Meanwhile, the Pixel Watch 2 is still more expensive than its closest competition, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6. But it’s got newer internals that drive slightly faster performance and considerably longer battery life than the first Pixel Watch could manage. For that reason alone, the Pixel Watch 2 is easier to recommend to more people than the first generation. It still doesn’t match its Wear OS competition on value, but the Pixel Watch 2 is useable enough that it feels more reasonable to spend the premium on it — less style over substance, more stylein addition tosubstance.
The handful of new features in the Pixel Watch 2 aren’t compelling enough that I’d recommend upgrading from the first generation. Anybody who was interested in the Pixel Watch but turned off by the crappy battery life, though? The second generation fixes it. We should expect bigger changes in the Pixel Watch 3 — smaller bezels, for one — but for now, the Pixel Watch 2 is the do-over the original needed.
