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The Google Pixel Watch 2 is Google’s latest in-house smartwatch, introducing new features and upgraded hardware for an even more personal and tailor-made experience for Pixel phone users. Much like the Apple Watch for iPhone and the Galaxy Watch lineup for Galaxy phone users, the Pixel Watch is designed to bring enhancements to Google’s phones. And for its second run, Google definitely seems to be refining the smartwatch and Wear OS as a whole.
There are definite differences here between Google’s last iteration of the Pixel Watch but it also still carries familiarities. Such as the design, which hasn’t really changed. Nor should it really as it seems well-liked by the majority of users who own the first model. With that in mind, is the Pixel Watch 2 worth your hard-earned money at a base cost of $349? Let’s get into the full review and see if Google’s second Pixel smartwatch is worthy of your time.
Google Pixel Watch 2 review: Hardware and design
For the most part, not much has changed here from the original Pixel Watch design. The Pixel watch 2 still uses the water drop design with a seamless glass display that flows around the edge to almost melt into the watch case. This in particular is one of the most popular elements of the way Google’s smartwatch looks. And with how much people loved it it’s easy to see why Google wanted to stick with it for a second go-around.
The digital crown makes a return for easy navigation of the UI without having to touch the display and gunk it up with your fingerprints. And although you may still have to touch the screen sometimes, it’s not always necessary thanks to the crown. It’s not the rotating bezel of the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic. But it serves a similar purpose and that’s worthy of appreciation. The digital crown is also really easy to use and I found myself almost falling in love with it. I still prefer the rotating bezel though. If you have a watch that requires navigation via the display only, this is a nice hardware feature to have. And I’m glad Google didn’t get rid of it.
Bands also still attach the same way using the seamless attachment system from the first watch, and the single button on the side with the digital crown is back. Where Google has updated the hardware design is with the all new-multipath sensor on the bottom. And Google is also using aluminum this time around which makes the watch slightly lighter. Overall the design is great and there’s not much I would personally change if I were given the chance too. The only thing I wish was different was the display size. Everything else though is right where it needs to be.
Google Pixel Watch 2 review: Display
Let’s talk about the display. I’ll just get straight to it. I wish Google offered a model with a larger display. 41mm is just a little small for my liking after having the Galaxy Watch 6 Classic on my wrist. Plus the larger display really makes interacting with the watch a little easier, not to mention it makes things easier to see.
But personal preferences aside, the Pixel Watch 2 display is nice and most users are going to love it. It still has a peak brightness of 1,000 nits which is quite bright and really more than bright enough for most situations. Though it doesn’t really appear that you can manually set it to this value. Your best bet to ensure that you get the most out of the Pixel Watch 2’s display brightness is to do two things. Make sure adaptive brightness is enabled, then also enable the Sunlight Boost toggle.
This way if you do need to use the watch in direct sunlight, this feature will boost the display brightness temporarily to make sure things are as visible as possible. It’s in the part of the year here in Oregon where there’s not much sunlight to be had so I didn’t get to personally experience this very much. But over the past weekend I did test it out during a walk and it does appear to get noticeably brighter with the sun shining right down on you. All-in-all It’ll work well and I don’t think many people are going to have issues with how the display looks or functions.
Google Pixel Watch 2 review: Performance
I don’t have much of a frame of reference for how well performance is with the Pixel Watch 2 compared to the original, but from my limited time checking out the first watch the second model definitely feels like a smoother experience. Google has upgraded the hardware here and is using the Snapdragon Wear 5100 from Qualcomm. And this seems to make the performance feel more fluid.
I didn’t experience many snags that have been present in other Wear OS watches. And the Snapdragon Wear 5100 plays a big part in that. But Wear OS 4 most certainly plays a role as well. Google has said that Wear OS 4 helps deliver some improvements to performance to make the watch have a snappier feel to it when swiping between tiles or menus. And that really does show after using the watch for the better part of a week.
That being said, I did still notice the very rare hiccup when backing out of the app screen and going back to the homescreen. This isn’t going to bother most people and I wouldn’t even say it bothers me at all. Performance is most certainly better than most smartwatches out there. But it’s not flawless. That’s also not a deal breaker because any slowness almost never comes up and when it does it’s so minimal you’ll forget it happened quickly. Basically, performance is pretty decent.
Google Pixel Watch 2 review: Battery life and charging
Battery life was one of the main gripes people had about the original Pixel Watch. And with good reason because it struggled to last a full day with the always-on- display enabled. You certainly don’t need it turned on but it does help the user experience in a positive way making it easier to glance down at your wrist and see important information. Unfortunately this was also a noticeable drain on the battery. Enough that it wouldn’t be surprising if this turned some people off from buying one.
Luckily, this time around Google has made battery life improvements. Partly due to Wear OS and partly due to the new chipset. Google claims you can now use the watch with the Always-on display enabled and actually get a full 24 hours of battery life out of the watch. And in my experience that seems to be an accurate statement.
I never really did drain the watch completely during my testing before this review. But I did keep the aod on and I wore it to bed most nights to utilize the sleep tracking features and to see how long the battery would last. I found myself typically placing it on the charger the next morning out of habit and would just put it back on my wrist after a morning shower and making some coffee. This has been enough time for me to get to the next charge cycle and keep this loop going.
I’d still probably categorize this as average battery life. Not amazing but definitely better than last year’s watch. And the thing is the Pixel Watch 2 isn’t going to be the watch that most people take on long excursions where you might not be near a charger for days at a time. So a full 24 hours is not only acceptable, for many users it will be more than enough.
When it comes to the charging, it takes roughly 30 minutes to charge it up to 50%. And since I was usually around 50% or a little more by the morning, a half an hour would put me back up to full. On the days where I went out for walks the battery might be a little more drained by the end of the day but still not enough to where I couldn’t wear it to sleep. And for me, that’s all I have really needed. If you do tend to use most of the battery, a little over an hour on the charger gets you to 100% from 0%. So you could easily charge it for that amount of time before going to bed and be able to put it back on before dozing off.
Google Pixel Watch 2 review: Software
Software is a big part of the change with the Pixel Watch 2 since it comes with Wear OS 4 and that comes with plenty of little notable features. For instance, Wear OS 4 now supports Fall Detection. There’s also now more apps available like Calendar and Gmail. With apps like Calendar you can see updates to your schedule and even upcoming events or important dates. And with Gmail you get a lot more than just a notification that an email came in. You no longer have to pull out your phone to interact. You can read, and even reply or compose emails directly from your wrist. And with Google Assistant that makes composing new emails or replies a lot easier than you’d think it would be.
App updates on the watch are now super simple
One of the software improvements with the Pixel Watch 2 (thanks to Wear OS 4) that I really appreciated was the ability to update apps more easily. You can go right into the Play Store and scroll to manage apps just like you would on a phone and see all apps that need updates in one scrollable screen. If any apps do need an update, you can tap an “update all” button and everything should be finished within a few minutes.
What’s more is that you can tap apps individually to update only apps you choose to update. This whole process is just much more user-friendly than it used to be. And if you use apps on the watch a lot you’ll like being able to get things done in one go. You can also see recently updated apps and apps that are already up to date.
Change the text font size for better visibility
Another really cool new feature is the ability to change the size of the text font. While I didn’t feel the need to increase the size of the font personally, this is a nice touch for those that might have a harder time reading smaller text. You can even enable a toggle that changes the text to bold if you prefer. All of this can be done on the watch too. Although you can also change the font size in the Watch app if you’d rather do it that way. But there’s no need to do so and I found this to be more cumbersome and less convenient. Unless you were already in the app for some other reason.
Adjusting the font size to be bigger though will make notifications less glanceable in that you’ll see less of the information on the screen. Not just in a single notification but you’ll end up seeing less notifications. So it’s worth keeping this in mind as larger fonts will lead to more scrolling. If the default is too small for you, you’ll want to play around with the different sizes when you have some notifications and find a happy medium.
Watch face customization
Google has added new watch face customization options and this to me was a big deal. As I like to personalize the look of my devices any way I can. With the Pixel Watch 2, you have new watch face options for the face itself, but you can also now customize different aspects of the face you choose.
You can select from a wide variety of different color options and even choose different layouts. Additionally you can change styles and which complications to add and where you want those to be. Overall there’s a lot more personalization and it helps to make your watch unique to the way you want it to look and how you want to see information. You can use the digital crown to scroll through all the options too which makes the process of finding your personal style a breeze.
I tend to change my watch face often and I went through a few different watch face changeups before this review was over. And I expect I’ll do it a lot more as time goes on with the large variety of available tweaks you can make.
More information at a glance
One of my favorite new features is the more glanceable information from notifications that come in. Say you get a message from a friend or an alert from your video doorbell. It’s now possible to see details of the message or even a short clip of the video from the doorbell. All without having to do anything other than look at the notification.
Though if you do want more detail you can tap on the notification to expand it and see everything it has to show you. Then tapping it again will collapse the notification and you can choose what to do with it. Whether that’s swipe it away to clear it or interact with it some more. A quick swipe up or even using the digital crown can open up the notifications screen where you can see all notifications that have come in too. Overall I found this to be a much better experience than interacting with notifications on Wear OS 3.
Google Pixel Watch 2 review: Fitness
Last year’s Pixel Watch didn’t have what many would consider a crucial feature. Auto workout tracking. The Pixel Watch 2 rectifies this by adding it in. It will still only track a handful of different workout types automatically. With Google stating that the Pixel Watch 2 can track 7 different workout types including walking, running, outdoor cycling, and HIIT.
I really only ever noticed this during walks but I go on walks often enough that this was nice to have. As I didn’t have to worry about the watch tracking my walk or manually go in and start things. I can just go outside with the watch on and after about 10 minutes (it’s around 5 minutes for more vigorous activities like running) it would recognize I was walking and begin tracking my steps and such. This makes using the watch for fitness activities way better because it takes out some of the extra steps that didn’t need to be there. And that allows you to focus more on the workout.
The watch also now gives you reminders to start workouts, like logging a certain number of steps. And these alerts will pop up on the watch display throughout the day if it notices you haven’t moved around in a while. Again this was another nice new feature that has somewhat helped me to ensure I’m getting in some amount of exercise. Even if it’s just getting up and moving around or going out for a quick 5-10 minute walk.
You can take your fitness interactions on the watch even further with the Fitbit app. Which brings in advanced tracking features like heart rate zones and active zone minutes, goals, and even a touch lock feature for the display if you want to go for a swim. You can also access all of this information by swiping up or to the left to peruse through different screens.
Heart rate tracking with the new multi-path sensor
More accurate tracking is the name of the game and it certainly seems to work better than on other devices I’ve tried. The higher accuracy of the readings helped me stay more on top of what my heart rate was during specific activities. And I feel like it helps keep a handle on where your heart rate should be.
If you want more detailed metrics, you still have to open up the Fitbit app on your phone. But you get a decent amount of information right from the watch. So unless you want to check out your progress over time, the watch gives you what you need.
Sleep tracking
Sleep tracking is more robust on the Pixel Watch 2 thanks to both the skin temperature sensor and newly added details like sleep score and sleep stages. All you have to do is go to sleep with the watch on and then when you wake up in the morning everything is readily available.
I did notice that it takes around a minute or two for this information to populate. But after that you can find everything inside of the Fitbit Today app. In here you can scroll to where the sleep section is located and it displays the information listed above. Although you can also scroll to the sleep tile from the home screen and see a brief snippet of information there. Tapping on the tile will expand it to show you more information if you want it.
And if you’re curious you can check out your skin temperature during sleep too. Although you do need to wear the watch to sleep for three nights in a row to first establish a baseline temperature. While I did wear the watch to bed multiple nights, I did have a break in that three-day requirement for the baseline. So I haven’t been able to test this feature yet.
If you want even more information you can check out the sleep profile in the Fitbit app on your phone which draws in multiple key metrics that are intended to help your sleep quality improve. This does require Fitbit Premium though. Luckily the Pixel Watch 2 comes with a 6-month trial of it. So you can use it right away.
Should you buy the Google Pixel Watch 2?
This is potentially going to be a hard sell for some users, though perhaps really only if you already have a Pixel Watch and don’t necessarily need to have the new features. There is a plenty to love about the new watch though. From the auto workout tracking to the new and improved battery life and performance.
You should buy the Google Pixel Watch 2 if:
- You want the auto workout tracking
- Longer-lasting battery life is important to you
- You want better and more accurate heart rate tracking
You shouldn’t buy the Google Pixel Watch 2 if:
- You already own a Pixel Watch and are fine with the battery life
- You prefer Samsung’s take on Wear OS 4