Google Pixel Watch 2 Review: Is This What Fitbit Has Become?
Retail Price: $399
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Disclaimer: Google sent us a unit of the Pixel Watch 2 free of charge to review, but all thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are our own and were not discussed with the company prior to publishing.
In what feels like an extremely short amount of time, the Pixel Watch now already has a new sequel. Following up from the debut of the first Pixel branded smartwatch, Google has added a few new sensors and that’s really about it. Is the Pixel Watch 2 that much better than the first and is it this the beginning of the new Fitbit era? Let’s find out.
Sticking With What Works
Google sent us an LTE model in a polished silver aluminum case. The band it came bundled with is the new Bay color which matches my Pixel 8 Pro. This is one of two configurations that have the silver casing. There’s a gold and a black casing with their respective colored bands. I had the black case on the original watch and I actually prefer the black aluminum design a lot more than this polished silver. Scratches and fingerprints show up a lot easier on polished silver and it does look kind of like a toy from certain angles. Of course this is just my opinion on the material and look, but some people may find it attractive.
The watch really is physically almost the same as the original. It’s the same 41 mm case size, the same shape, has the same buttons, and uses the same watch band changing mechanism. The only design change is with the charging structure. The new charger puck is no longer solely relying on a magnetic connection. There are four pins on the charger and four magnetic pin receivers on the back of the watch. Only one orientation of the watch can be mounted onto the charger now. I have no idea why Google made this change. It’s less intuitive than the original magnetic charger and feels like a step backwards.
Longer Lasting
The Pixel Watch 2 lasts a bit longer than its predecessor
Although Google claims the second iteration of the Pixel Watch should have longer battery life, you will realistically still need to charge it everyday. If I’m not going to the gym or exerting a lot of physical energy that my watch would constantly need to track, then I can usually end the night back home at around 30% or so. This is with the always-on display showing me information at all times and all of my available apps pushing notifications to me. I can say that it does seem to last slightly longer than the first Pixel Watch, but at least with my current daily life, it isn’t drastically better. It takes a little longer than an hour to get the watch charged up and ready for more work.
I got into the habit of wearing my watches to sleep while wearing the Garmin Venu 2. I tried sleeping with the Pixel Watch 2 to log my sleep information, but if you were to use this as a sleep tracker, you’re going to have to do some math and figure out when you could fit in a charging session into your schedule. No matter how much Google touts this as a fitness product, this is still a smartwatch first and foremost. As such, the battery life and the uses that dictate it being on your wrist will have to revolve around a smartwatch’s daily lifespan. Don’t go into a Pixel Watch 2 expecting a week’s battery life or even more than a day like you would on an Amazfit or Garmin. We’re talking about different classifications of products here.
The Fitness Part Of Fitbit
You can’t review the Pixel Watch 2 without also reviewing the current iteration of what is now the remains of the Fitbit app.
On a fitness note, the health monitoring sensors on the Pixel Watch 2 work well together to paint your overall health and fitness picture. There’s a heart rate tracker that is joined by a skin temperature and electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor. What you need to know about how these things work together is that through the Fitbit app, which the Pixel Watch 2 communicates to you through, the hardware will relay how stressed it believes your body currently is. If a mixture of your heart rate and other factors that Fitbit determines might be a sign of a stressful event, the watch will buzz you and ask you to log how you felt at that certain time. Doing this often will allow not only Fitbit to figure out if your body is reacting to something, but it might also help you realize certain signs that trigger your body. My experience with this has been positive for the most part. I do recognize why the watch thinks I’m stressed about 75% of the time, but the other 25% of the time I’m left pondering if I was feeling something inside that I couldn’t identify in the moment.
You cannot track SpO2 if you do not wear your watch to sleep
You can’t review the Pixel Watch 2 without also reviewing the current iteration of what is now the remains of the Fitbit app. Who really knows how much of the redesigned app is influenced by the fitness oriented brand or instead from their ad selling boss now calling the shots? What I can tell you is my personal likes and dislikes as a user who has dedicated a lot of time this year into improving my body. Since beginning personal training, I’ve been logging my macronutrients as well as my water intake. I’m still shocked that there isn’t a quicker way to do this. Why is there still no water logging tile on the Pixel Watch 2?
I’m also baffled at why the watch doesn’t allow you to organize the order in exercise activity trackers on your tile. The three Quick Start activities are your most recently logged ones. It makes no sense why we don’t have access to a favorites list you can curate as a user. I’m also spoiled by Garmin into relying on counting and logging sets and reps. I don’t expect muscle mapping and I do understand that it’s not totally accurate for auto set and rep counting, but having the option to do it and to modify the numbers post-workout for your own records should be a must for a device of this price. I miss having a rest timer in between logging of sets. Fitbit has always had a reputation of being a bit simplified in their fitness monitoring, but I had hoped that with Google directing the show that the products would be more competitive as a mass consumer fitness product. Instead, it seems we’ve gone the other way and the fitness functionality of the Pixel Watch 2 is more simplified than ever.
I don’t want to turn this into what the Pixel Watch 2 doesn’t do, so this will be my final point. I don’t understand why Google restricts your ability to monitor blood oxygen saturation (SpO2). The watch’s main competitors allow for on-demand measurements, yet Fitbit only allows overnight readings on the Pixel Watch 2. Since I was hospitalized with Covid last year, I’ve had certain long term issues with my health. Being able to monitor your SpO2 during any time of the day, at any hour of the day, is a norm for just about most competitive wearables nowadays. It would have irked me a little less if Google didn’t constantly tout the Pixel Watch 2 as this perfect fitness device instead of marketing it as what it actually is, which is a great Android smartwatch.
SmartWatch Stuff
So while I’m not a big fan of the Fitbit fitness stuff now that I am actually seriously monitoring my workouts and diet, I still am a big fan of the Pixel’s smartwatch stuff. Notifications push eloquently onto this round platform. Text messages and emails are legible and properly spaced to be able to quickly glance at the content. This is about as good as it can get presenting text on a round watchface. At a resolution of 450 x 450 p, the 320 ppi density is good enough to not be able to spot too many pixels on most watchfaces. It’s a bright AMOLED panel that I enjoyed looking at and reading off of.
The swipe interactions are also quite good. The watch is snappy running on a Qualcomm 5100 chipset with only 2 GB of ram. I really haven’t come across any instances of lag at all. The quick settings and interactions between tiles flow nicely into one another. I pay almost exclusively with GPay through the NFC on the Pixel Watch 2. A lot of my life revolves around my wearable and Google has done a good job of allowing the Pixel Watch 2 to keep up with real human lives. This is still the watch I choose to use when on an Android phone. It can’t stress enough how much I personally enjoy the user experience of the Pixel Watch 2 as a smartwatch.
Lastly, I would like to see more Google created watchfaces that are a bit more colorful to match the playful vibe the company tries to push onto their products. Fortunately, the beauty of anything related to Android is that the power of the Google Play Store allows you to customize things however you want. Even with the things I feel are counter-intuitive to the health tracking functionality, I still am excited that Google is pushing hardware in the smartwatch department.
Final Thoughts
This is a product that makes wearing a smartwatch feel easy. It simply works and that’s that. My biggest detractor is less about the smartwatch capabilities and more so targeted at the continued deterioration of Fitbit. Fitbit was once a leader in consumer wearables for just about anyone. If I’m being honest in my anecdotal assessment of my surroundings, most people at my gym are using Apple Watches or Garmin products to track their health now. I have not seen a Fitbit product on anyone’s wrist this year other than my own. As someone who has transitioned into the gym life, I do see the drastic differences in the health tracking user experience between those products and the one I just went through with the Pixel Watch 2. I also do understand that Google wants to carve their own identity into Fitbit and I think we all saw that coming the minute they acquired the brand. Here’s hoping that the simplification of functionality for future products is targeted at the proper things that should be limited and not the beneficial things.
Alex
Caught in between the conundrum of his fascination with retro and the future, Alex has a very unique taste in technology. Never one to follow trends like his millennial peers yet constantly desiring to get ahead of the curve, he sees technology like he does his other love: comic books. Always looking for the best value or a hidden gem, his collector mindset reflects on some of his favorite gadgets: the Moto X (2015), HTC U11 and the Google Pixelbook. If there’s a good tech deal out there, Alex is on the hunt!