Google Pixel Watch 4 reviewed: a winner

The latest wearable from the maker of Android, the Google Pixel Watch 4, fixes one of the major shortcomings and gives you two days to do what you do.

Our phones may well be the centre of our universe, but that doesn’t mean we can’t wear an extension of them on our wrists. That’s the job of a watch, and these days, that watch is doing more than mere notifications.

It’s your health tracker, your sleep monitor, your AI assistant, and your window to the world at a literal arm’s length.

But there’s one area most wearables fail: battery life. Like so many phones, there’s a good chance you’re going to need to charge this one nightly, adding to the things you need to remember to do.

Can the Google Pixel Watch 4 turn it all around, and is it a nice wearable, too?

Design and features

A big slick circle made for your wrist, Google’s latest wearable is reminiscent of its past Pixel Watch models, a range that has been kicking around since 2022. It’s definitely similar, but there are some pretty key differences, most of which occur on the inside.

Underneath is a Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon made-for-wearable processor W5 Gen 2, and there’s also 32GB storage and 2GB RAM, both of which you’ll hopefully never need to think about because it’s a watch and not a phone.

Sensors include an assortment of heart-rate, electrocardiograph (ECG), SpO2 infrared sensors, skin conductance, skin temperature, barometer, altimeter, and accelerometer, making it just about as well spec’d as any other decent wearable. There’s also a built-in microphone and built-in speaker in case you want to have a chat.

Wireless connections cover an assortment of 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax WiFi 6, Bluetooth 6, GPS (dual-frequency), Near-Field Communication (NFC) for Google Pay, and support for ultra-wideband radio, with 4G part of the package if you add another to each model.

Outside, you’ll find another of the domed glass wearable styles, as Google opts for another circular take on the watch, more like a classic watch, but with a big screen measuring either 41mm or 45mm.

Little about the design has changed, though. You’ll still find an aluminium casing with a glass dome display. Google doesn’t do the sapphire glass thing, but it does use Corning’s 3D Gorilla Glass 5, which gives the watch a little more resistance to the world, alongside an IP68 water resistance rating and a resistance to 5 metres of water for swimmers. That sort of thing matters for that.

In-use

Grab the watch, slot its watch straps into place, and you are pretty much ready to go, provided you have an Android phone, because Wear OS only plays nicely with Android. Much like how an iPhone is needed for an Apple Watch, an Android is needed for a Pixel Watch, too.

Setup is easy, though; run the app and look for the watch, and shortly after, it’ll be connected to your phone, and you are good to go.

You can change clock faces with ease, tweak some, and you’ll find a decent assortment of cute colours and softened numbers, and the look is otherwise friendly. We have little in the way of complaints to how the watch faces look and feel.

There are apps for fitness and shortcuts to get things going, and ways to customise the watch.

Performance

The good news is you never really have to worry about how the Pixel Watch 4 handles things, as it just works.

The second-gen W5 chip inside keeps things going, and while there may be a moment or two of lag, we found the watch was typically snappy and responsive, loading the clock and notifications and apps when you needed them all too well.

Health is a little more of the focus than it ever has been — that and Gemini’s AI, if you want it — and they’re all within reach all too easily without any thought to whether they will work when you need it.

Overall, the experience feels a little tighter, too. Android’s take on wearables in Wear OS does manage to deliver a seemingly better experience, with a minimalist vibe that doesn’t really get in the way.

Battery

You shouldn’t have to worry about the performance, and it’s the same vibe for the battery, which just largely handles itself better than most other fullscreen wearables at this price point.

Throughout our time and testing with the Pixel Watch 4, we found two full days of battery life was consistently reliable, with the recharge more likely to happen the morning on the third day. That is to say we were seeing a full battery runtime of around 50 to 56 hours without needing a top-up, the sort of life you expect with a more expensive and much larger watch.

While not “the best” it could be — we’d love three days to a week, folks — two days is where you expect things for the Apple Watch Ultra, the more premium and expensive model in the Apple Watch range. That model costs roughly twice the cost of the 45mm Pixel Watch 4’s $679, giving you an idea just how far ahead Google’s battery life is.

In short, this battery life isn’t short, and that makes it one of the standout features.

Value

Even the value seems like a winner, as Google largely leaves the price the same as the Pixel Watch 3, but improving the system.

The Pixel Watch 4 starts at $579 in Australia for the smaller 41mm model, but the variant we reviewed with the slightly larger 45mm screen and a subsequently bigger battery fetches $679 locally, something we just noted with the battery.

While not cheap per se, the value isn’t bad given you’re getting two days of performance in a rather lovely looking wearable. It could still be less expensive, and the cost of 4G does seem rather high to get your watch always connected, adding a coat of $170 to either model, making it $749 for the 4G 41mm Pixel Watch 4 or $849 for the 4G 45mm variant.

But if you don’t need to be always connected from the wrist alone, the price for the Pixel Watch 4 is actually downright decent.

What needs work?

What’s less decent is the app ecosystem, which still doesn’t feel as fully furnished or finished as Apple’s watchOS.

While Apple offers numerous apps that connect with phone equivalents, and plenty of developers have taken advantage, Wear OS doesn’t feel as well rounded from an app ecosystem approach as Apple’s equivalent.

We ended up mostly relying on the likes of the time, notifications, calendar, and fitness notifications, the latter of which Google leans on Fitbit for, following its acquisition some number of years ago. Extra apps just don’t feel as well established or connected in the Pixel Watch 4, which seems to be an ongoing issue outside of Android phones.

It’s a similar vibe with AI, which doesn’t really exist for a good reason on the Pixel Watch, unless you want to talk to Gemini by holding your wrist watch to your lips and speaking.

You can do that — you can talk to Google’s AI of choice, and get it to do things — but talking to the Pixel Watch instance of Gemini was never really all that fulfilling, and feels like a bonus rather than an integral addition.

What we love

Our favourite feature might end up being the stand, because it’s one of those additions where Google has actually gone and done something clever.

While there was nothing technically wrong with the stock standard basic charging puck of the previous models, it was a little basic. The new model is different, providing a cute little charging stand for you to rest your Pixel Watch 4 in.

Slot the watch into the charger and it not only starts charging, it also switches to the bedside mode, flipping the clock’s orientation and showing you the time, which means Google is essentially providing a charging accessory that can’t be found anywhere.

You can find heaps of Apple Watch charging stands, and there was even a holder for a Samsung Galaxy Watch at one point in time (Mophie made it). But we’ve never seen a Pixel Watch charging stand.

Google makes one, however, and it even comes with the Pixel Watch 4. That’s a clever inclusion worth talking about.

Pixel Watch 4 vs the competition

The battery life makes the Pixel Watch 4 an easy consideration, as does that design, but is there anything else we’d consider in its place?

Since we’re staying put in Android world, the Pixel Watch 4 competes nicely with the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, a nice wearable that misses having a decent battery life, and costs a little more at $699 for the 44mm edition. We’d call the Pixel Watch 4 the better of these two if you had to compare them.

There are other models, though, and if you can forgo the major operating system and support for payment, Huawei’s Watch Fit 4 Pro offers an Apple Watch-inspired design with several days worth of battery life, while the Withings Scanwatch Nova delivered up to two weeks in an analogue design.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

Google’s update to the Pixel Watch 4 is definitely interesting all the same, not just because it keeps that elegant design in play, but because it fixes one of the biggest complaints we’ve had about the Pixel Watch range since it launched: battery life.

Let’s get something out of the way here: no one should need to charge their watch nightly. It’s a watch; you should be able to wear a watch overnight and be comfortable that it can survive you checking the time in the space of 24 hours.

But these days, watches tend to do a little more. They check your health, they get notifications, and they typically provide more ways to look at and show off the time than a regular watch can. They have a screen and wireless hardware, and just like the phones that also do, we largely expect the battery life to be less than thrilling.

That’s a rather bleak way of saying wearable battery life is rarely good.

Google hasn’t entirely fixed that with the Pixel Watch 4, but it is taking a big stride into improving it greatly.

The Pixel Watch 4 does that well. It lets you focus on your life and health without reaching for a charger, and when you do, the charger is also an accessory that makes life a little easier, as well.

This is about the most well thought-out Pixel Watch ever. It’s easily one of Google’s best gadgets this year, and a great addition to the line-up.

For people in need of a wearable that works with them, rather than against them, Google’s minimalist Pixel Watch 4 is an easy recommendation designed for Android users of all kinds, delivering maximum compatibility with minimum effort. It’s a winner for sure. Recommended.