Google has a one-track mind these days: jamming Gemini down our throats in hopes of making the AI chatbot ubiquitous just by brute force. Case in point: Gemini replaces the Google Assistant in the Pixel Watch 4. Sounds good to have a smarter voice assistant available at the rise of your wrist, but as I found out, it’s hardly that much more “intelligent,” but at least the rest of the smartwatch’s hardware is very upgraded.
By upgraded, I mean the Pixel Watch 4, Google’s fourth-generation smartwatch, finally holds its own against even several-year-old Apple Watches and Samsung Galaxy Watches. Google took many generations to catch up, but it finally has. Gemini may be all Google cares about, but if all you want is a smartwatch for Android that looks great, lasts longer, more accurately tracks your health and fitness, and doesn’t come with a Samsung or OnePlus logo on it, the Pixel Watch 4 should fulfill your needs.
Google Pixel Watch 4 Google's Pixel Watch 4 is finally a competitive smartwatch to the Apple Watch Series 11 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 8. 4 Pros Bigger, brighter domed display
Longer battery
More accurate health and fitness tracking
Redesigned fast-charging dock Cons Gemini is hit or miss
Still has finicky band attachment mechanism
Subtle quality-of-life tweaks
Last year, Google finally did what everybody had been begging for: it added a larger model. So Google gave us the 45mm Pixel Watch 3. The battery life was better, too. The Pixel Watch 3 was improved, but it was overall a minor spec refresh. The Pixel Watch 4, starting at $350, takes the Pixel Watch 3 and tweaks it in practical ways that you can and can’t immediately see.
The Pixel Watch 4 still comes in the two sizes: 41mm and 45mm. I was sent the 45mm model in Moonstone because I prefer a bigger screen that I don’t need to squint at. Like the Moonstone Pixel 10 Pro Fold I just reviewed, the color is a purple-gray. The round always-on display is really nice—super bright (up to 3,000 nits of peak brightness versus 2,000 nits on the Pixel Watch 3) and very visible in sunlight. The screen is also around 10% larger, while the bezel around it has slimmed down by 16%. The result is a bigger display but not a larger aluminum case. I like it a lot! The “Actua 360 display” is also subtly domed in the center, curving upwards. This is something borrowed from analog watches; it’s such a small thing, but it makes the time and the software feel just ever-so-slightly closer to your eyes. You have to see it with your own eyes to appreciate the effect.
There’s still only a digital crown for pulling down quick settings, scrolling through notifications and apps, and launching apps in Wear OS 6. The single button brings up recent apps and functions as a back button. Otherwise, you swipe through the smartwatch OS to open up app widgets. It’s all very familiar with a UI that looks nicer thanks to Material 3 Expressive. I’ve said it before, but the bubblier animations work better on the round display than it does on smartphones.
The Pixel Watch 4 has a newer Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 chip, but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you it’s meaningfully faster than the Pixel Watch 3. Wear OS 6 feels snappy enough, and I can’t be sure if any of the few times I noticed a stutter swiping back in an app or trying to return to the time was simply human error or the 2GB of RAM bottlenecking.
It doesn’t seem like a lot of RAM, but it’s the same amount in Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8, and twice as much as what Apple includes in the Apple Watch Series 11. You get 32GB of storage, but I don’t know a single person who’s ever filled up their smartwatch with offline songs. I certainly have never. The Pixel Watch 4 also has what Google claimed was the first smartwatch with emergency satellite communications. That was true when the Pixel Watch 4 was announced in August, but the Apple Watch Ultra 3 beat it to market. I doubt I’ll ever find myself trapped in some remote place without cellular connectivity, but if you think you might, it’s reassuring to know the feature is there.
Attaching and detaching bands is still a finicky process involving pressing a button and sliding the bands on a pair of rails. It’s just not as smooth as swapping bands on an Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch. On the left side of the Pixel Watch 4 is the new charging connector. Google has switched from the old charging puck (that also worked with Fitbit smartwatches) to a new Quick Charge Dock. Instead of the smartwatch lying flat on a surface, it can now sit upright on a desk or nightstand, displaying the time and charging status.
The charger is a major quality-of-life upgrade, and as its name suggests, it charges the Pixel Watch 4 faster—around 25% faster (0 to 50% in about 15 minutes). This is something that’s necessary in a smartwatch that’s expected to be used for workouts, but also worn when you’re sleeping for tracking shut-eye time.
Google also made the haptics stronger. They’re less generic buzzing and more nuanced when vibrating your wrist. At least, they felt better to me. I’ve used my fair share of smartwatches and wearables with cheap vibration motors, and you can really feel the difference. Apple Watches have had premium Taptic Engine haptics since the original, so it’s nice to see Android smartwatches finally do, too.
Better for workouts
When Google bought Fitbit in 2021 for $2.1 billion, everyone thought it would lead to class-leading smartwatches that would leave Apple Watches in their dust. That didn’t happen. Similar to the dragged-out transitioning of Nest users to Google Home, using Fitbit for tracking workouts, health, and sleep on the Pixel Watch 4 finally feels more polished.
Ask anybody who’s ever owned or used a Pixel Watch, and they’ll tell you that the fitness tracking could be very hit or miss. If it wasn’t a step counter that was wildly off compared to an Apple Watch, or auto-workout tracking that didn’t log your activity, or inaccurate location tracking, it was always something else that would make me want to give up and go back to an Apple Watch. Google says it made a number of hardware improvements to address the inconsistent tracking on the Pixel Watch 3 and make it more accurate on the Pixel Watch 4.
For example, though the multi-path optical heart sensor is the same one in the Pixel Watch 3, new AI and software algorithms improve its accuracy. Comparing the Pixel Watch 4 to an Apple Watch Series 11, I observed a general difference between 1 to 3 beats per minute (bpm) as opposed to the sometimes 5 to 10 bpm difference using a Pixel Watch 3. So, Google’s closed the gap on heart rate tracking. That also, in turn, means sleep tracking is more accurate since it relies on heart rate information to log when you’ve fallen asleep, how you’re sleeping, and when you wake up.
Wearing the Pixel Watch 4 on my left wrist and the Apple Watch Series 11 on my right, I slept for a week and compared data from both smartwatches and their corresponding apps (Fitbit and Health apps, respectively), and I was pleased to see the delta of data between the two was narrower. Weirdly, on the second night of wearing both to sleep, the Pixel Watch 4 logged an extra hour of sleep compared to the Apple Watch Series 11. It didn’t ever happen again, and the Pixel Watch 4 often says I woke up a minute or two later than the Apple Watch Series 11, but they’re worth noting.
These discrepancies could have been human error or simply that I wore the smartwatches on different wrists. I also woke up one morning, swiped over to the sleep widget, and saw it said there was no sleep data, which obviously wasn’t true. I tapped the button to open the data in the phone app, only for the sleep data to appear in the smartwatch widget a few seconds later. On the Apple Watch Series 11, there’s never any delay in showing the sleep data; it’s always instant.
Apple added Sleep Score to the Apple Watch this year, which has really pushed me toward correcting my lousy sleep. Both smartwatches break down your sleep by duration, sleep stages, etc., and then provide a score. These scores all work differently on different smartwatches and fitness trackers, and I’ve always found them somewhat complicated to understand. On the Pixel Watch 4, your sleep score is calculated based on the total of points for “time asleep, deep and REM sleep, and restoration.” As always, Apple was late to the game with Sleep Score, but I think the stat breakdown is better presented with the sleep “donut” ring that shows duration, bedtime, and interruptions; it’s easier to understand.
For improved fitness tracking, there’s a dual-frequency GPS for more accurate route tracking when you’re farther from the grid or in cities where everyone’s wireless connections are crossing fire. Automatic tracking is also improved for some activities. Nothing groundbreaking—just catch-up to the Apple Watch and tweaks to make the basics more accurate.
Subscribing to Fitbit Premium ($10/month or $80/year) gives you more fitness, health, and sleep insights, workout classes, as well as some AI-powered coaching and suggestions. I’m not a data junkie for any of these things, so I’m often good with what’s included in the box. But there’s a lot there if you’re a fitness or health nut, and you really like to dive into metrics to live a healthier or more active lifestyle. Me? I’m just a guy who needs my smartwatch to guilt me into working out more and sleeping better. I can trust the Pixel Watch 4 to reliably do that.
Goodbye Assistant, hello Gemini
Like it or not, Google’s Gemini AI chatbot is here to stay. But it doesn’t work the same on every device. On the Pixel Watch 4, its capabilities are more limited. Replacing the Google Assistant, Gemini is supposed to be more “intelligent” and contextual. In reality, it’s currently only a little bit smarter than the Assistant. The big new thing is a “raise to talk” feature that lets you, well, raise your hand and start speaking to Gemini—no “Hey Google” wake word prompt required. I didn’t keep an exact record, but I would peg the gesture working around 70% to 80% of the time. I noticed the gesture would fail more often when I was working out harder—like hitting my stride during a run—compared to when I was standing or sitting at my desk or walking. You don’t realize how often you’re barking out “Hey Google” into your wrist until you no longer need to do it. I found myself asking Gemini about things I’d normally search Perplexity for and converting units.
When Gemini works without issues, it’s like having an actually useful assistant right on your wrist. I love that I can just say, “Create a checklist in Google Keep. First item is buy cat food, second item is call mom, third item is get cash from the ATM,” and the checklist is created in the Keep notes app, synced across all my devices (including Apple ones). But when it doesn’t work, like when I asked Gemini to start an audio recording and it said, “I cannot start an audio recording because I am a text-based AI,” it was a sober reminder that these AI chatbots are all works in progress.
It’s also somewhat annoying that Gemini isn’t the Gemini Live version, which keeps listening after the first prompt. After it shares a response, you need to tap a microphone icon to initiate a follow-up, which adds back a layer of friction to talking to a voice assistant on your wrist.
Consumers don’t care that Google is retrofitting the Pixel Watch as it’s accelerating down the proverbial highway. They’re just gonna be annoyed that the so-called “intelligent” AI can’t open the Recorder app and start a recording because… wait, why can’t Gemini do that? The app is on the Pixel Watch 4, and shouldn’t Gemini just be able to open the app and start the recording after understanding your natural language request? I’m sure there’s a technical reason, but again, consumers don’t care. Tech companies keep promising all this “agentic” stuff with AI assistants, and then they can’t even do basic stuff like open the apps already installed on your smartwatch and perform an action. To be fair, Gemini does understand when I say “Open the Recorder app,” but if I include “and start a recording,” it can’t actually do that. Google doesn’t get a pass here; Gemini is supposed to understand natural language as opposed to a command, and it just doesn’t seem to get that right enough times.
There’s also a feature on Pixel Watch 4 called “smart replies” that is supposed to parse your message and suggest replies based on the conversation, as opposed to really boilerplate quick replies like “yes,” “no,” ok,” “thanks,” and the like. The AI-suggested replies are better, but I wouldn’t say they’re more personal or even that contextual. It seems Gemini only knows how to look through a few recent messages at a time, not the whole conversation that has a lot of back and forth. Smart replies mainly work in the Messages app. It didn’t work in WhatsApp or Line.
Great for Android users. iPhone users LOL
iPhone users… just look away because the Pixel Watch 4 doesn’t work with Apple’s glass slabs. Or don’t look away, if you’re considering a switch to Google’s latest Pixel 10, 10 Pro/Pro XL, or the 10 Pro Fold, or another Android phone. If you’re an Android user, the Pixel Watch 4 has the most complete featureset in a stylish watch case that’s not from Samsung. To Apple Watch users, it’s nothing to be proud of since Apple nailed all these things years ago.
If you prefer a more minimalist design, Google’s smartwatch is my recommendation. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 8 has slightly more comprehensive health tracking and some useful gestures like a pinch, shake, and double-shake that I find useful. However, the Pixel Watch 4 has longer battery life based on my testing. I found myself only needing to charge it up every 1.5 days instead of every night, though it still doesn’t compare to the OnePlus Watch 3, which is the smartwatch battery champ, often enduring 2 to 3 days from one charge.
It’s really great to see Google has finally caught up to Apple and Samsung this year. The Apple Watch has needed this kind of competition for a while. It’s just been so boring when the only competition for Android users has been from Samsung for the most part. Next year, though, I want to see the Pixel Watch 5 take the lead for a change, whether that’s with Gemini or some other feature.