For the past year, the Google Pixel Watch 3 has barely left my wrist. It’s been a fantastic and reliable smartwatch. It does everything I expect it to do and does it well. However, at its core, it’s just a typical smartwatch. My habits remained the same: I’d glance at notifications, manually start tracking my bike ride in the Fitbit app, or swipe over to a widget to check the weather. My watch was a convenient, wrist-mounted second screen for my phone, but it was largely a passive experience.
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When Google announced the Pixel Watch 4, I expected the usual iterative upgrades: a better battery, a brighter screen, and additional software features. And don’t get me wrong, the Pixel Watch 4 has all of those things, and they are very welcome improvements. But nestled among these is one new software feature that blindsided me. It’s a feature so simple, so intuitive, and so seamlessly integrated that it has completely rewired my brain and transformed my smartwatch experience. That feature is the new Gemini raise-to-talk action — the true highlight of the Pixel Watch 4.
A truly hands-free experience
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
On every smartwatch I’ve used before this one, including all previous Pixel watches, interacting with Google Assistant/Gemini has always been a deliberate, two-step process. I either needed to long-press the side button to summon the assistant and then speak my command, or had to say “Hey Google” and wait for the watch to recognize it before I could ask my question. Both methods work, but they introduce a tiny bit of friction. A long-press isn’t a hands-free action, and saying a hotword out loud can feel awkward in public, especially if it doesn’t register the first time and I need to repeat myself.
The Pixel Watch 4 eliminates this friction entirely. Now, there’s no button-pressing or hotword required. As soon as I lift my arm in the natural gesture anyone would use to check the time, a subtle glow appears at the bottom of the screen, indicating that Gemini is active and listening. From there, I just start talking. It turns a two-step chore into a single, fluid motion.
What was once a two-step chore is now a single, fluid motion.
Let me give you some examples of how this has changed my habits. Before, if I wanted to check the weather, my muscle memory was to raise my wrist, swipe over to the weather widget, tap on it, and then scroll through the forecast. It was a multi-step process that required my full visual attention, not to mention the use of my hands. Now, my process is completely different. I just raise my wrist, see the Gemini glow, and ask, “What’s the weather this week?” I can immediately drop my arm and just listen to the audio response (through the new, much-better speaker!) as I continue doing whatever it was I was doing.
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