Simple fixes make this the best smartwatch for most Android users
By finally adding a much-needed bigger case size for the Pixel Watch 3, Google has finally delivered a smartwatch that tops the charts for Android users. That increased size has bestowed genuine 48-hour AOD staying power, and the newfound battery consistency ensures it can now also be trusted when juice levels are on the low side. We're a touch disappointed that Google has stuck with the same GNSS tech and stress tracking for this generation, and we're not sure those choosing the smaller Pixel Watch 3 will experience the same level of upgrade, but there's still plenty here to get excited about. The Fitbit tracking - bolstered by Cardio Load and new insights for runners - has never felt more cohesive, and the general accuracy across the board makes this a thoroughly recommendable smartwatch.
Pros
- Finally in two case sizes
- Two-day AOD battery life (45mm version)
- Still excellent HR tracking
Cons
- Not much of an upgrade for 41mm users
- No dual-frequency GNSS
- Stress tracking remains baffling
When reviewing the Pixel Watch 2 last year, our main takeaway was that Google had set itself on the right course with its smartwatch project after a shaky first attempt.
Yet, some glaring issues remained, holding it back from being our top smartwatch recommendation for Android users. Google clung to a singular, 41mm case size through its first two Pixel Watch generations, and it had a hugely detrimental effect on battery life.
Even the improved second-gen option sometimes struggled to scrape through 24 hours, and, though unisex in style, I also questioned whether such a small smartwatch could have a broad appeal.
Those primary concerns have been addressed in the Pixel Watch 3. The latest Google smartwatch comes in an all-new 45mm variant, ensuring it blasts through the brand’s conservative battery estimate. With the increased size, it’s transformed into an accessible watch series no matter your wrist size or preference.
There are other upgrades, too. Google has bumped up the display brightness and made it more edge-to-edge, and the Fitbit experience has been bolstered to include the company’s take on the now-ubiquitous ideas of training load and run-focused insights.
Not everything is perfect with the Pixel Watch 3, but Google’s changes here ensure that the third time truly is the charm. For many Android users, this is now the best option available.
Read on for the full verdict.
Design and display
I criticized Google a year ago for not introducing a larger edition for the second generation.
Mercifully, the brand has finally heeded the calls for a bigger Pixel Watch 3 with a 45mm case size, and the subject of this review is the clean, matte black version.
Introducing an additional case size is remarkably basic, but it’s the biggest move Google could have made this generation (and why I was surprised that it wasn’t done after the OG Pixel Watch). It also brings Google’s smartwatch into line with what we see from its biggest rivals, Samsung and Apple – each offering two sizes of their mid-range, ‘classic’ smartwatch models.
However, while making a bigger Pixel Watch is simple in theory (and I promise I won’t give Google too much credit for finally doing something that could have arguably been done two years ago), it’s also reasonable to argue that brands often lose the balance between wearability and distinction when they do it.
I’m happy to report Google has navigated this well, though. The 45mm Pixel Watch 3’s case shares the same 12.3mm thickness and weighs just 6g more than the 41mm equivalent, meaning it retains much of the smaller edition’s dainty feel and provides plenty of benefits in the look, display, and battery life (more on that later).
The key design upside is that users get a reasonably big smartwatch that feels very slight and flush to the wrist – even during workouts like running or cycling. The only major downside of the design at this stage is the limited durability.
I’ve not experienced catastrophic cracks or blemishes with the Pixel Watch 3, but the display has picked up a handful of (barely perceptible) scratches over the last couple of weeks. As such, it’s one I’ve been careful to protect against gym equipment and power tools. Like previous generations, it’s akin to using a phone without a protective case – one drop or bash against a hard surface feels like it would leave a mark.
Aside from that issue, the display itself remains very solid. It’s not quite the best display found on a Wear OS watch – a title comfortably held by the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra – but Google has doubled the brightness to 2,000 nits, and the always-on display can now drop down to 1 nit.
There’s also been an effort to reduce the dead space on the bezel (Google tells us this has been reduced by 16% – whatever that equates to), while the refresh rate can now jump up to 60Hz (up from 30Hz on older models).
They’re all welcome changes, but not ones that overhaul the experience – or ones I think the average user would notice. The bigger display size is better to interact with, but the predominantly black backgrounds on Wear OS meant the small-ish screen size never really bothered me. The brightness, too, just isn’t that noticeable unless you’re fighting harsh sunlight.
Still, with the new case size and those subtle changes, I think Google has pretty much maxed out what it can do with this particular design. It’s one of the best-looking smartwatches on the market, now fits a greater number of wrists, and remains functional for almost anything besides rough-and-tumble wear.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a change to the design for the next generation – for freshness, more than anything else – but there’s a good argument to be made that the Pixel Watch 3 is right up there with what Apple produces at this price point.
Smart features and software
Instead of delivering heavy-hitting smart features exclusive to this generation, Google has focused on mild refinements for the Pixel Watch 3.
There’s the Wear OS 5 upgrade, obviously, but that in itself isn’t as exciting as the kind of upgrade Apple has brought through its latest software, watchOS 11.
Instead, the most meaningful updates come through the improved integrations with existing services. Google Maps will now work offline, while Google Home will show live security camera feeds (from a limited number of devices).
The Pixel Recorder app is also available for those who want to sync memos to their Pixel phone, and Google TV users can use the Pixel Watch 3 as a remote. None of these are exclusive to this model, I repeat, as they’re already available on all older Pixel Watch models, but still.
The one noticeable smart feature you’ll only find on the Pixel Watch 3 is the ultra-wideband support. And, at the time of writing, it’s currently the only Wear OS watch featuring this chip.
There are some fringe benefits to it, like the ability to use the smartwatch to lock/unlock your BMW or Mini, though I suspect most will find the precise location tracking via Android’s Find My Device function the most useful if you happen to misplace the Pixel Watch 3.
That’s about it, though. And while I’m always incredibly reticent to criticize or praise a watch for anything related to watch faces (because there are squillions out there via third-party apps – just look at the best faces for Wear OS to see a fraction of them), I’m also surprised that there are only three new native ones for this edition – especially with more real estate for the in-house devs to take advantage of.
Of course, none of this means the smart experience is weak. On the contrary, Wear OS is now awash with great app support, rich notifications, well-established integrations, useful safety features, and wide-ranging support for key features like LTE and contactless payments.
There’s just not much new to speak of – and, at the risk of leaving you guessing, it still doesn’t work with iPhones.
Activity tracking: New features and GPS
During the unveiling keynote, one of the headlines was Google noting how the algorithm has been tweaked to offer improved accuracy for running.
It’s an area the brand is prioritizing in this latest update, with it also jumping on the bandwagon of providing advanced insights for runners, such as stride length, cadence, ground contact time and vertical ratio.
These metrics have all loosely aligned with Garmin – in this case, the Fenix 8 – during our testing, and I’m sure some users will be interested in getting a bit more of an idea into their running form.
Yet, as ever, I’m not really convinced how vital these are for the average runner to focus on.
What’s much more helpful, I think, is the additions of Cardio Load (and Target Load) and the Readiness Score being brought out from behind the Fitbit Premium paywall.
These all make the Pixel Watch 3 tracking experience feel much more cohesive and holistic than in previous iterations, with sleep quality, skin temperature, resting heart rate, and previous activity now playing a central role in activity guidance.
I think the Readiness Score remains pretty true to feel, even if it is generally a little on the low side compared to Garmin and Whoop, and it’s now even better thanks to being paired with the new load-related insights.
I’m still getting to grips with the scaling for Cardio Load (as it naturally uses a different kind of arbitrary numerical value to Garmin’s), but harder efforts roughly equate to a higher load, as they should. Our only potential gripe is that these load-related insights and suggestions are – again – a little on the low side.
Like most variations of this feature, it could get better once it’s got a few more weeks of reference to work from. Initially, before we realized that Cardio Load is based on the well-established TRIMP model, we suspected these figures could be due to Fitbit’s traditionally oversensitive grading of HR zones, but alas.
With this feature, you’re also treated to a handy chart of your current fitness level and whether your cardio capacity is being maintained, improved or declining. This makes Cardio Load infinitely more useful than the age-old Fitbit Active Zone Minutes, which have never really cut through for me.
A note on GPS, too: this is another thing Google has left unchanged for this generation, which I feel is a little stingy considering dual-frequency has become commonplace in Wear OS watches over the last year (even cheaper ones).
In our testing, it performed mostly very well once again – there were no major hiccups – but it was always slightly lagging behind Garmin’s gold-standard Multi-Band mode. For every 10 miles tracked, it would generally be at least a few hundred meters out of sync – in contrast to something like the Galaxy Watch Ultra which tended to be right in line.
I also suspect this good-but-not-amazing GNSS performance – which I exclusively tested on a wide-open coastline for this review – would have fared much worse in a built-up city environment. I’ll save that test for another time, though.
Heart rate tracking performance
The heart rate tracking performance has been a particularly strong point of the Pixel Watch story so far – and Google says it’s tweaked the algorithms to ensure better accuracy for runners this time around.
We’ve tested it during indoor and outdoor cycles, strength sessions, and a few short runs as we continue to rehab from an injury, and the results have once again stacked up very well against the top alternatives.
Curiously, though, it’s not been quite as on the money as we found last year’s Pixel Watch 2 41mm model, which we found within 1 BPM (or better) of our test devices across tons of different workouts and activity types. This year, that discrepancy has stretched to around 3 BPM (though, again, it’s almost exclusively on the lower side compared to our other test devices).
This could be down to the increased size of this year’s device – since bigger watch models can sometimes perform slightly differently in scientific HR tests due to their increased weight creating more movement on the wrist – but I think it’s more likely this will even itself out in more testing.
After all, most of our workouts have been outdoor cycles and strength sessions, which are often the most challenging for an optical heart rate sensor.
Whatever the case, even a ~3 BPM disparity by no means equals a poor showing. We still found the Pixel Watch 3 to be extremely tight to the Garmin HRM-Pro Plus chest strap and Whoop in most cases. As in the 40-minute interval spin session shown above, the Pixel Watch 3 matches the maximum HR figure (177 BPM) of both and only reports the average BPM figure lower by a single beat compared to the chest strap.
It also remained very matched to the Garmin Fenix 8 and Whoop 4.0 when we looked at the live readings in strength workouts, suggesting latency remains a strong point, and we can see how it tracks those dips and peaks from each set effectively below.
This example is also representative of the Pixel Watch 3 reporting slightly below the Fenix 8 in both average and maximum heart rate. Yet, it is in line with Whoop’s maximum HR figure – ignore Whoop’s average figure, since this is skewed by a warm-up in its Strength Trainer – and shows a largely accurate picture of a notoriously difficult workout type to track.
Health, stress, and sleep tracking
After revamping the optical sensor last year and introducing a continuous electrodermal activity sensor (cEDA) and skin temperature, not much has been added here for the Pixel Watch 3.
Aside from the new ‘Loss of Pulse Detection’ – a feature that automatically calls emergency services if it recognizes the wearer is having some kind of cardiac event – there’s nothing particularly new to speak of here.
I haven’t had the opportunity to get to grips with Loss of Pulse Detection, mind, on account of not experiencing any major cardiac issues in the past few weeks. And for those outside of the UK and Europe, the feature isn’t even available at the time of writing.
Still, it’s the first of its kind we’ve seen on a smartwatch, so we applaud it. It’ll no doubt save the lives of some Pixel Watch 3 wearers over the coming years, and is further evidence of the power of true health innovations in wearables.
You can also check out our PULSE Podcast episode with Jake Sunshine, Google Research Scientist, and Edward Shi, Product Manager for Personal Safety at Google for Android and Pixel Watch, where we discuss what it took to build the feature (and Fall Detection).
Elsewhere, then, the picture very much remains the same.
That’s no bad thing for areas like health tracking, where the Health Metrics dashboard is still very aligned with Whoop and Oura, and handy trends relating to HRV, skin temperature, resting heart rate, and other data points are all available in the Fitbit app.
Sleep tracking is also unchanged. At Wareable, we never really put much stock into sleep stages during testing, given no wearables can provide a passable level of accuracy. Yet, still, the basics and sleep-related insights are about as good as you’ll find from a Wear OS smartwatch with the Pixel Watch 3. It’s just a shame a few of them remain locked behind the Fitbit paywall.
However, mostly, I would have liked Google to rethink how it presents stress. As I’ve consistently noted in our Fitbit/Google reviews over the last few years, using an EDA sensor to try and inform us of some change in our body isn’t a method that helps me understand anything about my sensitivity to stress.
I’ve often been left with 5-10 daily minutes of body responses logged by the Pixel Watch 3, which I then dutifully tag for this review via the same set of generic emotions provided. But, even when you’re using it properly, it just feels like a far cry from Oura’s Resilience and its helpful stress plot points – or Whoop’s Daily Stress Monitor – that I’ve tested over the last year.
If the goal here is to help you become more aware of your body, it goes some way to doing that, and arguably in a friendlier way than other interpretations, but I think more can be done here by Google to help users zero in on the events and behaviors that trigger reactions (and help them learn how to manage these with breathing and other mindfulness techniques).
Battery life
Staying power has been the major sore spot for the Pixel Watch through its first two generations. And while I haven’t been able to test the 41mm edition to see if Google has managed to improve upon that 24-hour-ish battery life, I have seen a great performance from the 45mm Pixel Watch 3.
Even with the AOD enabled, consistent outdoor tracking, maximum screen brightness, a regular stream of incoming notifications, and general daily interactions, the Pixel Watch 3’s battery life has comfortably lasted beyond 48 hours in each charging cycle.
But it’s not just the extra day of juice that’s so handy. Last year, we lamented the inconsistency of the battery, with the drain varying massively between similar activities or daily use.
This time around, that appears to have been rectified. I found sleep tracking, for example, to steal around 1% an hour, with that drain creeping to just under 2% per hour in time at my desk (with the AOD on).
During roughly an hour of indoor exercise, we came to expect the battery to reduce by around 6% (or 1% every 10 minutes), while more power-intensive outdoor GPS tracking generally took around double that. We didn’t test any workouts with Spotify linked, but this traditionally zaps an extra chunk, too, so bear that in mind if you’re planning it for something like a marathon.
For everything else, though, we can comfortably recommend the bigger Pixel Watch 3 for extended use. The two-day battery life isn’t earth-shattering, granted, but it does provide some relief from the grind of daily charging. Plus, this latest model charges up quicker than previous models, which is handy if you want a quick top-up before tracking your sleep or a run.
In testing, the Pixel Watch 3 went from 15% (when the power saving mode kicks in) to full charge in around an hour – and grabbed much of that back in 30 minutes. That’s pretty good going.
