Google Pixel Watch 4 review: Pebble perfection

Smartwatches are well and truly part of our daily tech ecosystem, and time flies if you’ll excuse the pun, because Google is already on its fourth generation of Pixel Watch. 

It took Google a while to get into the game, despite making software for wearables for such a long time previously, but the Pixel Watch quickly established itself as one of the best alternatives to the Apple Watch. 

The Pixel Watch 4 might look extremely similar to the last model, but that’s no bad thing and Google has made various improvements and upgrades which are hard to see at a glance. 

With the Galaxy Watch 8 series from Samsung proving something of a disappointment, the Pixel Watch 4 might be the best Wear OS smartwatch of the year. I’ve been using it for nearly three weeks to find out. 

Design & Build 

• A familiar Pixel Watch look 
• New Moonstone colour 
• Now repairable 

The Pixel Watch 4 looks very similar to the Pixel Watch 3 and, really, all the way back to the original. As tech reviewers, we often call for design overhauls but in this case, I don’t think one is needed yet. 

Apple’s square design has never been to my taste and very few round smartwatches totally suited me either. That was, until the Pixel Watch came along. Google’s glass-pebble-like design was stunning back then and it still is now. 

Last year, Google fixed a major problem and introduced a larger size. That’s the case again this year, so you can opt for 41- or 45mm models and I’m testing the larger one here in the new Moonstone colourway, which I think looks smart yet subtle, with unisex appeal.

This, like some of the other colours, can possibly be matched with the Pixel 10 phones if you pick the right model. It’s not straightforward though, as Moonstone is only available in 45mm and Champagne Gold is only available in 41mm. 

Otherwise, your choices are between Matte Black and Polished Silver. 

Once again, the Pixel Watch 4 is extremely comfortable to wear all the time. The smooth shape and lightweight aluminium body (only 37g for the larger size) are a match made in heaven. 

As usual, you have the digital crown on the side to access your apps and scroll and, although I never seem to use it, a button above it to see your recently used apps. 

There are two more design elements to cover before we move on, and the first one proves to be better than expected in person. 

Google has moved the charging pin connectors to the side to use with a new dock (more on that later). These were seemingly purposely kept out of images of the watch. This led many, including me, to worry that they would look rather ugly – but fortunately they don’t. 

If you wear the watch on your left wrist, you’ll barely ever see them.

The other design element is invisible as such, because although the device looks essentially the same as before, Google has redesigned it to be repairable. 

That was a popular request from fans and now the Pixel Watch 4 screen and battery can both be replaced if needed. That’s great news if you have an accident or want to put a new battery in to extend the life of the device, plus you could even take in on yourself. 

Now held together with screws rather than glue, it’s possible to repair the Pixel Watch 4 at home. It should even retain its IP68 dust and water resistance. 

Ifixit even gave it a repairability score of 9/10, calling it: “The most repairable smartwatch on the market.” 

Hopefully, you don’t need this functionality any time soon, but it’s worth noting that the Pixel Watch 4 doesn’t have a sapphire glass cover like some rivals but Gorilla Glass 5 instead. 

This means it’s not as scratch-resistant, but it should be better in a drop or some kind of impact. The same glass has been used on previous generations and we’ve not had any problems with watches that have been used for a year or more. 

Screen & Audio 

• New Actua 360 display 
• First-of-its-kind domed view 
• Solid speaker with a catch 

The Pixel Watch 4 hides its upgrades very well because you wouldn’t know it had a new screen under the glass front. Google calls the Actua 360 AMOLED screen the ‘first-of-its-kind’ and features a domed display. 

It is genuinely very different from others and its predecessors. So much so that it actually took me a few days to get used to. It offers a slight fish-eye type view, a little like you get from glass beer pumps in bars, so that you can see what is available from the side. 

It’s not that dramatic, but experience is pleasant, plus it results in a larger ‘active area’ than before. 

Elsewhere, the specs are largely the same, including the resolution and dynamic refresh rate of 1-60Hz. There is a new peak brightness of 3000 nits, which matches many ‘Ultra’ level smartwatches. 

It’s been pretty dull weather while I’ve been testing the Pixel Watch 4, but I had no issues during one very sunny day spent in the garden wearing it.

The speaker on the left side of the Pixel Watch 4 is decent and is perfectly good enough to hear Gemini responding to you. You can also make use of it to have a phone call if you wish. 

What it can’t do is play audio from apps such as Spotify, which is hardly a major omission but could come in handy sometimes. 

Performance & Software 

• New Snapdragon chip 
• Wear OS 6 with Gemini 
• Material 3 Expressive UI 

The Pixel Watch 4 has a combination of a new processor and new operating system. Wear OS 6, Google’s latest smartwatch software, is running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 Gen 2. 

I had some glitchy performance issues in the first week, but these were quashed with a firmware update. In general, the smartwatch runs very smoothly for navigating and scrolling through menus etc. 

There are occasions when things aren’t snappy. Loading some apps, including Spotify, and summoning Gemini can take a second or two, which can feel like an age, but it’s typically on the first try. If you’re connecting to a live feed of a Nest camera, you’ll also need to be patient.

Like Pixel phones, this has the most vanilla version of Wear OS 6 (Samsung, for example, puts One UI 8 Watch over the top) and the Pixel Watch 4 comes with Google’s Material 3 Expressive design language. 

It works really well on the smartwatch, with optimised shapes, animations, colours that pop and more. It feels more stylish than childish, which is how some of it comes across on phones in my opinion. There are a dozen watch faces pre-installed, but it’s easy to get more.

Once again, Tiles on either side of the watch face (essentially widgets) give you quick access to information and features, and can be customised to what you need the most. 

A new haptic feedback engine enhances the experience further, which is crisp and responsive from scrolling to notifications. 

Gemini replaces Google Assistant on the Pixel Watch 4 (the AI bot is being rolled out on every device you can think of) and you can even set it to activate with raise-to-wake if you like. 

I’ve found myself using it far more on the watch than my phone, but it’s often hard to know what its limitations are. It can answer questions, of course, but despite a welcome guide when it installed saying it could do things like “tell you about your heart rate”, this command is simply a shortcut to my real-time bpm. 

There are also AI features such as Smart Replies, which aims to offer up personalised suggestions in the way you write. The example on the Google Store is a choice of a couple of coffees when someone has asked what coffee you’d like. 

Fortunately for me, this works with WhatsApp where I do all my messaging, but it doesn’t appear to know me very well. As for the coffee question, it gave me three different ways to ask for a black coffee, which is about the only coffee I don’t drink. In a group chat, it solely suggested “hahaha”.

So, it’s just guessing what coffee I like? Not ideal, and Google says that onboard processing means “the AI doesn’t learn from your responses or improve responses as you continue to use it”. 

Fortunately, the other reply methods – even the tiny on-screen keyboard – work very well.  

It’s also worth noting that you need a Pixel phone for Smart Replies to work (9 or later, according to this help page or 8 Pro or later, according to the official store). 

Although I’ve not needed them, there are various safety features available too (Pixel phone or not), including fall detection, loss of pulse detection, check in, crash detection and emergency SOS. Just note that the LTE models are required for satellite connectivity.

Health & Fitness Tracking 

• No new sensors 
• Solid core tracking 
• Fitbit Premium costs extra 
• Upgraded dual-band GPS 

Google hasn’t upgraded the tracking sensors from the Pixel Watch 3, but it does everything you’d expect from a flagship smartwatch. 

Steps, calories, floors and such like are all accounted for (and you’ll see them around the edge of the larger 45mm screen on the default watch face). There’s also heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature and various bits of exercise information all within the Fitbit app (which is getting a big redesign very soon). 

The Pixel Watch 4 give you a holistic view of your activity and you can delve into different areas on the watch and on the Fitbit app on your phone, too. In my testing, it’s all accurate, including sleep tracking, which gives you a score and a breakdown of your night.

You will need Fitbit Premium, which costs £7.99/$9.99 per month or £79.99/$79.99 per year to get “advanced insights, personalised recommendations and energising workouts” and this includes one of the best features, the Readiness score, which takes all information into account to give you an idea of how much you should take on that day. 

The Pixel Watch 4 does come with 6 months of Fitbit Premium free, so you can at least give it a good try before deciding whether it’s worth paying for. You won’t need it for Morning Brief, which gives you an overview of things including your sleep, weather and what’s on your calendar. 

Via Fitbit, Google does a great job of presenting all the information and helping you achieve your goals. 

If you’re more of a fitness enthusiast (unlike me), you can pay more attention to things like the Cardio Load metric and the Fitbit phone app has a wealth of workout videos and a running coach (though the AI personal health coach is limited to the US, so I’ve not been able to try that). 

Sure, you can go with a Garmin or similar if fitness is particularly important to you, but I’d say the Pixel Watch 4 does a good job for a more mainstream smartwatch. 

For exercise tracking, there are 52 sports available and it can auto-track a number of these. Other watches can do many more, often way over 100, and the selection is a little strange considering boxing is AWOL but pickleball (whatever that is) is right there. 

For walks and runs etc, you now have dual-band GPS for more accurate tracking, and I found it acquired a signal in just a few seconds. I don’t live in a dense forest where the tech has more impact, but it tracked my walks around the neighbourhood with very high accuracy. 

I’m still not convinced by the body responses feature (and similar things on rival watches), which aims to keep track of how you’re feeling. However, this still seems rudimentary and appears to detect a raised heart rate, which could be from almost anything. 

You’ll get a notification and the option to log your mood, which could be happy or stressed, for example. When I could remember what I was doing at the time stated, it was normally something mundane like getting my daughter ready to leave the house and the limited selection of ‘feelings’ meant I could rarely select how I really felt. 

Even when I could, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, with the watch mostly saying ‘hold onto that feeling’ if it’s a good one. For me, all this is more of a faff than it’s worth and, ironically, stressful. 

I haven’t tested it for obvious reasons, but after being introduced on the Pixel Watch 3, the device can track your menstrual cycle with potentially useful info like cycle status and predictions. 

Battery Life & Charging 

• Slightly bigger batteries 
• Up to 30/40 hours battery 
• New charging dock 

Google has managed to fit the Pixel Watch 4 with a slightly bigger battery, for both sizes, and that means you can get up to 30 or 40 hours (41- and 45mm respectively) of use with the display always on. 

This extends to 48 or 72 hours with Battery Saver on, but you won’t want to use the watch in that mode unless you have to. 

The battery life you’ll get depends on what you need a smartwatch for. I’ve been testing the 45mm model and I can get two days and nights from a single charge, sometimes more, but this is with a lighter level of use. 

Those tracking intensive workouts with GPS every day and using the screen in bright sunlight, along with other battery-draining features, will need to charge more regularly. 

However, when you do, it’s very fast and Google’s new Quick Charge Dock is a much neater solution than the previous chargers.

The dock is small and could do with being heavier to stay flat (cable management is key here), but I much prefer it to the previous version (and most rival solutions). The screen will tell you if the other end of the cable isn’t plugged in or the contacts aren’t quite aligned and, when it’s charging, information including how long is left and the time. 

I expected the screen to stay on all the time while charging, but this has to be enabled in the developer settings. It can sometimes struggle with the orientation of the display when docked, but not too often. 

Charging is incredibly quick (25% faster than the Pixel Watch 3), even for the 45mm with a bigger battery, with my tests exceeding even Google’s claims. From completely dead, I saw it reach 50% in 15 minutes and 89% in 30.

As mentioned in the design section, a key feature of the Pixel Watch 4 is that the battery is replaceable and you may even feel confident enough to do it yourself at home. This could be crucial in the device lasting many more years before you need to upgrade. 

Price & Availability 

Despite the various upgrades, the Pixel Watch 4 comes in at the same price as its predecessor, meaning you can pick one up from £349/$349.99.  

Of course, that will get you the smaller 41mm size in the WiFi/Bluetooth model, so adding LTE connectivity or choosing the larger 45mm will cost you more.

Here’s the full Pixel Watch 4 pricing:

• Pixel Watch 4 (41mm Wi-Fi) – £349/$349/€399
• Pixel Watch 4 (41mm LTE) – £449/$449/€499
• Pixel Watch 4 (45mm Wi-Fi) – £399/$399/€449
• Pixel Watch 4 (45mm LTE) – £499/$499/€549

You can buy it from Google as well as retailers such as Amazon, Argos, Currys, Very, John Lewis, and Best Buy for those in the US 

The price sits between the Apple Watch Series 11 (£369/$399) and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 (£319/$349.99), so it’s very fair. As mentioned, you might need to pay for Fitbit Premium to get the most out of it. 

Check our list of the best smartwatches to see our current top 10 recommendations.

Should you buy the Google Pixel Watch 4? 

For my money, the Pixel Watch 4 is the best Wear OS watch out there, with only a few small issues to complain about. 

It’s the best looking watch (though you may disagree) and Google has done a great job of making it repairable so you can replace the screen or battery – possibly yourself, at home. 

Performance is smooth for the most part, the domed screen is a delight, the interface looks and works great, the new Quick Charge Dock is a boon and health, fitness and smartwatch features are plentiful. 

There’s still a bit of work to be done with Gemini and Smart Replies are restrictive, plus you can get a longer-lasting smartwatch for less money in the OnePlus Watch 3. 

However, the Pixel Watch 4 is an excellent all-rounder and easy to recommend if you’re looking for a flagship smartwatch that does just about everything well. 

Specs

• Wear OS 6
• 41 or 45mm
• Actua 360 display, AMOLED, 1-60Hz, 3000 nits peak
• Snapdragon W5 Gen 2
• 2GB RAM
• 32GB storage
• Heart rate monitor
• SpO2
• ECG
• Skin temperature
• Microphone
• Speaker
• Wi-Fi 6
• Bluetooth 6.0
• Satellite SOS (LTE models)
• Ultra Wideband
• Dual-band GPS
• eSIM
• NFC
• 325/455mAh battery
• Quick Charge Dock
• Gorilla Glass 5
• IP68/5ATM
• 31/37g