Key Takeaways
- The Pixel Watch 3 refines its design with smaller bezels and a brighter 2000-nit display, but it doesn’t stray far from its predecessors’ sleek, minimal aesthetic.
- Google builds on the Pixel Watch’s health tracking with new features like readiness scores and cardio load tracking, though some metrics feel redundant alongside existing in-depth tracking.
- Despite its impressive battery life, the performance of the Pixel Watch 3 still lacks the fluidity and polish of competing smartwatches like the Apple Watch.
A smartwatch has always been a cornerstone of my everyday carry. After switching to the iPhone last year, the Apple Watch replaced my Galaxy Watch for nearly three years and gave me a new perspective on how essential integration is to a hardware ecosystem. If there’s one device that determines the efficacy of this integration, it’s the smartwatch and how seamlessly it interacts with everything else—particularly your phone.
Having tested many smartwatches over the years, I’ve rarely found the same level of integration that I experienced with my Apple Watch and iPhone. I was particularly intrigued to test Google’s latest offering, the Pixel Watch 3. After spending time with it, I can confidently say that on the Android side, Google is getting very close to creating the perfect smartwatch.
Disclosure: Google Canada provided our review unit, but all thoughts and opinions are at our discretion. Google did not receive an early preview of this review.
Google Pixel Watch 3
The Google Pixel Watch 3 is a performance-focused smartwatch featuring a larger, brighter Actua display available in two sizes, designed to enhance fitness tracking and daily productivity. It offers advanced running capabilities, readiness and cardio load tracking, and deep integration with Google’s ecosystem, all while delivering up to 36 hours of battery life with Battery Saver mode.
- Really nice build quality
- Surprisingly good battery life on the smaller 41mm
- Integrates well with Google services
- Does occasionally lag
- No wireless charging
Price and Availability
The Pixel Watch 3 is available for $349.99 in the U.S. for the 41mm and $399.99 for the 45mm at most major online retailers, including Best Buy, Amazon, and directly through the Google Store. The device comes standard with 32GB of storage and is available in Polished Silver, Champagne Gold, and Matte Black Aluminum casings with various active band pairings.
Design of No Difference
The Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t stray far from its predecessor in design, but it’s been the same story for many major smartwatch makers over the last few years. At first glance, you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish between this model and last year’s Pixel Watch 2.
The design remains sleek and minimal. The 41mm model fits comfortably on the wrist, but it’s just a bit too small compared to the 45mm Apple Watch. Google offers the casing in either polished silver or gold aluminum or a matte black finish, which both look stunning. The Pixel Watch 3 also retains its IP68 rating and 5ATM water resistance, which means you can take it for a swim or sweat through a workout without worry.
I’m a big fan of the domed display glass because it gives the impression that the watch isn’t just a 2D screen. It looks fantastic with the always-on display as the components spill over the sides. It also helps that the screen now comes with 16% smaller bezels, giving more screen real estate to work with, especially at this smaller size.
The display can now go up to 2000 nits, making the screen easy to read even under direct sunlight, and it’s very usable as a small flashlight. I took the watch out on a walk during the middle of the day and had no issues glancing at my maps on the screen.
Coming from the Apple Watch, I was surprised to see Google’s rendition of a Digital Crown, and unlike the likes of the OnePlus watch—which doesn’t have any functionality in its twistable crown aside from clicking a button—this crown does allow you to interact with the software through turning it.
I think it works well for the most part, but it misses subtleties on the Apple Watch. For one, the haptics aren’t as precise, and the tolerance for the turn is tighter, which doesn’t correspond as effectively with the software.
You can only tell this if you’re coming from an Apple Watch, and even then, it’s only noticeable when you’re directly comparing the two side by side. That said, it speaks to the small differences in polish in integrating hardware and software that I often found missing on the Android side for smartwatches.
One area that hasn’t seen much change—and one I wish Google had rethought—is the charging system. The Pixel Watch 3 still uses a pin-based charger like the Pixel Watch 2, which, while functional and providing faster charging, feels somewhat dated in an era where wireless charging is becoming the standard.
It also means you can’t use the Pixel 9’s reverse wireless charging feature. Given how many times I’ve used reverse charging to juice up my earbuds, it would have been nice to see this compatibility extended to the Pixel Watch.
Overall, it’s clear Google understands that the core Pixel Watch design didn’t need much tuning aside from gaining a larger screen. Honestly, it’s great to see this particular design continue to be iterated upon, given that it strays from the generic smartwatch look.
Consistent Fitness and Health Features
It’s no secret that Google’s acquisition of Fitbit greatly influenced the company’s decision to enter the smartwatch market, and the Pixel Watch 3 continues to showcase that. New this year is the addition of readiness score and cardio load tracking as new metrics.
The readiness score is calculated based on your sleep data, heart rate variability, and resting heart rate, giving you a snapshot of how prepared your body is for physical activity. The cardio load tracking helps monitor how hard your heart is working during workouts and recommends when to push harder or scale back.
These features are very similar to Samsung’s new Energy Score metric, and much like it, I found it difficult to find it useful given that the watch’s sleep monitoring and automatic activity monitoring already give the same insights with greater depth than a single score alone.
For example, with sleep tracking, the watch was already providing a detailed overview of my sleeping habits and scoring it out of 100% for any given day. Overall, it feels like readiness is redundant when the watch already consolidates much richer information through other metrics.
On the fitness side, I mainly used the watch to track strength workouts and automatically track walking sessions, and I found the results of the Pixel Watch 3 to be very similar to those of Samsung’s and Apple’s. What you’ll appreciate most about the Pixel Watch is its heart rate monitoring, as I always found it to keep up with me whenever I look at the watch.
Smooth Performance and Killer Battery Life
The Pixel Watch 3 is equipped with the Qualcomm SW5100 processor and does a decent job powering the entire experience. From navigating the OS to tracking workouts and listening to music, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t boast any major performance issues.
Occasionally, it does take a second for the watch to exit the always-on display, but overall, I’ve encountered very minimal lag— I think the best way to describe it would be to say it works exactly like a Pixel phone.
The overall experience is smooth, but its animations lack just that bit of polish that gives a perception of dropped frames. In daily use, you’ll rarely encounter anything, but to me, the Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t have the same fluidity as the Apple Watch.
Regarding battery life, the Pixel Watch 3 offers an experience that should serve most usage, and the 41mm surprised me. Over the past week, I’ve found the battery reliable, even with the always-on display turned on.
I typically get through a full day of use, including ambient fitness tracking and at least one hour of active fitness tracking, notifications, Google Assistant, and occasionally streaming music. By the time evening rolled around, unlike the Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch, I didn’t find myself needing to juice up the Pixel Watch nearly as much before heading to bed.
Thankfully, charging isn’t a huge hassle. The fast-charging can get enough juice for the night with just a 45-minute charge before bed.
Should You Buy the Google Pixel Watch 3?
The Google Pixel Watch 3 doesn’t break new ground in terms of design or anything we haven’t seen before, but it refines the Android wearable formula in meaningful ways.
No standout features inherently make the Pixel Watch 3 a must-have device, and that’s reflected not only in Google’s case but also for the other big players. Wearables have stagnated greatly, and the improvements we see with the Pixel Watch 3 are things you won’t notice straight away, if at all.
That said, a smartwatch running Wear OS and being a Google-made smartwatch says something. The Pixel Watch 3 is the purest form of the platform you’ll experience, and it’s excellent. I don’t think anyone coming from the Pixel Watch 2 or even the original Pixel Watch should consider upgrading, but for someone coming into wearables for the first time, Google really only rivals Apple.
The Pixel Watch 3 showcases a near-flawless Wear OS experience in a very consistent package that delivers performance, battery life, and health tracking.
Google Pixel Watch 3
The Google Pixel Watch 3 is a performance-focused smartwatch featuring a larger, brighter Actua display available in two sizes, designed to enhance fitness tracking and daily productivity. It offers advanced running capabilities, readiness and cardio load tracking, and deep integration with Google’s ecosystem, all while delivering up to 36 hours of battery life with Battery Saver mode.
