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The Pixel Watch is official: $349, good looks, and a four-year-old SoC
- jqpabc123 4y agoI just want an affordable watch with data storage. Anyone know of one?
- TurkishPoptart 4y agoWear an analog watch on one wrist, and this on the other? https://www.amazon.com/Possibox-Custom-Wristband-Flash-Printed/dp/B083TXSGZX https://www.amazon.com/Possibox-Custom-Wristband-Flash-Print...
- xwowsersx 4y agoLOL that's amazing. I'm definitely getting one of those. I may need to design a logo just to put it on there.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- martey 4y agoLooking at the Google Store page that compares the Pixel Watch with existing Fitbit smartwatches (https://store.google.com/magazine/google_pixel_watch_compare https://store.google.com/magazine/google_pixel_watch_compare), I'm not sure why most people would buy the Pixel Watch. It's more expensive than the Sense 2 and Versa 4, but it is not a clear upgrade in terms of features.
- turtlebits 4y agoNo iOS support either. It's also pretty hilarious that the Fitbits don't support Google assistant but only support Amazon alexa.
- gkfasdfasdf 4y agoI had a fitbit versa 3 and it worked with Google Assistant just fine. I don't know why they say it doesn't support Google Assistant.
- cogman10 4y agoTo make the pixel watch not look like shit? There is almost nothing the pixel watch is offering that makes it better than their fitbit watches. This is embarrassing for google.
- gkfasdfasdf 4y agoRight, especially 1 day battery life with Pixel Watch vs 6 days with Versa 4? So for $100+ more dollars you are getting...WearOS and a circular face instead of square? What am I missing that is so great about the Pixel Watch?
- ajhurliman 4y agoI think the "good looks" part is subjective... reminds me of those Oakley "over the top" sunglasses: https://www.maxim.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/oakley_atoboldon_4-scaled.jpg https://www.maxim.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/oakley_atob...
- metadat 4y agoYes, it's definitely subjective. To me the Google watch looks a little blob-esque and cheap. Similar to the Nickelodeon splat tat logo. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/spongebob/images/1/11/Nickelodeon_1984_%28Splat%29.png https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/spongebob/images/1/11/Nick...
- daniel_reetz 4y agoAgree. This is truly awful industrial design. And I say that as someone who very much appreciates Google's design inspiration in hardware.
- DemeterFarm 4y agoHave the announcement ready for this time next year: "Google kills off Pixel Watch after low consumer demand in favor of FitBit." A word to the wise, don't invest your own time and money into google products unless you want to gamble.
- Belphemur 4y agoThat or Fitbit get rebranded as Google Watch and now you have Pixel Watch and Google Watch. Then they merge the two into "Watch" the new alphabet company. Not like they didn't do that before with their chat apps.
- TurkishPoptart 4y ago>good looks I clicked the link and thought "God, that looks like shit." And Google is going to cancel support for it in a year and a half anyway.
- Twirrim 4y agoSo expensive watch, with previous generation SoC that is older and worse than competitors, at a price point nearly $100 more than said competitors. Here we go again... This seems like a product explicitly designed to fail.
- skavi 4y agoThe application processor core used in the SoC (the A53) is a decade old now. ARM’s progress on little cores is absurdly slow.
- hattmall 4y agoI really don't see the need for cutting edge CPU in a watch. Even very old chips should have more than enough power for what you need from even the smartest of watches, refined software and battery optimization are far more important than raw power.
- my123 4y agoIn theory yes. In practice no because they're running Android on this instead of a lighter OS...
- Twirrim 4y agoThere's power efficiency reasons to prefer a more modern CPU. It's not that you need the speed, at all. It's the nanometer / process size. The more tightly packed the transitors are, the shorter distance electrons have to flow and so requires less energy. This watch is more expensive, by a lot, but will also consume more battery than other current generation watches.
- mikestew 4y agoI'd like to be a part of the meetings where it was decided to go forward with the product. "We're not price-competitive, we're using a SoC from the Apple Watch 4 era, and the bezels are wide enough to ride a bicycle on." "Looks good, when does manufacturing start?" "I'm sorry, ma'am, perhaps not I've explained myself clearly..." I mean, is this some tax write off scheme to balance profitable products? What business hinkiness am I missing that makes this a viable product? Because what I'm not imaging is someone in the viewing audience saying, "wow, it's about time Google, this is the watch I've been waiting for!"
- thermin 4y agoIt's me, I'm the person who's been waiting for this watch. I want a nice-looking, curved-screen watch that feels snappy and fluid and has a non-terrible UI (so not Samsung or FitBit), has decent Wear OS update policy (so not Huawei or Xiaomi), and is compatible with an Android phone (not Apple, which otherwise would be ideal). I guess they made the watch for me personally. I will buy it while fully realizing they will drop it before the third year comes — at least I'll have a nice Android watch for these two years.
- awill 4y agomy guess is Google has been working on this for years, and just needs to ship something.
- cogman10 4y agoJust a shining reflection of Google's piss poor product management skills.
- sorenjan 4y agoGoogle lost interest in smart watches for years, and now we're supposed to trust them again? I had a watch with Android Wear, after the updates stopped Google's own apps started losing features they had when I bought the watch (like offline music support). I'd rather buy a watch from somebody that doesn't treat it like a small side business they can shut down at any moment. Plus, this hardware is very underwhelming.
- ianburrell 4y agoI'm glad they released Wear OS 3.5 and hope it soon comes to other watches. When Samsung and Google merged OSes merged to make Wear OS 3, it didn't have Wear OS apps available and was only available on Samsung's watches. Wear OS 3.5 adds Wear OS apps and should be available for other watches. The Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 should get apps. Fossil has Gen6 series that should get update.
- exabrial 4y ago* If you're an athlete, buy a Garmin * If you're in iOS user and want an iPhone on your wrist, get a iWatch * If you like to incinerate cash, buy fireworks... or this watch. The lack of compatible wristbands is enough reason to avoid, let alone the inevitable outcome of you losing access to your investment once Google drops support for bringing a half-baked product to market.
- r0m4n0 4y agoYou forgot, if you are smart, read the pros and cons of each and make the decision for yourself. Thanks for your review of a product that isn’t even out yet
- rnk 4y agoI had an iwatch. The battery life was so short (at most 24 hours, less if using it to track a hike or ski day) that I finally got tired of using it. It has a slightly weird strap system. Mine kept coming off and eventually it fell off and cracked the screen slightly. I switched to a garmin watch and battery life is great (a week+, and at least a couple of longer hikes or ski days doesn't kill it when tracking exercise), it's also lasted much better and not broken when I dropped it - I have the sapphire something screen, a harder screen. The watches have access to the apps you opt into, so there is a security possibility of exposing information. The iwatch made me log in every time, such a pain, because it would ask me to log in multiple times a day. The garmin doesn't have a log in. The garmin forwards every message on my screen from my android to my watch and I can reply, while the apple required me to load an app on the phone or watch, adjust each one. I love the garmin, glad I moved on from the iwatch.
- srvmshr 4y agoGoogle/Alphabet should stick to internet infrastructure based products. It is increasingly becoming evident that they don't have customers confidence nor are they keeping up with the times with such botched launches & cancellations. Playing on your strengths is not a bad deal. If they cull some of these product lines for good, and reinvest in core set of Workspace products, better search & competing GCP with AWS/Azure seriously (good documentation, product support etc), it will go a long way to recover the trust & brand value. You don't want to be seen as the Yahoo! of 2020s. That's a death sentence in slow motion. As a computer scientist, Alphabet is no longer my first preference to get hired. The lustre of the company has jaded considerably in last 5 years (with the exception of AI ventures)
- amf12 4y ago> As a computer scientist, Alphabet is no longer my first preference to get hired. I am curious. Which companies would be your top preferences?
- srvmshr 4y agoHonestly, in FAANG category, keeping the bad PR aside, the Facebook engineering team feels much more talented actually. I have a lot of friends in both places, but the type of projects they are churning right now at their open source end is much better than Google AFAIK. NVIDIA is also very creatively handing their sortware engineering. Outside of that category, I feel Huggingface is doing some incredible things to bring ML at scale. Then there are a slew of small startups such as Adept, Anthropic and Mosaic which are doing very interesting things too. You is reimagining search with the help of vector search. A few non-profit such as AllenAI are also really competitive. A lot of value prop is being created by small teams at Vercel, Railwayapp etc, which are something to look out for
- Bloedcoin 4y agoYeah just ignore the bad pr...
- hnburnsy 4y agoThe 10mm (5 mm around) bezel, sneakily hidden in marketing photos < my calculations are correct) takes up about 25% of the listed 41 mm watch diameter... https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/behold-the-fat-bezel-on-the-new-pixel-watch/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/behold-the-fat-...
- hnburnsy 4y agoSorry, correct link here... https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/behold-the-fat-bezel-on-the-new-pixel-watch/ar-AA12CmqC https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/behold-the-fat-...
- CryptoBanker 4y ago
- jerlam 4y agoVery questionable hardware design decisions. A raised watch crystal to mimic the Apple Watch, more likely to scratch and shatter (with zero aftermarket support for add on protection). A traditional round case, less useful for displaying text and mostly suitable for displaying analog watch faces. Only comes in a "small" 41mm diameter size, the screen display further reduced with the internal bezel and round case. Funny, the Pixel Watch has been added to the Fitbit web site, where on the comparison table it looks quite inferior to Fitbit offerings and costs $50 more. But wait, it has features like "Google Play Store" and "Gmail" which no one asked for.
- tristor 4y agoA Fitbit is better than this in almost every way. As someone who's been wearing a smart watch of some kind for nearly a decade at this point, there are only really three players in this race: Fitbit, Garmin, and Apple. Everything else on the market is a joke by comparison. That's setting aside the fact that nobody should ever trust a Google product launch of hardware at this point.
- mukara 4y agoYou probably already know this, but Fitbit is now a Google product. One would imagine this Pixel Watch have more than a few things in common with some Fitbit products.