Google Pixel Watch with Fitbit unveiled – available to pre-order today

Alongside their Pixel 7 phones, Google have unveiled their long awaited Pixel Watch.

The Pixel Watch offers a stylish, rounded watch which is designed to be worn all-day, every day with a rounded design inspired by a water drop, that won’t catch on sleeves. It’s a feature packed device offering sleep tracking, fitness tracking and even to-the-second heart rate monitoring.

Hardware

The Pixel Watch has a domed glass face covered in a custom 3D Corning Gorilla Glass with a premium stainless steel casing available in three finishes: Champagne Gold, Matte Black and Polished Silver. The case can also get wet with support for underwater use up to 5ATM.

In terms of specs, the Pixel Watch uses an Exynos 9110 SoC with 2GB RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage. Google is including NFC for mobile payments, and you get GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo for tracking your workouts – or for using Google Maps on your wrist.

There’s a built-in microphone and speaker for taking calls, or you can pair your headphones to them with Bluetooth and connect wirelessly using either Wifi, or with optional LTE connectivity.

The PIxel Watch uses an Always On Display for notifications on the AMOLED  panel which offers up to 1,000 nits brightness to make it easy to see in any lighting conditions. 

In terms of use, Google has included a 294mAh battery which they say will last up to 24 hours. There’s a USB-C magnetic charging cable in the box which offers fast charging:

About 30 minutes to 50%

About 55 minutes to 80%

About 80 minutes to 100%

Bands

The Pixel Watch has a clean design and comes with a Fluoroelastomer band with soft-touch coating. Google has designed the Pixel Watch with no exterior lugs for connecting watch bands. Instead, watch bands snap on using an internal connector which attach like a camera lens with a twist and click. There’s a number of band choices available including Stretch, Woven and Leather bands with metal bands coming soon.

Fitness

The Pixel Watch is fitness focused and includes a number of tracking features for your heart including continuous heart rate tracking with 1-second intervals, atrial fibrillation tracking with the ECG app, sleep tracking,  blood oxygen tracking and more.

WIth built-in Fitbit support, the Pixel Watch will also monitor your activity for training, checking how long you’ve been in your peak, featuring Active Zone Minutes for checking your activity. The Pixel Watch also includes 6 months of Fitbit Premium access offering over 1000 workouts and over 400 pieces of mindfulness content. 

The Fitbit integration will help generate a wellness report and health metrics dashboard including heart rate variability and incorporating all your metrics.

Software

Of course, the Pixel Watch runs Wear OS 3.5 and pairs to a phone using the new Pixel Watch app – available from Google Play. Unlike previous Wear OS watches, the Pixel Watch is not compatible with iOS, nor is it compatible with Google’s Android (Go Edition) for lower specced devices. 

The new Wear OS 3.5 will feature a number of new features including more watch faces featuring new complications, as well as access to Google Assistant, your Google Home Smart Home hub, Maps, Google Photos, Wallet for payments, YouTube Music and more. 

You can even use your new Pixel Watch to find your phone, or take photos from your wrist, with a view finder offering zoom support on the new Pixel 7. 

The Pixel Watch includes an Emergency call setup, which lets you easily call trusted contacts or emergency services if you feel unsafe and later this ‘summer’, Google will also be bringing Fall Detection to the Pixel Watch.

Availability

The Pixel Watch is available to pre-order from today from $549 for the Bluetooth/Wifi model, or $649 for the model with LTE connectivity – though only Telstra is listed as a supported carrier for now.