Fourth time’s the charm. The Pixel Watch 4 is Google’s latest stab at the premium smartwatch market. As the successor to last year’s Pixel Watch 3, the new.
The Pixel Watch 4 is Google’s latest stab at the premium smartwatch market. As the successor to last year’s Pixel Watch 3, the new model may not look all that different on the surface. But underneath that domed exterior is a slew of improvements, including a new display, an updated chipset, longer battery life with faster charging, improved fitness tracking, and Google’s latest Wear OS software with Material 3 Expressive design.
Starting at $349 for the 41mm version, the Pixel Watch 4 appears poised to claim the title of the best Android smartwatch on the market. But is it any good? Let’s find out.Design
The Pixel Watch 4 features an identical design to its predecessor. It is, however, a very nice design, so it’s hard to complain. The domed glass that gently crowns in the middle and wraps around the sides still looks unique and beautiful. The rest of the watch body is made out of aluminum, which can either be polished or matte depending on the color.
The watch comes in 41mm and 45mm sizes, with the one I have here being the former. The watch is also quite svelte, so it doesn’t stick out much from your wrist. It’s also very light and barely feels like you’re wearing anything at all. The watch has a rotating crown on the side as well as a side button, but I found these a bit difficult to use due to their size and also because of how hard they were to press.
The Pixel Watch uses a proprietary connector for attaching the wrist straps. If you are foregoing compatibility by not using standard lugs, you at least expect the attachment mechanism to be easy to use. But while the Pixel Watch 4 mechanism is easy enough in theory, in practice, I found it frustrating to remove or attach a strap because of how tiny the button is that needs to be pressed to release the strap. The fluoroelastomer strap that comes by default is quite nice, but third-party options will be limited compared to some other popular smartwatches.
The overall build quality and finish of the watch are excellent; however, the display only uses Corning Gorilla Glass 5 instead of a sapphire crystal. This means it’s not going to be as durable, and you should be careful of bumping the glass into things, especially other people’s watches. This is also made harder by the fact that most of the exterior of the watch is just the glass, which makes it an easy target.Display
Speaking of the display, the Pixel Watch 4 has an AMOLED LTPO display with 320 PPI, DCI-P3 color, and up to 3000 nits of peak brightness. The display can also go down to as low as 1 nit and has a refresh rate of 1-60Hz.
Google calls this the Actua 360 display because it’s a curved panel that follows the curves of the domed glass. This means it bulges slightly in the middle and spills over the edges. This is one of the bigger and more noticeable differences between the Pixel Watch 4 and the Pixel Watch 3, as the previous panel was neither curved nor as big. Google says this display has 10% more area despite the watch being the same size as before. It’s also brighter, as the Pixel Watch 3 display only went up to 2000 nits peak brightness.
The display on the Pixel Watch 4 is excellent. It gets plenty bright outdoors under the sun, and the colors also look pleasing without being oversaturated. The domed glass does distort the image a bit, something you don’t notice at first, but after using this watch for a while, every other smartwatch display starts looking concave in comparison. The panel being fused to the glass and following its curves makes everything look like it’s floating on top of the watch in a large bubble that’s held together by surface tension. It’s a fantastic design choice that makes this series of watches stand out from the crowd, and the new display makes it look better than any Pixel Watch before it.
