Pixel Watch 3 Is Great for Everyday Fitness Tracking
The Pixel Watch 3 (starting at $349.99) is Google’s newest smartwatch, the third in the Pixel lineup, and rumored to possibly be the future of smartwatches for Fitbit fans. (Google has denied rumors of phasing out the Versa or Sense, but if you go to fitbit.com today, you’ll see a giant banner urging you to order a Pixel 3. Take that as you will.)
The new Pixel Watch improves on previous Pixel models , featuring a brighter screen and two screen sizes (large wrists rejoice, as one is 45mm). Battery life is better than previous Pixels, and my testing showed longer life than the promised 36 hours. This is a big jump from the previous model’s 24-hour battery life. You’ll still want to charge it daily, but the 36-hour battery life means you can do so at any time during the day.
If you’re considering upgrading from a Fitbit smartwatch, the Pixel Watch 3 won’t offer the nearly week-long battery life you’re used to, but it does have offline maps that don’t require you to take your phone with you. . Pixel 3 also has new fitness-focused features, including running dynamics such as ground contact time and vertical oscillation. I also found its heart rate and GPS sensors to be impressively accurate, delivering similar results to the Garmin Forerunner I tested with it.
Out of the box
The Pixel Watch 3 I tested was the 41mm version, the smaller of the two sizes offered. It’s the same size as the Pixel Watch 2 , and fits my relatively small wrist perfectly. If you prefer a larger watch, the Pixel 3 is also available in a 45mm size.
The Pixel Watch 3 has two physical buttons: a crown that can be rotated or pressed like a button, and a second button located just above the crown if you wear your watch with the crown on the right side. Press the crown to see a menu of available apps (or return to the watch face); press the button to view recently used applications.
The Pixel Watch 3 comes with two silicone bands, one smaller and one larger. You will have to attach the tape yourself. It took me a minute to figure out how to do this, but essentially you press a button on the side of the band slot and then slide the band in to the side. To remove the strap, press this button and the strap will slide back out. To wear the watch, you close the band with a hook that goes through one of the holes on the band, and then tuck the end of the band inside. (In other words, it works just like the band on the Pixel Watch 2. )
The charger is similar to the one that came with the Pixel Watch 2, with four tiny pins that snap into place once you orient the magnet correctly. Pro Tip: Keep the charger cord near the watch’s crown. If it doesn’t align, it may be pointing in a different direction.
I found the Pixel Watch 3 to be comfortable to wear; The smooth back didn’t leave any dents on your skin, and the silicone strap didn’t snag on clothes or objects. Some people find the silicone strap sweaty, but that doesn’t bother me. I really liked that I could quickly wash or wipe it down (say, in the shower after a workout) without having to wait for the band to dry.
Display
The Pixel Watch 3 features an Actua-style AMOLED display that Google says has a brightness of 2,000 nits, which is twice as bright as its predecessor. I don’t have a Pixel Watch 2 for a side-by-side comparison, but I can say that the Pixel Watch 3 is easy to read even in bright sunlight, and the brightness is dim enough to not irritate the eyes in most dark rooms. .
Google says the new model has smaller bezels than the Pixel Watch 2 and that its 45mm screen size takes up 40% more screen real estate than its predecessor.
The watch has an always-on display (which can be turned off), as well as tilt and tap wake gestures. Note that even when it’s “always on,” the display dims when it doesn’t think you’re looking at it. In this darker look, details may disappear from the dial, such as the hash marks around the edge of the Adventure dial, only to reappear when you turn your wrist toward you to read the time. There’s a slight delay between the gesture and the watch face clearing, which I didn’t like and made it difficult to quickly check my stats while running.
The Pixel Watch 3 also boasts the ability to detect when you go to bed and automatically turn on night mode. I found this feature too annoying to test: if I go to bed with the screen on, it will blink every time I move. I always switched it to night mode myself so that it would stop doing this.
Battery and charging tests
Google advertises that the Pixel Watch 3 can last up to 36 hours in power-saving mode, but to my surprise, the battery life was better . I checked how long it took to discharge from 100% to 0%, both with and without Battery Saver mode enabled. (Battery saver turns off the always-on display and reduces some background activity.)
When I ran the tests, I took the watch off the charger in the evening, put it in night mode while I slept, and took it out of night mode in the morning. During the day, I used the watch for an hour of GPS-enabled running and an hour of listening to music via Bluetooth headphones. The watch was still running when it was bedtime again, so I used sleep mode again, turned it off in the morning, and waited to see how long it would take for the watch to completely drain. I followed this protocol on two different occasions: once with the default settings enabled, including always-on display; and the other with the battery saving function enabled.
-
Without Battery Saver, I got an impressive 36 hours and 39 minutes.
-
Using Battery Saver I got a few extra hours – 39 hours and 11 minutes.
-
(Please note that these results are for the 41mm model. The 45mm model has a larger battery but also a larger display, so exact battery life may vary.)
Battery saving mode automatically turns on when the watch has 15% battery left, so I let it do this even during the non-battery saving test (since I was keen to test the default settings). The clock turns off when there is about 3% battery charge left. After this, if you press the crown three times, the time will briefly be displayed along with a low battery icon.
Charging the Pixel Watch 3 from this apparently dead state takes about 20 minutes to reach 50% battery capacity, with a full charge occurring within an hour. (I timed it to take 53 minutes to get from 0% to 99% charge, although at this point it stayed at 99% for several minutes. I’m happy to consider 53 minutes a full charge.) The watch displays the estimated charge time. along with the battery percentage, which was generally pretty accurate. If it says you have 17 minutes left, you probably do.
Fitness functions
The Pixel Watch 3 isn’t a dedicated running watch, but it does have heart rate and GPS sensors that allow it to do that job, as well as some features in the Fitbit app that measure specific running metrics. So I took the watch with me several times a week while I tested it.
My overall impression is that it’s good enough for running tracking if you really want a smartwatch that can track running. Avid runners will be happier with something like a Garmin with physical buttons and even more accurate location tracking. (The Pixel Watch 3’s price falls somewhere between that of the Garmin Forerunner 165 and Forerunner 265; consider those two models.)
I tested the Pixel Watch 3 with a Garmin Forerunner 265 connected to different phones (and kept the Pixel phone to make sure I tested the watch’s performance on its own). On some runs I wore a heart rate chest strap paired with a Garmin as it gave me the most accurate heart rate to compare. Here’s how it went.
Ease of use while running
Overall, the Fitbit app on Pixel Watch 3 provides a smooth, useful, and accurate running experience. If you want to know if the watch is right for your runs, you can stop reading here. It does the job.
The display shows a color heart rate monitor, along with your total mileage, time, heart rate and current pace in miles per minute. Swipe across the screen to reveal two other useful screens: on the right are music controls (for playing music from your phone or watch), and on the left is a menu where you can lock the screen, add “spacing” (in other words, it’s your circle), and also end or pause the workout.
On a normal easy run it was great. My heart rate and mileage matched the Garmin on my other wrist, and whenever it buzzed to tell me a mile had passed, the distance never deviated by more than a few hundredths of a mile.
I also created my own interval workout in the Fitbit app to see how easy it was to follow a workout from the watch. And it’s great here: there’s even a progress bar on the side of the watch so you can see how far you’ve gone in the interval. My only major complaint is that when I looked at the watch, it took an extra second or two for the display to fully light up. This is too long; The running watch should be visible when your legs are moving at high speed.
Due to the lag time you look at the watch and the lack of physical buttons, I wouldn’t recommend this watch to a serious runner trying to decide between a Pixel and a Garmin. But for most people, the Pixel will do a great job tracking your runs.
Precision like a running watch
While I think the accuracy of fitness trackers is a somewhat overrated concept (you ‘ll never know how accurate they are, and that’s okay ), a running watch should be able to track distance and heart rate consistently enough to be useful. The Pixel passed this test, although it’s not as reliable as the Garmin I compared it to. For example, here’s how closely the Pixel Watch 3 (left) followed my route compared to the Forerunner 265.
Yes, it’s not ideal, but I’ve seen other devices (like an old Apple Watch) completely follow the wrong path at this intersection, teleporting away as soon as they realized where I actually was. Pixel doesn’t fall for this and gets a passing grade. Here are the stats from the same run, showing that the total mileage and pace were determined correctly:
Advanced running metrics
Where running accuracy may suffer (it’s honestly unclear) is in the new, advanced running metrics. I really like the way the Fitbit app displays this data, putting your numbers on a spectrum and telling you which end corresponds to a more efficient stride.
In the same run as in the screenshots above, PW3 reported a stride length of 0.88 meters (Garmin: 0.87) and a cadence of 174 steps per minute (Garmin: also 174). So far so good!
But then we have a ground contact time of 302 milliseconds (Garmin: 260), a vertical oscillation of 6 centimeters (Garmin: 7.9) and a vertical ratio of 6.9% (Garmin: 9.1%). These numbers do not match, and it is unclear how to determine which one is correct. However, there’s not much you can do with these numbers anyway. So it doesn’t really matter, which makes their existence kind of moot.
Recovery Metrics
Another new group of features deals with your readiness, cardio, and morning recap, which aim to tell you how your body has been feeling lately. I also compared the numbers here with Garmin, as well as the Oura ring, which has long been considered something of a gold standard in recovery tracking for consumer wearables. (If you’re interested in learning more about how different devices track recovery, I have a comparison of Oura, Whoop, and Garmin here .)
Overall, the watch works well with other device numbers. It captures the same fluctuations in heart rate variability (HRV) as the other two. But his resting heart rate measurements were consistently higher than others, reporting a heart rate 6 to 10 beats higher. When they gave me a number in the 40s, the Pixel reported a number in the 50s.
The readiness indicator was also unsuccessful. Sometimes it was tracked with other devices, and sometimes in the opposite direction. “Readiness” is not a scientific concept, so it is impossible to know what your true readiness is; the clock simply spits out a number and it’s up to you to trust it. Fitbit doesn’t give you detailed information about why your readiness number is what it is (like Oura does), so you’re left guessing.
Third party running apps don’t always work well
The Pixel Watch 3 is integrated into the Fitbit ecosystem, and Google expects you to use the default Fitbit app to track workouts, including runs. That’s good about it. However, when I set up the watch, I was given several other workout apps to choose from; I chose Strava, Couch to 5k and Alltrails. Unfortunately, none of them went smoothly for me.
What Google doesn’t tell you is that installing an app on your watch is not the same as installing an app on your phone. When I launched the Strava app, it prompted me to sign in on my phone, so I had to stand in the treadmill parking lot installing the app before I could sign in. The Couch to 5K app was not working. even give me a hint; it helped me go for a run without any problems, and then I realized that I don’t have this app on my phone. I installed the application, but at that time there was no way to get data from an already completed run.
(My experience with AllTrails was hilariously disappointing; I selected a nearby route and then realized while running it that the mileage counter was still zero. Either I didn’t set the route from the correct starting point, or the app crashed, or perhaps both, I couldn’t even force close the application.)
Bottom line
Overall, the Pixel Watch 3 functions well as a smartwatch for Android users, and the built-in running features make it a decent running watch, although serious runners would likely prefer a device more dedicated to the task.
Pros
-
36 hours of battery life
-
Brighter display than its predecessor
-
Two screen sizes (41 mm and 45 mm)
-
More fitness metrics including recovery and running dynamics.
Cons
-
The always-on display gets brighter with a delay as you look at it
-
The lack of physical buttons and some inaccuracy in placement mean it’s not a replacement for a serious running watch.