PixelWatch 3

Google has been acting strangely over the past few years when it comes to WearOS and the smartwatch market in general. First they seemed to lose interest, then they launched an exclusive partnership with Samsung that effectively tied the latest WearOS platform to Samsung products, culminating in the quickly becoming comically dainty Pixel Watch.

Well, it's not like WearOS has been sorted out – some third-party vendors can't offer Google Assistant for some inexplicable reason, Gemini is nowhere to be found, and Google has reportedly been so difficult to work with that the entire Fossil Group has pulled out of the WearOS and smartwatch market altogether.

But amidst all the chaos, we now find a smartwatch that thankfully feels a little more solid, this time in a 45mm size: the Pixel Watch 3 from Google. It's Google's version of a de facto smartwatch for Android, and now it's in direct competition with Samsung's Galaxy smartwatches and Mobvoi's Ticwatch. What else do they have to offer?

There are no concerns here when it comes to hardware, let's get that clear first. Although Google has gradually moved towards an industrial design profile with the new Pixel 9 phones, the Pixel Watch 3 retains the rounder, more natural and curvier profile of before. It's a small river stone with no screen edge, no extra simply distracting pieces of material other than the small rotating crown. Simplicity, elegance, build quality. It's a beautiful watch, and this time it's big enough for those of us who want something a little more… Well, bigger wrists can go along with it.

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Sure, it's Gorilla Glass 5, but Google should use sapphire glass here, especially if they're charging the same for a Pixel Watch as its main competitors from Samsung, Huawei, Mobvoi, and others. The Pixel Watch 3 is a pretty nice watch, but if the display is lit up like that all the time, it's easy to imagine that Gorilla Glass 5 won't be enough in the long run. However, it's IP68 certified and also 5ATM, so it should be possible to wear it in any weather and take it swimming.

The display is a 1.4-inch LTPO AMOLED with a resolution of 456×456. It's all very reliable, and this 45-millimeter variant doesn't have the scary edges that previous versions had. There's an always-on display option if you want it, but with battery life only on the better side of “acceptable,” it's easy to imagine this will be downright mediocre with the display always on. Under the hood, though, there's a Snapdragon SW5100 with 2GB of RAM, and there's 32GB of storage on board too.

That means the watch has the horsepower to run WearOS 5 in the smoothest, most responsive way I've seen to date, and it's easy to trust that the watch will run the three free platform updates Google has promised just as smoothly. This is, in many ways, the most responsive smartwatch experience I've had outside of the Apple ecosystem, and it puts both Mobvoi and Samsung in particular to shame when it comes to this kind of smooth, connected, and most importantly, bloated software experience.

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There are things I wish Google had fixed now that the third generation Pixel Watch has launched. The proprietary straps could easily be swapped out for more standardized ones, they last a day and a half on a charge, but charging via a POGO connection means there isn't a very efficient ecosystem of third-party chargers, and Fitbit really should be free forever, not just the six months that come with the purchase of each new Pixel Watch.

It's still the best Android-based WearOS smartwatch on the market, due to Google's great ability to create a connected, well-functioning ecosystem of Pixel products, but there's still a lot of work to be done.