The Pixel Watch 4 is the Google smartwatch I’ve been waiting for

Every year, Google’s wearables get a little brighter, a little faster, and a little more like something I’d keep on my wrist full time. The Pixel Watch 3 was already a step toward greatness, but the Pixel Watch 4 is without doubt the best model yet. It nails the hardware, tightens the software, and even throws in satellite SOS for good measure.

The Pixel Watch 4 isn’t a radical redesign, but it’s refined in all the right ways, especially if, like me, you already liked Google’s aesthetic. The minimalist build returns in two case sizes, 41mm and 45mm, recycling the same signature domed silhouette we’ve seen since Act One. The aluminum body still straddles the line between premium and practical, and four new colorways —Polished Silver, Matte Black, Champagne Gold, and Brushed Aluminum —offer variety.

This year’s Actua 360 display is physically domed to create a seamless surface, delivering a 10% larger active screen area and gloriously shrinking the bezels by 16%. The screen is also 50% brighter, reaching a peak brightness of 3,000 nits. I was disappointed to see the display still isn’t sapphire crystal, but even so, I haven’t managed to scratch it up.

I’m not in a hurry to ruin my watch, but I did wear it through plenty of workouts and hikes, and all the everyday chaos of my daily grind, plus to bed for nearly a week. The comfort is excellent, and the design strikes a perfect balance between aesthetics and utility. The shape keeps it from feeling oversized, and the size keeps it from feeling underwhelming. I could see all my workout stats mid-session, but I never worried about smashing it on gym equipment.

Which brings me to my favorite design upgrade: the Pixel Watch 4 is finally serviceable. The new charging mechanism, which I’ll get to below, makes way for replaceable case and battery components, which have official support through Google’s repair network. You can send these in through customer service, visit select Google Stores or service centers, or tackle a DIY fix if you’re the tinkering type.

The entire UI experience feels more cohesive this year, thanks to Material You Expressions. The refreshed interface is personal and dynamic, with richer colors, new watch faces, and a livelier rhythm. The rounded menus and color harmonies make the watch feel unmistakably Google, and deeply appealing to anyone who uses exactly three colors throughout their home decor.

Meanwhile, a new haptic engine feels noticeably sharper for fine-tuned alerts, and an upgraded speaker makes every call and Gemini response sound cleaner. Add in Wear OS 6‘s robust feature set and signature layer of polish, including battery and performance improvements, and the user experience is fairly flawless.

Kicking this off with good news, the Pixel Watch 4 finally lasts more than a day, and I’m a lot less stressed about finding time to charge it. Google claims a 25% improvement in stamina, promising about 30 hours on the 41mm model and 40 hours on the 45mm. Even with the always-on display and a steady stream of notifications, I routinely hit a day and a half, sometimes two, a major improvement from the OG’s painfully low 24-hour ceiling. Battery Saver mode helps, stretching runtime to roughly two days on the 41mm and three on the 45mm.

If you’re lucky enough to snag a full eight hours of shut-eye, that stretch of sleep tracking uses less than 5% of the battery, which is frankly delightful to wake up and discover. The bad news is we’re still not in ‘forget the charger for the weekend’ territory. Someday, Google might deliver Garmin-level endurance, but that day isn’t today. Still, I’m genuinely thrilled with how far Google’s come.

I’m also happy to report that Google’s sense of refinement finally extends to its charging setup, even if I remain exasperated by the company’s track record of killing backward compatibility. The Pixel Watch 4 debuts yet another proprietary dock, but it finally has a strong magnet, and it’s even faster. It hits 50% in 15 minutes and fully charges in under an hour. It’s also weighted to be stable on my desk and cradles my watch on its side for Clock Mode, which I adore. The fact that it turns last year’s charger into yet another ghost in my tiny tech graveyard? Considerably less adorable.

Gemini on the Pixel Watch 4 brings life, though artificial, to the line. With on-device AI and tighter integration across Google apps, it is considerably more useful. I’m not huge on talking to my wrist at baseline, but I do love that you can now raise your wrist and talk directly to Gemini without prefacing with ‘Hey Google.’

Responses can feel a beat or two slower than expected, and multi-step queries sometimes fall short. Still, as far as on-wrist assistants go, it’s easily one of the most natural and genuinely helpful out there. I’ve long-abandoned my resistance to chatting with my wrist and now use it for all kinds of queries from ingredient swaps and flight information to weather updates and health tracking details, and everything in between. Gemini also now assists with auto-workout detection, summarizing sessions, and sending recovery nudges, though it didn’t always catch every activity. It’s still early days.

My biggest gripe is less about performance and more about philosophy: much of the experience still leads you straight to the gates of Google’s walled garden. To get full health insights, you’re steered toward Fitbit Premium. To unlock deeper AI suggestions, you’re nudged into Google One tiers. For a watch built around convenience, there’s still a little too much fine print.

Google is still after athletes’ hearts, literally, with heart-rate tracking that remains among the most accurate in the wearable space. I ran several sessions with a Polar H10 chest strap for comparison, as well as a Polar Verity Sense armband. The Pixel Watch 4 was rarely off by more than a beat or two, even during intervals.

As shown in the two graphs above, the Pixel Watch 4’s accuracy is very impressive. This consistency is exceedingly comforting, especially since heart-rate accuracy feeds so many other health and fitness metrics.

Sleep tracking also continues to deliver this year. My early results, however, were confusing, so I reached out to Google for clarification. Fortunately, it wasn’t an issue with the watch. In a surprise to no one but me, an hour-plus wake window at four in the morning to rock your child back to sleep will, in fact, trigger your morning report. The sleep tracking proved great, with results nearly identical to my dedicated sleep-tracking devices.

As for working up sweat, the Pixel Watch 4 is a very well-rounded wearable for fitness tracking. Swimmers now get pool swim tracking that includes heart-rate data, something prior Pixel Watches skipped. Open-water swim tracking remains limited, but it’s nice to see Google give such a popular workout type some attention. Cyclists also gain real-time workout streaming for mirrored stats on their phones, which is a clutch upgrade for training visibility. The watch also adds a dozen new activities, including pickleball, which is pretty much the only sport I can beat my partner at.

Notably, Google is launching an updated Fitbit app in the near future, with a public preview for Fitbit Premium subscribers in the US. I’ll continue to review the fitness tracking experience with that rollout as well.

One of the most exciting upgrades on paper is the new dual-band GPS, which should make this the most accurate Pixel Watch yet. It locks onto satellites quickly and rarely drops connection. However, my tracked workouts haven’t been quite as sharp as I expected.

Hikes show me noticeably off-trail, and as much as I love the image of me swinging through the trees, I typically prefer marked paths. Urban routes are generally decent, but occasionally drift into lawns or structures. In one particularly bad example, shown in the map above, the Pixel Watch 4 wandered noticeably off course compared to my Apple Watch Ultra.

The most accurate route I recorded lined up very closely with the much pricier, GPS-focused Garmin Epix Pro, though it still had a few moments of deviation. Still, this gives me hope that there could be a calibration or software issue rather than a hardware limitation. I’ll keep testing in the coming weeks to see if things improve.

Of course, route/location tracking brings me to the real headline: satellite SOS. The Pixel Watch 4 was officially the first smartwatch to bring satellite emergency messaging to market. If you’re out of range and can’t connect to cellular or Wi-Fi, the watch can guide you to align with a satellite and send a message for help.

The connection sequence is intuitive and more satisfyingly fun than calling for help should be. You don’t need an active LTE plan to use it either, just the LTE model, and it’s currently free for the first two years (US-only). The Apple Watch Ultra 3 has since followed suit, suggesting satellite connectivity is a new standard, but credit where it’s due: Google got there first.

I’ve been calling the Pixel Watch 3 the best Wear OS smartwatch available for a year, and I’m happy to move that crown to the Pixel Watch 4. The reality is that the line just keeps getting better, and this genuinely feels like the most complete build yet. The design is beautiful, the performance is smooth, and the new repairability and safety features add real value.

Yes, proprietary chargers have become a running joke, and the decision to swap them yearly borders on absurd. Battery life is also still best measured in hours rather than days. However, for Android users, especially Pixel owners, the watch finally delivers the full experience that Google has been promising since the original: smart, stylish, genuinely useful, and increasingly independent of your phone.