This Pixel Watch 4 feature has changed how I use a smartwatch

For the past year, the Google Pixel Watch 3 has barely left my wrist. It’s been a fantastic and reliable smartwatch. It does everything I expect it to do and does it well. However, at its core, it’s just a typical smartwatch. My habits remained the same: I’d glance at notifications, manually start tracking my bike ride in the Fitbit app, or swipe over to a widget to check the weather. My watch was a convenient, wrist-mounted second screen for my phone, but it was largely a passive experience.

When Google announced the Pixel Watch 4, I expected the usual iterative upgrades: a better battery, a brighter screen, and additional software features. And don’t get me wrong, the Pixel Watch 4 has all of those things, and they are very welcome improvements. But nestled among these is one new software feature that blindsided me. It’s a feature so simple, so intuitive, and so seamlessly integrated that it has completely rewired my brain and transformed my smartwatch experience. That feature is the new Gemini raise-to-talk action — the true highlight of the Pixel Watch 4.

On every smartwatch I’ve used before this one, including all previous Pixel watches, interacting with Google Assistant/Gemini has always been a deliberate, two-step process. I either needed to long-press the side button to summon the assistant and then speak my command, or had to say “Hey Google” and wait for the watch to recognize it before I could ask my question. Both methods work, but they introduce a tiny bit of friction. A long-press isn’t a hands-free action, and saying a hotword out loud can feel awkward in public, especially if it doesn’t register the first time and I need to repeat myself.

The Pixel Watch 4 eliminates this friction entirely. Now, there’s no button-pressing or hotword required. As soon as I lift my arm in the natural gesture anyone would use to check the time, a subtle glow appears at the bottom of the screen, indicating that Gemini is active and listening. From there, I just start talking. It turns a two-step chore into a single, fluid motion.

Let me give you some examples of how this has changed my habits. Before, if I wanted to check the weather, my muscle memory was to raise my wrist, swipe over to the weather widget, tap on it, and then scroll through the forecast. It was a multi-step process that required my full visual attention, not to mention the use of my hands. Now, my process is completely different. I just raise my wrist, see the Gemini glow, and ask, “What’s the weather this week?” I can immediately drop my arm and just listen to the audio response (through the new, much-better speaker!) as I continue doing whatever it was I was doing.

Another good example is working in the kitchen, an activity that is almost always accompanied by music playing through my Nest speakers. Normally, I would need to say “Hey Google” quite loudly for my Nest speaker to hear me over the music, and Google would turn the volume down briefly to listen and respond. Now I can just lift my wrist and say, “Set a timer for 15 minutes.” No interrupting my music and no needing to shout over it.

One more good example of this is tracking my bike rides. Sure, I could use the “Hey Google” hotword and then say “Start tracking a bike ride,” as I’ve done many times in the past. But when I forget to start tracking the ride and have already jetted off, this is not convenient. It requires me to take my hand off the handlebars, hold the watch near my mouth, say “Hey Google,” wait for it to acknowledge the hotword while keeping my hand steady, and then issue my command. With the raise-to-talk feature, I slash that time in half: just raise my wrist, say “Start tracking a bike ride,” and get my hand back on the handlebar grip. Of course, with the Pixel Watch 4’s new auto-tracking feature for bike rides, I don’t even really need to do this anymore unless I know I want GPS tracking.

The bottom line here is that the seamlessness of this feature has encouraged me to use the assistant far more often than I ever did before, and that is fundamentally changing my smartwatch habits.

After becoming so accustomed to this feature over the past two weeks, it would be incredibly difficult for me to go back to a smartwatch that doesn’t have it. Funnily enough, I used the Pixel Watch 3 while shooting some of the B-Roll for the video at the top of this article, and caught myself raising my wrist to ask a question and being met with silence. It’s already changed me! It’s been like switching from a car with a standard key to one with keyless entry and push-to-start; the old way suddenly feels clumsy and archaic.

This single feature elevates the Pixel Watch 4 from being just another solid smartwatch to something truly special. Of course, the other upgrades are fantastic: the multi-day battery life is better than ever, the faster charging means less downtime, and the display is brighter and has smaller bezels. It’s an excellent piece of hardware all around. But the raise-to-talk Gemini feature stands out as the real upgrade. It’s the killer feature that finally delivers on the promise of a smartwatch being a truly helpful, proactive assistant that fades into the background of your life.

Of course, the big question here is whether or not this feature will come to other Pixel watches. Judging from what Google has explained to me, there doesn’t appear to be any new hardware in the Pixel Watch 4 ($349.99 at Amazon) that is required to make this feature work. As far as I know, it’s just an algorithm. Theoretically, then, Google could bring this to the Pixel Watch 3 ($349.99 at Amazon) at least, if not the Pixel Watch 2 as well. Time will tell on that one, but for now, this is locked to the Pixel Watch 4.

In the meantime, if you’ve been on the fence about the Pixel Watch 4, or about smartwatches in general, I urge you to give it a shot. It may just be the device that finally makes the entire idea of a smartwatch “click” for you, just as it did for me.