Time to get a new watch? Don’t get Google’s Pixel Watch 2
Pathetic battery life on the new watch is a disappointment for one reason: everything else about it is so very appealing
I was at a street party last night, and wondered out loud what the time was.
With a flourish, I held up my wrist wearing a cool, matte-black watch on an obsidian (ie black) watchband, and the time was...
I couldn’t tell. The face of the watch, which is supposed to show the time, was black, too. Everything about the watch was inky black. The battery had run out.
Google’s Pixel Watch 2 is light and comfortable.
“I know the time!” my neighbour joked. “It’s time to get a new watch!”
The trouble, of course, is that it was a new watch. It was the new Pixel Watch 2 from Google.
If Google had one job to do after its poorly received Pixel Watch from last year, it was to fix the pathetic battery life.
With the Pixel Watch 2, it has certainly improved the battery life, but it hasn’t fixed it.
Last year’s model could barely make it past 2pm without being recharged. Here it was, maybe 8pm at the street party (though, other than knowing it was time to get a new watch, I can’t say for sure what time it was) and the battery had already given out, having been taken off the charger that morning.
In fairness to Google (which, as you’ll see in a moment, it certainly doesn’t really deserve right now), yesterday’s performance was the Pixel Watch 2’s worst performance during our testing. Normally, the watch does indeed last a full day, just as Google advertises, even with the screen set to “always on” mode.
The Pixel Watch 2 can give you live heart-rate readouts, so you can see your heart break when the battery runs out. Or you could, if the battery hadn’t run out.
But coming from an Apple Watch Ultra 2, which can last three or four days without a recharge, or from watches like the Suunto Vertical which can last weeks or even months on a charge, merely getting a full day’s usage from the Pixel Watch 2 is still a bit of a shock to the system. Or, it would be a shock, if the watch had enough battery to deliver one.
As with the original Pixel Watch, the limited battery life on the Pixel Watch 2 is only a disappointment for one reason: everything else about the watch is so very appealing.
It looks great (though we do prefer the look of last year’s stainless-steel back to this year’s recycled aluminium back). It’s light, it’s comfortable and unobtrusive. It’s got plenty of features including an improved heart-rate sensor that tracks pretty closely to the sensor on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 in our tests. It’s snappy to use (a big improvement on last year) and the watch faces (when you can see them) are terrific and easy to customise.
The Fitbit app it connects to on your phone is great and easy to use, too, though we do think it pushes you towards paying for the premium version of Fitbit a little too aggressively. (Sleeping heart-rate data, which is free if you own an Apple Watch, you have to pay for if you have the Pixel Watch 2, for instance.)
And then there’s the AI.
At last week’s launch of Google’s new AI model, Gemini, there was some talk of using Gemini loaded onto a Google Pixel 8 phone to improve the way you can reject unwanted calls on your Pixel Watch.
We were quite keen to test this, until it emerged that Google had faked much of its Gemini demo, apparently in a desperate effort to catch up to its rival, OpenAI.
So we haven’t tested that call rejection feature, if it even exists, for fear of falling for more Google fakery.
Fool us once, Google, and it’s on you. Fool us twice and it’s on us. Unlike your watch.
Likes: Looks great. Comfortable and light. Useful features.
Dislikes: Battery life still wanting. Fake AI.
Price: $549 Bluetooth/Wi-Fi only, $649 adds 4G LTE
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