The Pixel Watch smartwatch went on sale, and thematic resources published their reviews, so now we can understand what kind of watch Google released after so many years of waiting.

And it’s worth starting with one of the most important points – autonomy. And here the Pixel Watch is very bad.

Pixel Watch battery life is average at best – and terrible if you want to use the always-on display

The Verge

Recall that the watch uses a battery with a capacity of 294 mAh and is far from the latest SoC Exynos 9110. Google itself talks about 24 hours of operation against 18 hours, which Apple always claims for its watches. However, in reality, the Google watch, with far from the most active use, simply does not live up to the evening, not to mention the work at night. Moreover, in order to activate the sleep tracking function, the watch requires a minimum of 30% charge, but in practice it simply turns off in this case closer to the morning, so it is better to have about 40%.

Speaking of specific examples, running with GPS for 55 minutes with AlwaysOn Display turned off drains the watch by 25%. And that’s without music. With the activation of AOD and the inclusion of music, a 30-minute run is already enough to drain the battery by 30%! The Verge journalist says that she had to charge the watch twice a day with 12-15 hours of work, although the charge was not up to 100%.

As a result, in order to get the promised hours of work, you need to turn off AOD, do not track sleep, and preferably not use GPS or track any long workouts.

As for the rest, the watch is rather praised here. They have good performance, despite not the newest platform, a good screen, a large number of sensors, Google Assistant works great. Very thick bezels in everyday life are not particularly noticeable due to the curved glass and the dark theme of the interface.

At the same time, at least one of The Verge journalists had a broken watch glass, despite the fact that he does not remember hitting the device somewhere. There is an assumption that due to the excessive convexity of the glass, it may not be particularly strong.

When it comes to sports and health-related features, Google took almost everything from Fitbit, and their software is considered one of the best in this matter. But there is a big fly in the ointment. The fact is that some of the data can only be obtained with a Fitbit Premium subscription. And while Pixel Watch buyers get a six-month free subscription to this plan, it will end and you will either have to pay or give up this data. Neither Samsung nor Apple offer anything like this, and this is not a plus for Google.