After months of leaks and teases, the Pixel Watch is officially here. Google revealed the complete details of its first-ever smartwatch at the Made by Google event held on October 6 along with a brand new addition to the Pixel lineup — a Pixel Tablet that can also double up as a Nest Hub device.
The Pixel Watch is available for preorder starting October 6 and will hit the market shelves starting October 13. It’s priced at $349.99 for the WiFi version and $399.99 for the cellular version. There’s no word on pricing or a release date for the Pixel Tablet, however, with the company stating that it’ll be coming in 2023.
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Entering the wearable space for good
The Pixel Watch is powered by Samsung’s last-gen Exynos 9110 chip, also used in the Galaxy Watch 3. However, Google has added an extra Cortex M33 co-processor to optimise battery life, which the company states should be around 24 hours on a single charge.
The watch also gets more RAM at 2GB, Bluetooth 5.0, LTE, WiFi and NFC for contactless payments in addition to a compass, built-in GPS, altimeter, SpO2 sensor, heart rate sensor and a new ‘multipurpose’ electrical sensor alongside your usual gyroscope and accelerometer.
On the software side, the Pixel Watch runs on WearOS 3.5 which features a completely different user interface compared to what we’ve seen on Samsung’s recent WearOS watches. Google’s version of WearOS also features Pixel Watch-specific watch faces with customisation abilities. Finally, no features on the Pixel Watch will be exclusive to Pixel phones, meaning just about any Android phone will be enough to use the watch to its full potential.
All the Google services you expect will also be present in the watch, integrated rather seamlessly with the hardware. You get Google Wallet, Maps, Calendar, Gmail notifications, Find My Device, Google Assistant and the Google Home App. The company is also throwing in three months of YouTube Music for free with each Watch.
Health features on the Pixel Watch are all powered by Fitbit with each watch coming with a six-month Fitbit premium subscription. While the watch does support FDA-approved EKG readings, it won’t be able to track your temperature or stress levels like the latest Apple Watch as Google’s watch lacks the hardware to do so.
The Pixel Watch will be available in WiFi and LTE variants. | Source: Google
The watch is only available in one size — 41mm with a 12.3mm thickness. It’s obvious from the design, fit and finish of the watch that Google is going after Apple’s watches here. Just how well the Pixel Watch will fare in a real-world setting however remains to be seen.
A Pixel Tablet that’s also a Nest Hub
Alongside its flagship phones and the company’s first smartwatch, Google also revealed more details about its upcoming Pixel tablet. The tablet was first teased back at I/O 2022 and a few key features were announced today.
The biggest of all is the tablet’s ability to attach to a magnetic wireless charging speaker dock designed to transform the tablet into a smart display resembling a Nest Hub Max. This essentially allows the tablet to stay charged while also responding to Google Assistant queries and letting users control their smart home appliances with the recently revamped Google Home app.
Just like its phones, the tablet will also be powered by the new Tensor G2 processors and the interface will be supported by Android’s Material You. With the recent work that the company has put into making Android feel natural on tablets with Android 12L and other features allowing for better multi-tasking support, it’ll be interesting to see how the tablet fares against the competition.
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