Google's own watch

Review: Google Pixel Watch 5 - Not quite state of the art

Google Pixel Watch 5 may well appeal to those who want to complement their Pixel phone, but much works less well than on both other Wear OS watches and Google's Fitbit devices.

Elias Nordling Elias Nordling

Published 24 September 2026 - 14:25

Google’s Pixel phones are hardly intended to outdo other Android manufacturers; rather, they may primarily serve as a testbed for Google to develop its services. With watches, it is even harder to pin down what Google wants. It is clear that the company is serious about the Pixel Watch, as the one we are testing here is the fifth generation. At the same time, it is difficult to see Google pushing the technology to offer more than the basic Wear OS experience. Google has long lists of features unique to its Pixel phones. For the watches, the list is considerably shorter.

AI is Google’s focus right now, but the Pixel Watch 5 does not have the computing power to carry out any AI operations on its own. Nor has Google really tried, because although the Pixel Watch has slightly higher-clocked chips than the previous generation, they are fundamentally the same chips that have powered the watch for several years, and unlike the Samsung Galaxy Watch, Google has not chosen Qualcomm’s new smartwatch chips, which could have provided a real performance boost. As it stands, I find that the system quite often stutters in animations or needs to load data. There is no real wow factor on the wrist.

The AI feature available is that you can speak to Gemini directly through the watch by holding down the rotating button. It then naturally has to retrieve information from the phone and the internet. The watch is also meant to automatically detect when I have gone to bed and activate bedtime mode so that it does not disturb me while I sleep. It sometimes fails to do this, and it happens that it wakes me with notifications if I have forgotten to activate bedtime mode manually.

Feature-rich health app

You get even more AI in Google Health, the app on your mobile that keeps track of your collected health data, at least if you subscribe to Premium, which is also included with Google One. The watch naturally measures all the usual things and more besides; for example, it can detect both cardiac arrest and shortness of breath, and make emergency calls on its own.

However, the usual measurements for sleep and physical activity are analysed by Gemini, which then coaches you according to the goals you have set. The assistant tells you whether it is a good day for training or rest and can suggest complete training programmes. This is a very impressive implementation of an AI chatbot, but it also generates a great many notifications on your mobile; every little walk to the supermarket and back has to be commented on.

You can log workouts both manually and automatically. If you let the watch log a walk or run automatically, you do not get a GPS track of your route; this is only included if you activate it manually.

You also get all this if you choose a considerably cheaper activity tracker from Google's Fitbit range. There, you also get the health information presented clearly. Despite choosing the larger watch model, I have difficulty finding a sensible watch face that presents the information I want to access easily. Once I have done so, and replaced some of the hands on the watch face with what I want, I eventually have a decent watch face, but with figures so small that nobody over 40 can read them. Put simply, I do not think the available watch faces are particularly informative or attractive.

Notifications and replies

You can, of course, receive notifications on the watch and reply to them either with the keyboard, by browsing through emojis, or by dictating a message. Neither option is particularly quick, and once again I think Google's Fitbit devices, where you can choose pre-written messages and emojis, do this better. One thing I like is that you can choose whether a notification sent to the watch only vibrates on your wrist and does not chime on the phone, and vice versa: if the phone's screen is on and you receive a notification, you can choose not to have it sent to the watch as well.

One reason I chose to test the larger version of the watch is that it offers better battery life. I get just over two days from a single charge. That is not particularly good for a watch, even allowing for the fact that it is a watch on which you can install third-party apps, but the charging speed is good. The watch does not use wireless charging, but has its own charging cable that works as a small mini dock, allowing the watch to stand upright and display the time while charging. The watch charges from empty to full in under an hour, but if, for example, I put it on charge at breakfast after two days with 15 per cent remaining, it charges fully in a little over half an hour. This means I do not spend much time with the watch in the charger after all, and it does not need to charge every night instead of tracking sleep.

Load up with apps

As mentioned, you can install apps on the watch. The selection is not extensive, but I use Google Keep on the watch, for example, and can tick off shopping lists on my wrist. You can add cards to Google Wallet and make contactless payments, and the watch supports several streaming services, allowing you to download music and listen without taking your phone along to a workout. If you choose a version with eSIM, you can also take calls on the go and stream music.

The watch's design is elegant, with the entire front consisting of a curved glass surface and a rotating crown beside it (a second button next to the crown is much more discreet). Really stylish. However, you cannot use standard watch straps and are limited to Google's own. In addition to the touchscreen and buttons, you can control several of the watch's functions by pinching your fingers twice. The user interface indicates when this is possible, for example when you start a timer or a workout, and it works really well.

I have tested Pixel Watch before, and I am struck by the lack of progress. What I thought was bad then, primarily the user interface, the watch being slow and the battery life, is still bad in exactly the same way; what was good is roughly as good now. If you already liked Pixel Watch, you will like it now too, but alternative Wear OS watches from other manufacturers have more to offer, and if you only want Google's health tracking on your wrist, a Fitbit activity tracker is better.