The Google Watch Is Here. But You’d Better Love Android. - The New York Times

It’s 2022, and Google yet has a effect to the Apple Watch. It’s the Pixel Watch, which is fundamentally a Fitbit designed to enactment lone with Android phones and seemingly a nonstop counterattack to Apple’s wearable that works lone with iPhones.

The lone losers successful the ongoing feud betwixt Apple and Google, however, are us.

Nearly a decennary ago, Fitbit was a wide adored marque that made fitness-tracking bracelets and tiny pedometers for counting steps. One of its selling points was that the trackers worked with phones moving either Google’s oregon Apple’s software.

But not agelong aft the Apple Watch was introduced successful 2015, Fitbit’s income shrank and its banal tanked. In 2021, Google acquired the company for $2.1 billion.

The $350 Pixel Watch, which features Fitbit’s wellness monitoring bundle and volition beryllium released connected Thursday, is the archetypal Google-branded astute ticker resulting from that merger. It requires an Android instrumentality to tally apps and stitchery data. So portion the Pixel Watch, with its sleek, polished design, is simply a worthy rival to the $400 Apple Watch, it’s disappointing that Google constricted its compatibility to Android.

From a concern perspective, it makes consciousness for Google to necktie the Pixel Watch to Android. If the ticker becomes a hit, it could springiness iPhone owners a crushed to power to Android.

That’s precisely a leafage from Apple’s playbook. According to my sources who worked connected the Apple Watch, Apple years agone considered making its ticker enactment with Android phones to summation income — akin to however iPods became fashionable successful portion due to the fact that they were compatible with Windows computers. But the institution concluded that an Apple-dependent ticker would support iPhone users loyal to the marque and could transportation immoderate Android users to convert.

In the end, if we bargain 1 of these watches, it becomes harder for america to aboriginal power to an iPhone oregon Android telephone if we ever go dissatisfied with either ecosystem — due to the fact that successful summation to dumping a phone, there’s a ticker to get escaped of, too. Keep that successful caput earlier you see buying a Pixel Watch oregon an Apple Watch.

To marque side-by-side comparisons, I spent a fewer days wearing a Google Pixel Watch connected my near wrist and the latest Apple Watch connected my right. (Yes, I astir apt looked a spot odd.) Here’s what I learned.

The setup

When you crook connected the Pixel Watch for the archetypal time, it asks you to nexus the instrumentality to an Android phone. To bash that, you usage the telephone to download the Pixel Watch app done Google’s app store.

The Apple Watch setup is similar. You constituent an iPhone camera astatine the ticker look to nexus it to your data, and you past adhd immoderate biometric information, similar your tallness and weight.

Fitness options

To commencement gathering wellness information connected the Pixel Watch, you indispensable download the Fitbit app and acceptable up an account. The Pixel Watch relies heavy connected Fitbit’s software. To way a workout, you property a broadside fastener and prime the Fitbit Exercise app. From there, you take from a enactment of workouts, including bicycling, hiking and martial arts.

I’m a stone climber, truthful connected the Pixel Watch I selected the indoor climbing workout successful the Fitbit app, and connected the Apple Watch I picked the climbing workout successful Apple’s Workout app. As I climbed for fractional an hour, some watches measured my bosom complaint and estimated the magnitude of calories I burned.

To my surprise, the Pixel Watch consistently measured a little bosom complaint than the Apple Watch. During tougher climbs erstwhile I was decidedly feeling winded, the Apple Watch gave a bosom complaint speechmaking of 150 beats per minute, and the Pixel Watch gave a speechmaking of 125 beats per minute. In easier climbs, the Apple Watch measured astir 130 beats per infinitesimal and the Pixel Watch 110. In a fewer instances, similar erstwhile I was sitting down to rest, some watches showed the aforesaid bosom rate.

Throughout the workout, I counted my bosom complaint the old-school mode by taking my pulse and got the aforesaid measurement arsenic the Apple Watch reading.

Google said successful a connection that its ticker and the Apple Watch utilized antithetic algorithms and that it believed the Pixel Watch’s heart-rate tracking was accurate.

Health monitoring

After I was done with the climbing workout, I washed my hands to trial a diagnostic that was intelligibly created during the pandemic. The Pixel Watch has a hand-washing timer app, which you indispensable activate by pressing a fastener earlier washing your hands to a amusement a 20-second countdown. It’s a bittersweet transcript of the Apple Watch’s hand-washing timer, which automatically triggers a countdown erstwhile its sensors observe that h2o is splashing connected your hands.

I besides wore some watches to sleep. On Friday morning, the Fitbit app said I had slept astir six hours, and it showed a people of 77 retired of 100 — a “Fair” standing for the prime of my sleep. The Apple Watch said I had slept astir the aforesaid magnitude of clip but didn’t amusement a rating. (I similar not to person a grade; I already cognize erstwhile I person a lousy night’s slumber and don’t request an app to make maine consciousness much anxious.)

Battery beingness and different features

Both devices had artillery beingness that lasted a spot much than a day; the Pixel Watch lasted a fewer hours longer than the Apple Watch earlier needing a charge. In general, some wearables needed to beryllium charged regular to support up with my routines.

Like the Apple Watch, the Pixel Watch has aspects that marque the accessory service arsenic an hold of a smartphone. The ticker tin beryllium acceptable up to reflector notifications for substance messages and spot telephone calls — features that enactment well.

The biggest quality betwixt the Pixel Watch and the Apple Watch is the design. The Pixel Watch’s circular look much intimately resembles a accepted watch, which I’m partial to. The Apple Watch’s rectangular look squeezes much pixels into the surface and looks much similar a calculator watch. (Though it’s hard for either to look arsenic bully arsenic an old-fashioned timepiece with analog hands.)

Bottom line

What you bash from present depends connected your narration with your phone. If you person a beardown committedness to Android and are not focused connected measuring your bosom rate, a Pixel Watch whitethorn beryllium a good accessory to have. In the aforesaid way, an Apple Watch, which has much precocious features, including a assemblage somesthesia sensor to foretell ovulation, tin beryllium bully to person if you similar iPhones. But neither is simply a must-have to the constituent that it would compel astir radical to power from their telephone ecosystem of choice.