Pixel Watch 5 Review: Google changed nothing on the outside, but tidied up on the inside

There’s a category of products for which a review is a thankless task, because not much can be gleaned from a spec sheet. The new Google Pixel Watch 5 is precisely such a case. Place them next to last year’s four, and you won’t notice a difference even after a minute of examination. But wear them for a week, and you’ll find that you interact with them differently than with any watch before. In the following text, we will together look at all the features, ways of use, as well as significant shortcomings that cannot be overlooked.

A design with nowhere to go

Google makes no secret of playing it safe. The circular convex Actua 360 display, aluminum case, Gorilla Glass cover, 12.3-millimeter thickness, and a weight of 36.7 grams including the strap — it’s all indistinguishable from the previous generation. I tested the smaller 41mm variant with a pinkish Canyon strap, which is exclusive to this size, and I must admit it’s one of the few color combinations on the market where I don’t mind people noticing it before me.

The convex glass is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The display flows over the edge without any bezel, which looks great and makes swiping from the edge pleasantly fast. At the same time, however, it has nothing to protect it from bumping into doorframes. In a week, I didn’t find any scratches on the glass, but a week is a short time, and the experiences of colleagues from other editorial offices who tested the four for a whole year are not optimistic. At least Google keeps its word on repairability — both the display and battery can be replaced, which is still not a given with competitors.

Durability remains at IP68 and 5ATM, so the watch will survive a shower and a pool without a blink. The quick-release strap system works reliably, although Fitbit Air owners might be disappointed that straps are changed significantly more conveniently there.

Haptics that make you forgive the watch

This is something you won’t read in the specs and (surprisingly!) won’t find in the press release. The haptic feedback of the Pixel Watch 5 is on par with Apple Watch, a sentence one doesn’t often write in the Android world. The vibrations are not the buzzing rattle we know from cheaper watches, but short, precisely delivered taps. You’ll feel notifications on your wrist even under a sweatshirt, touch confirmation feels like a physical click, and combined with smooth animation, it creates the impression that the watch is truly moving under your finger.

Google has equipped the watch with the Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 Accelerated chip, complemented by a Cortex-M55 coprocessor, along with 3 GB of RAM instead of last year’s 2 GB and 64 GB of storage instead of 32 GB. The manufacturer speaks of a twelve percent increase in processor performance and an overall one-fifth faster operation compared to the standard W5 Gen 2 in the Pixel Watch 4. For context, it’s worth noting that newer chips have been on the market for a relatively long time, such as the Snapdragon Wear Elite, which is even more powerful and can be found, for example, in the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2.

While you can’t easily verify the numbers, the difference in responsiveness is immediately noticeable: apps launch without hesitation, the notification list doesn’t stutter, and crown rotation is smooth from the first to the last degree. The doubled storage also makes sense for anyone who downloads music offline to their watch.

At a Glance and gestures: I touch them less than ever before

The biggest change this year isn’t visible in photos. A space for the At a Glance feature has been added to the bottom of the watch face, displaying what’s currently running — media player controls, a timer countdown, ongoing navigation, an airplane boarding pass, or an active workout. Previously, you only saw a small icon on the watch face and had to tap further. Now, you have the information directly in front of you in an arc that follows the display’s curvature.

By itself, it’s a nice improvement. But when it connects with extended gestures, it starts to make sense of a completely different caliber. A double pinch of the thumb and index finger in the air opens At a Glance from the watch face, a second pinch pauses music, and a wrist rotation acts as a universal back step. Google has extended gestures to most apps this year, and in the settings, you can assign what they should do — snooze or dismiss an alarm, pause or skip a track on the player.

The result is that during the week, I found myself controlling the watch without a single touch to the display. With groceries in one hand and a bag in the other, it’s the difference between stopping in the middle of the sidewalk and just a flick of the fingers. Color complications and eleven new styles have also been added, so you can see heart rate range or a sunset countdown on the watch face without having to navigate away.

Generative watch faces, which Google boasts about most loudly, are, on the other hand, more of a toy. You describe in words what you want to see, and artificial intelligence conjures up… a new font for the digits. You cannot influence the layout of complications or the rest of the area, so “flowering meadow at dusk” and “space station” end up as two differently decorated fours.

Offline Gemini works, you just have to remember it

For the first time this year, the Gemini assistant handles basic commands directly on the watch without connecting to a phone or network. You can set a timer or alarm, start a workout, toggle Wi-Fi, Do Not Disturb mode, or water lock, skip a song, or open an app. Last year, you were out of luck with all of this if you went for a run without your phone, which was quite an absurd situation.

In practice, it’s mainly a matter of habit. I counted few real situations in a week where I had the watch on my wrist but not my phone. It proved most useful in the morning, when I turn off Do Not Disturb and power-saving mode, which I activate at night, with a single command. The response is significantly faster than before, as it doesn’t wait for a connection to the phone. Moreover, wrist-raise activation works with significantly fewer false triggers this year, so I turned off voice activation after years and don’t regret it.

GPS that corrects itself only after you finish your run

The most technically interesting novelty of the entire watch concerns the accuracy of route recording. The hardware remained the same as last year, i.e., dual-band GPS, but Google added additional cloud-based data processing to it. The system takes the raw recording, compares it with a 3D model of buildings and terrain from Google Maps, adds atmospheric condition correction from reference stations, and evaluates which satellites the watch could have seen at all and which signals merely bounced off glass and concrete. The recalculated route appears in the Google Health app approximately ten minutes after the workout ends.

Google claims that this is twice as accurate a recording in challenging environments and that the Pixel Watch 5 surpasses both the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Fenix 8 Pro. This is a marketing claim based on the manufacturer’s own measurements, so take it with a grain of salt — independent tests from downtown New York, however, suggest there might be some truth to it. Google intentionally had its own product tested there, and it came out best in most sections of the comparison, although it’s not perfect and occasionally shifts into the wall of an opposite building among skyscrapers.

One important thing that Google doesn’t emphasize in its promotional materials is: the correction does not run in real-time and does not change pace or distance. During a run, you see exactly what you would have seen last year on the display. The benefit is therefore in the cleanliness of the record for Strava, segments, repeated route use, or personal bests. If you are mainly interested in your wrist pace in the middle of an interval, this novelty will not change your life. But if it has bothered you for years that your route goes through your neighbors’ living room, you finally have a solution.

Health: the best has yet to arrive

And now for the unpleasant part. Google built its communication around the Pixel Watch 5 on a set of health innovations under the banner of Health Guardian — blood pressure trends, insulin resistance measurement, sleep breathing quality, strength training construction with repetition counting and voice prompts. On the day of sale, practically none of this works.

Workout creation is expected in September, the first blood pressure and insulin resistance report only after a month of data collection, meaning no earlier than late October. Sleep breathing quality has no timeline at all. Respiratory distress detection, which can call emergency services in case of a long-term drop in blood oxygenation, is, on the other hand, available in Europe and missing in the United States. It’s a textbook example of a phased rollout that doesn’t make the customer’s decision any easier.

What works, works well. Sleep tracking is, according to Google, 15% more accurate thanks to redesigned machine learning models — which I have no way to verify after a week, and frankly, I wouldn’t accept such a claim without a laboratory study. More practical is the new red night watch face, which won’t blind you at three in the morning, automatic audio playback pause after falling asleep, and a smart alarm that wakes you in a lighter sleep phase within a half-hour window. The morning overview summarizes readiness score, sleep, weather, and upcoming calendar events without overwhelming you with graphs.

It’s worth noting that a large portion of these new features will also arrive on Pixel Watch 3 and 4. So, if you have last year’s model, there’s practically no reason to upgrade. And beware of one thing: the most interesting part of the health overlay, namely the coach with custom workout plan creation, is part of the Google Health Premium subscription.

A day and a bit, but the charger saves it

The battery of the 41mm version increased from 325 to 332 mAh, an increase that can safely be called a statistical error. Google promises up to 30 hours of typical use; in my case, with the always-on display enabled, one night of sleep tracking, and one run with GPS, it was closer to 24 to 28 hours. The smaller variant is simply not a watch you can wear for a weekend and forget the charger at home. Those who want more peace of mind should opt for the 45mm version, which can realistically last two days.

However, the charging speed saves the situation. In fifteen minutes on the docking station, you gain another fifteen hours of operation, and you can go from zero to full capacity in about forty-five minutes. This is noticeably faster than competing Galaxy Watches, and in practice, it means you simply place the watch on the stand during a shower and you’re good to go. The anxiety of a drained battery largely dissipates with this.

Final Verdict

The Pixel Watch 5 is a watch that, after a week, leaves me with a significantly better feeling than its specifications suggest. Nothing here is new, yet they are used better than anything else with Wear OS. This is due to a combination of small details: haptics that I would put alongside Apple Watch, system responsiveness without a single hesitation, gestures that often mean you don’t even touch the display, and At a Glance, which keeps you on the watch face instead of wandering through menus.

I have two reservations, both concerning Google rather than the watch itself. The first is the price of 9,990 CZK for the 41mm variant and 10,990 CZK for the larger model, an increase from last year, for which you primarily get software novelties also aimed at older generations. The second is the way features that don’t yet exist are sold. Promising blood pressure and insulin resistance measurement on the day the customer pays, and delivering them two months later, is not fair to either the buyer or the product, which doesn’t need such a crutch. Czech interested parties must also consider that LTE variants are not sold here at all.

I would advise Pixel Watch 4 owners to wait with the upgrade. However, if you are upgrading from an older generation, from another Wear OS watch, or buying a smartwatch for the first time and have an Android phone in your pocket, the Pixel Watch 5 is the most pleasant choice on the market.

Editor’s rating: 92%

Would you swap your watch for the Pixel Watch 5, even though it hasn’t changed at all externally?