Google gets its wrist game right?

With a brighter 3,000-nit display, two-day battery life and deeply embedded Gemini AI, this device emerges as Google’s most cohesive — and surprisingly compelling — smartwatch yet

The battle between Apple, Samsung and Google to adorn your wrist with the most appealing smartwatch that money can buy has only gotten more heated as the years have gone by. Which is great news for the consumers, because each brand has been innovating fairly aggressively, making significant progress in health and fitness tracking, elegant refinements to their user interfaces and improving battery life with each passing year.

Of these three, the one that took me by surprise recently was the Google Pixel Watch 4. Available in 41mm and 45mm case sizes, the watch runs Wear OS 6 with Google’s Material 3 Expressive interface layered on top. Fitbit continues to anchor its health ecosystem, while Google positions Gemini as the intelligence layer tying everything together. What I expected would be a lukewarm, pleasing experience turned into something more fun and meaningful during the course of the review.

And here I share with you what I truly loved about the smartwatch and what it could do with a bit more refinement.  The Google Pixel Watch 4 sports a new Actua 360-degree AMOLED display, which remains the visual centrepiece. The 41 mm model, which I reviewed, features a 1.33-inch display, while the 45mm variant gets a 1.4-inch display. Both push brightness up to 3,000 nits, which makes a visible difference under harsh sunlight.

Text remains legible outdoors and notifications are easier to glance at without shading the screen.  Secondly, the comfort that the watch — and especially the straps — offer is clearly a league above its competitors. I had it on continuously for anywhere between one and two days at a time. The recycled aluminium casing kept the weight to just over 30 grams in the smaller model, and the fluoroelastomer straps are soft enough for all-day as well as overnight wear.

Despite being someone who is very sensitive to clammy, sticky smartwatch straps, this seldom made me uncomfortable the entire time . This is not easy to achieve. The third feature I really enjoyed is the deeply-embedded Gemini experience, and how accurate the device is with voice commands and dictations. Voice dictation was always accurate, be it me replying to messages or shooting off quick email responses.

The watch does a bunch of tasks efficiently, such as summarising emails, setting calendar events or triggering contextual reminders. The redesigned speaker delivers clear audio, and the strengthened haptics make alerts crisp without being jarring. Fourth, on the health front, the watch tracked my heart rate, SpO₂, and, among many other things, my most favourite parameter – sleep. It gave me a nightly Sleep Score – mine hovered in the 70s, sometimes 80s (out of 100), along with time spent being awake, and in REM, light, and deep sleep stages.

The watch also has automatic workout detection, which can be helpful if you sometimes tend to forget to start recording at the beginning of a workout. Finally, one of the best parts of using the Pixel Watch 4 was not having to worry about charging it every single day, despite round-the-clock use. The 41 mm version carries a 325 mAh battery, while the 45 mm houses a larger 455 mAh unit. With the always-on display enabled, the watch (41 mm) comfortably runs through two full days for me.

This is with sleep tracking on as well. Charging speeds are quick, too, and it takes no longer than an hour to charge fully from zero. So, a quick plug-in while you shower and grab breakfast is enough to keep the watch powered for two whole days. For those who need a quick top-up, a 15-minute charge restores close to 50 per cent battery.  Despite a whole lot of refinements, a few niggles remain — some cosmetic, others more practical.

One of the niggles I ran into very early on was struggling with the strap mechanism during the physical setup, out of the box. It’s nowhere near as easy as Apple’s slide and lock mechanism. I wish it were. The proprietary locking system requires precise alignment, and while it ensures a secure fit, it makes quick strap swaps less convenient. While I’m keen on watching Google’s new UI language Material 3 Expressive evolve over time, I have to say I don’t particularly enjoy being locked into the option of having only a dark background option, across watchfaces.

While this choice may conserve power, it limits the aesthetic variety, which makes the whole smartwatch experience a lot more fun and personal!  The charging solution, though faster, introduces its own learning curve. The side-attach Quick Charge Dock rotates the display to show time and charging status, which is thoughtful. However, it does not support reverse wireless charging from Pixel smartphones — a feature some users may expect at this price point.

The Pixel Watch 4 is priced at ₹39,900 in India, placing it squarely in the premium category. For that investment, users get a distinctive 3,000-nit AMOLED display, improved battery life, a great UI and AI integration, faster charging and some of the most reliable voice integration currently available on Wear OS. For Android users — particularly those using Pixel smartphones — the watch offers tight ecosystem integration and genuinely useful AI features.

The brighter display works well in Indian conditions, and the improved endurance reduces daily charging anxiety. After extended use across workdays, workouts and sleep cycles, the Pixel Watch 4 feels like Google’s most cohesive smartwatch so far. But is that enough to convince people who might otherwise go for cult favourites such as the Apple Watch series or the more affordable Apple Watch SE? That remains to be seen!

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