In preparing to write this post, I looked back to figure out how long I’ve had a smartwatch in my life. And the answer is almost 11 years, which just seems nuts.
The first one was the Motorola Moto 360, first generation, given to me as a Christmas gift in 2014.
By current standards of what a smartwatch could do, this was positively simplistic. There was even a cutout at the bottom of the screen to make room for the light sensor that would automatically dim the screen (it may have done other things too, but I don’t remember). But it was amazing. I could choose customized watch faces, display different time zones simultaneously, send and read texts from my phone via the watch, control music or video playback, and other things. It even monitored my heart rate. The most used feature for me on it, aside from telling the time, was using it while driving to text my wife to tell her I was pulling into the parking lot at her work to pick her up.
It was fun to have, because smartwatches were still new things–the Apple Watch wouldn’t come out until 2015–so even though Fitbit devices had been a thing for a while, a full-blown computerized watch was a novel thing. But because it was one of the first smartwatches out there, Google, Motorola, and other brands were still trying to figure out what to do with these things, so it was rough around the edges and the experience wasn’t quite as awesome as it should have been. Android Wear was the software that supposedly would tie disparate Android devices together, but it was sorely lacking in its feature set.
But as happened with those models, the battery started to give out after about 16 months of daily use. So I went back to my regular watches.
Then, in 2019, using some money from a bonus from work, I jumped into my next smartwatch. This one was bought after a great deal of research.
Samsung had their Gear line of watches out for a while, but those benefitted most from being paired with Samsung phones, and while I’d been saddled with an S7 Edge after the debacle of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (I’ll write about that at some point in the future), I hated that phone with a passion and couldn’t wait to get out of it.
Motorola had moved to a Gen 2 of the Moto 360, and while there were some improvements, it didn’t feel all that…exciting or new.
But there was a new and smaller player out there, Mobvoi, who had introduced the TicWatch Pro in 2018. It was unique in that it had a dual-layered screen–a color AMOLED screen underneath a transparent monochrome LCD screen. What this did is that it showed the time constantly. When the main screen was off, the transparent screen showed the time and drew very little power. Plus, this looked more like a standard watch. It was heavy and solidly built and just looked and felt like a good quality watch. I knew it would be capable of taking the beating I tend to give my watches.
And, by now, Google had been figuring out more of what to do with Android Wear–now Wear OS. Google Fit had become a thing, so fitness tracking was better integrated and presented than it had been with the Moto 360.
I loved (and still love) this watch, mostly for its appearance, but also for the leap it had made in technology. I loved the dual screen design and the fact that it always looked like a watch, not just a screen on my wrist. It had GPS on it, and NFC for Google Pay, and an accelerometer and magnetic sensor. So it had a full feature set.
But it needed both Mobvoi’s software and Google’s Wear OS installed on my phone for it to fully function, which always seemed to be unnecessary overkill and frustrating. And Mobvoi had loaded some of their software on the watch and in the app that duplicated some of Wear OS’s own functionality–like pulse monitoring, etc. When Mobvoi announced it would not get any Wear OS upgrades (especially to Wear OS 3, which would start to integrate some of the Fitbit and Tizen technology into Android-based smartwatches, I knew my time with it as my everyday watch was limited.
To it’s credit, it still is running, and by the time I got my Pixel Watch 2, it had been in daily use for 5 years.
It had been a long time coming, but in 2024, I realized a huge frustration with my Android phones and watches: while they were all based on the same platform, they had been customized, skinned, and given different looks and functionality, depending on who you bought the device from. I’d got a Google Nexus 7 tablet when it came out in 2013, and I was pleased with it–being a Google device, it ran stock Android, so it ran fast, looked clean, and was straight forward in terms of user experience. But the phones at that time still weren’t up to a level I’d come to expect.
My family had gotten various model Pixel phones over the years: the 4, 4a, and 6, and they were all kind of a mixed bag. The 4a was the right price and feature point for my kids, but my wife got the 6 shortly after it came out and hated it–everything that was supposed to be great about it didn’t work as advertised (mostly the camera). But I’d heard enough great things about the Pixel 9 Pro range that when that came out, I jumped from my OnePlus 10 into the Pixel 9 Pro XL.
I’ll talk about that phone in another post at some point as well, but I was very happy with it. Shortly after buying it, I got my Google Store credit for buying the phone, and decided to grab a Pixel Watch 2, which was just becoming old technology after the release of the Pixel Watch 3, but it was still going to be supported for a while.
The short version is that I love this watch. I love how my phone, watch, and Pixel Buds Pro just work together seamlessly, much like Apple’s product line. There’s no intermediate software that I need to run the watch or connect it to my phone. It syncs with Fitbit and Google Fit. In short, it has a robust feature set, and performs those features well.
It’s substantially more accurate in counting my steps than the TicWatch was, and it does have the ability to detect a fall and call for help if needed. Plus, it can sense a cardiac event, which, as I’m getting older, seems like a good thing. Even Google Pay works better now than it had on the TicWatch. On the old watch, I needed to unlock Google Pay every time I went to make a payment, and the angle to get it to line up with the reader was always difficult. Now it’s easier and smoother.
Though I do with the watch had a better design and that more strap manufacturers supported it.
The Pixel Watch, now comes in 2 sizes, 45 mm and 41 mm, with that larger size introduced with the Pixel Watch 3. I didn’t think the size would be a big deal, but as someone with large wrists and hands, the 41 mm looks tiny on my wrist. And it’s rounded, plastic-looking design isn’t really appealing if you want the watch to look classic, or classier. I’ve gotten used to it, but it kind of sits on my wrist as a black disk without much visual appeal. It’s just a thing there.
Here’s the bigger frustration: I have huge wrists. I’ve measured, and they’re about 240 mm around, where I wear my watch. And my hands are also very big. So when I’ve looked at and ordered alternative bands for this watch, it’s proven a challenge. I’d like a woven band, because I’ve taken to sleeping with this watch since Fitbit can log my sleep, and the provided silicone band gets irritating if it’s been worn too long at a stretch. I found what I thought was about the biggest woven straps I could find, but to get the watch on my wrist, the band is still connected to both sides of the watch itself in a loop, and getting that past my massive hands is difficult.
So back to the silicone.
There are also protective covers that can make the watch look more like a watch than the black disk that it is. I bought a cheap one, and it’s more protective than decorative, so it didn’t do much for the design.
I’ll go with this for a while, for sure, but I already wish I got the larger model, so I may keep watching for good deals on it or wait for the Pixel Watch 4 or something. But if you’re in the market for an Android phone and smartwatch, I’d strongly recommend the Pixel line. It’s what the experience should be.
