Pixel Watch impressions. I got the regular BT/Wifi connected version. Didn't think LTE was worth the extra monthly line fees for.
-The watch itself is on the smaller side, but I don't think most people would consider it to be 'tiny'.
-The bezels are pretty thick, but they did a really good job of hiding this with design and the way the interface works.
-The band it comes with is surprisingly comfortable. Usually I replace the stock bands on watches/fitness trackers immediately. Still going to try something else though.
-Have had no issues swiping around and even typing on the watch face. It's extremely responsive.
-The interface is very slick and snappy. It's using a two year old processor, but you wouldn't know it. It's very fast. This watch also has 2GB of ram which IIRC is more than most smartwatches have.
-There are two physical buttons- the crown/dial which can scroll through things and can be clicked to go back to the main watch face or to look at your apps list from the main watch face, and a recessed button on the upper right, above the crown, that when pressed shows recent apps. You can also hold this down to go to the Google Assistant. I saw some complaints that this button can be hard to press, but I haven't had a problem with it. It's recessed and once you know where it is, it's not an issue IMO.
-It's too early for me to really see how the battery life is, but when I got it yesterday afternoon, it was around 93% charged out of the box and got a lot of heavy use, downloading updates, messing with stuff, testing out phone calls, etc. By the time I went to sleep, it was at 27%, which is not bad for how much it was pushed. Today I put the watch on at 9am and did a few things to help lengthen battery life, including turning off the always-on display (I see no difference with this on or off and it apparently eats up the battery life), turning off some of the app notifications I don't care about, and turning off the wrist-flick function to show the display. I think the latter especially makes a huge difference and the screen comes right on with the slightest touch, so I'm good with it- will likely turn this back on when walking around on trails/parks and that's about it. Anyway, it's now nearly 11pm and I have 64% remaining. I used it regularly throughout the day to purposefully see how much the battery would go down, including using the flashlight function, voice to text, etc. So pretty impressed for now, but I have also been stuck at home all weekend since I've been on-call at work. Waiting to see how it is when I'm outside doing stuff. I've also seen that if can get drained a lot at night, but from comments, people are forgetting to put on sleep mode. I don't generally wear watches to sleep but I might test it to see how the sleep tracking works.
-Haven't messed with additional apps besides the stock stuff but you can get more off the Play Store. I'm impressed with how well this works with my Pixel phone and it's nice having Google Maps on the watch too for walking around. I can see that coming in handy on trips especially.
-So far, my big complaint is with the step counter. It says I walked 5,300+ steps today- I don't see how when I've been inside for 98% of the day. It seems to be counting a lot of the typing I've been doing while working as walking. Maybe there's a way to disable this temporarily or change the sensitivity?
Overall pretty impressed. I was half-expecting to be returning it because of the battery life -and that still could happen- but as of now I'm pretty happy with how it's working.
