I’m getting 24 hours of use out of my Pixel Watch without Google’s guidelines

Since its arrival in October, I’ve had the Pixel Watch on my wrist every day. I’m forming some review thoughts around it, but I’m probably not the most informed person when it comes to previous smartwatch use and I’m unsure how universal my experience will actually be. Coming from years of Fitbit Versas, my expectations of what can be done with a watch are pretty low.

Coming into my experience with those types of simple wants and needs, I’ve been extremely happy with the Pixel Watch. Again, I’m not coming from other WearOS or Apple Watches, so my take on this is limited in scope. That being said, it does everything I want in a watch and it looks great while doing so. And part of that initial impression for me comes down to battery life, too. I don’t use sleep tracking, so a full day of use means I don’t have to think about charging my watch until I lay my head on the pillow.

In my time with the Pixel Watch thus far, there hasn’t been a single day that has gone by where that hasn’t happened. Actually, it hasn’t even been close. As I type this, it is 5PM and I took my watch off the charger at 7AM. Currently, my watch sits at 60% battery, so I’m on pace to easily make it overnight if I so choose, especially with the sleep mode enabled. If a full day of use without concern is the goal, the Pixel Watch passes the test with flying colors. And yes, I keep all the notifications and always-on display turned on, too.

Battery complaints

But, as I said, my perspective is a bit limited with these things, and what seems completely fine to me hasn’t been that well-received by others. While I regularly saw multi-day battery life from my Versa 3, I also know I didn’t use it for much other than keeping up with my general heart rate and activity. The Pixel Watch delivers far more value to my daily grind, so losing those extra days simply doesn’t bother me because I get so much more utility out of it.

But it clearly bothers other tech reviewers, so Google set out to clarify the 24-hour battery claims it made at the launch of the Pixel Watch with some extra details. In an update to the Google Support page for the Pixel Watch, Google took the time to detail what should get you into that 24-hour battery sweet spot:

• 240 notifications
• 280 time checks
• A 5 min LTE phone call.
• 45 min LTE and GPS workout with downloaded YouTube music playback
• 50 minutes of navigation (Google Maps) while connected to a phone via Bluetooth®️
• The watch configured with the default settings, including the Always-on display set to off

While this is clearly just a guide (we covered it in more detail in another post), I have no clue how to actually compare this with my real-world usage. My guess is I don’t check my watch as much as what is prescribed above and most days I don’t use it for calls or navigation unless needed. I also limit my notifications to the important stuff mainly to sift out unwanted annoyances and to keep my sanity. It also allows me to only feel the need to respond to a notification in a timely manner if my wrist vibrates.

For me, I use my Pixel Watch to track steps, my ongoing heart rate, to tell the time, check the weather, control media playback (a lot), respond to messages (in Discord, WhatsApp and Messages) with my voice, and take the occasional phone call. To me, that feels like the intended purpose of a wearable piece of tech, and I do all of this with the always-on display engaged at all times: and still easily make it to bedtime. with plenty of battery to spare.

Take all this with a grain of salt, obviously, because I’m finding that everyone’s experience with these more-personal tech gadgets varies wildly. I love this watch and enjoy it immensly. But if you are someone who is more interested in a health tracker that can get multiple days of battery life, consider a Fitbit instead. As I’ve said in this post, I enjoy all the niceties of the Pixel Watch and find myself using it far more regularly than I ever did my Fitbits in the past. With reasonable expectations, I think many of you will love it too. At least, you will if you aren’t trying to pretend it’s an 8th-gen Apple Watch.