One of the more curious omissions from the launch of the Pixel Watch last year was the lack of blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) tracking. It wasn’t odd that they didn’t have it as a feature, per se; it was odd that the tools to measure it are on the Pixel Watch and Google simply wasn’t leveraging them.
But that seems to be changing as at least one Pixel Watch owner over on Reddit (via 9to5 Google) is now getting an oxygen saturation card in the Fitbit Today app on the watch, denoting levels collected during their last sleep session. And this wasn’t a fluke as tapping into that card actually has a full-screen explainer page to go along with it.
This is a pretty needed addition if you are using the Pixel Watch as an overall health-tracking watch. Far less expensive devices like the Fitbit Inspire 3 come in at under $100 have SpO2 tracking available to them, so missing out on an important feature like this on a watch that is 3x more expensive just isn’t a good look for Google or for Fitbit.
Why Google has held off on this for so long and how they plan on going about the full roll-out to Pixel Watch users is a bit unclear at this point. Now that the Heart Metrics in the Fitbit app are no longer locked behind a paywall for users, having this SpO2 sensing on the Pixel Watch will be a great addition and some useful information for those keeping closer tabs on their overall wellbeing with the Pixel Watch. We’ll keep an eye out on the Pixel Watches we have here in the office for it to show up.
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