The Pixel Watch bezels might not be as chunky as earlier renders made them look

It wouldn’t be the week before a big hardware event without a few leaks, poor renders, and general speculation, would it? That is exactly the case at this point with the Pixel Watch and its larger-than-expected bezels. Pulled from an earlier video of Google’s upcoming watch posted by the company itself, it became pretty clear that the Pixel Watch’s screen wouldn’t be quite as edge-to-edge as we all thought it would.

For our part, we bought the renders and the more I thought about it, the less it concerned me. I wrote about it already, but when you look at most smartwatches, there’s a decently-sized bezel around the display that goes unnoticed with OLED screens and thoughtful UI. With it being quite difficult to see where the black edges of the bezels end and the inky-blacks of the OLED screen begin, watches can get away without edge-to-edge screens and still look really nice.

Maybe those bezels aren’t so big

It seems Google’s been listening in on the internet chatter, however, and they’ve re-uploaded the same video that caused all this commotion in the first place to their Taiwan-based YouTube channel, re-rendering the Pixel Watch images to make the bezels far less bulky. Originally spotted by a user over on Reddit (via Droid Life), it appears Google doesn’t want you to think its watch is quite as bezel-challenged as we originally thought. Take a look at the differences between the videos below in a simple GIF made by Droid Life:

As you can clearly see, the differences in the first video and the new video are pretty staggering. But which are accurate? At this point, it is tough to tell, honestly. Based on the very early leaks of the Pixel Watch that happened on Reddit, I’m inclined to think these new renders are more accurate. They don’t paint some unrealistic picture of a Pixel Watch with no bezels at all, and the assumed size of those bezels looks far more modern and matches up with what we’ve seen prior.

We’ll obviously know one way or another next week at the event, but I’d put my money on this new video being the more-accurate depiction of the Pixel Watch bezels, and I think that may make many of you breathe a bit easier. While I still stand by my assertion that micro-sized bezels on a smartwatch with and OLED screen and proper UI won’t make much difference, I do still realize it is 2022 and that users paying $349 and up for a watch want something definitively modern. If these new renders pan out, I think we can most certainly say that about the Pixel Watch.