45mm Pixel Watch 3 review: big time

Google's smartwatch finally fits

I reviewed the Pixel Watch 2 a year ago, and at the time I really liked it. Between its newly passable battery life and the way it could easily bounce between Android phones, I ended the review by saying it might actually become my go-to smartwatch.

Reader, that did not happen. I ended up wearing a ton of watches over the past year, from Fossil Hybrids to the Apple Watch Ultra to Bluetooth-equipped Casio G-Shocks. I’d often return to the Pixel Watch 2, then swap it back out for something with a bigger screen or longer battery life.

In particular, the Xiaomi Watch 2 made for a stark comparison. Although I didn’t give that watch a full review, I did wear it for quite a while. It ran Wear OS, like the Pixel Watch 2, but it had a much bigger screen with far smaller bezels and could easily last two days on a charge. The whole time I was wearing it, I wished Google would blow the Pixel Watch up to its size.

Well, here’s the Pixel Watch 3. The previous 41mm size has been updated with slimmer bezels and a bigger screen, and there’s a whole new 45mm model with an even bigger display.

I’m not going to say that the Pixel Watch 3 is going to be my go-to smartwatch this year. Won’t get fooled again. But after wearing it for a few weeks, I will say that wow, the Pixel Watch sure is a lot better when it’s bigger.

The hardware update here is really all about the screen. I’ve been wearing the new 45mm model, which has a 40% larger display than the Pixel Watch 2. The 41mm Watch 3 has the same size case as the Watch 2 but a 10% larger display because of the thinner bezels.

With the caveat that I’m quite a sizeable person myself, the 45mm Watch 3 feels exactly right on my wrist. Previous Pixel watches always looked a little too small on me, and the thick bezels didn’t help the sense of cramped on-screen information. The 45mm Watch 3 can show so much more at once, including in tweaked watch faces with extra complications, and it makes a huge difference to the overall experience. The notification shade and Gmail app are a lot more practical to scroll through now, for example.

I haven’t had a chance to use the 41mm Pixel Watch 3, but I would expect the slightly bigger display to be somewhat meaningful in practice. I doubt it’ll suddenly turn the watch into an ideal device for jamming on emails, but it no longer looks like the bezels will intrude to the point of distraction.

While the Watch 3 looks much better than its predecessor, its bezels are still not what I would call slim. They get close to the point where the glass begins to curve, but Google hasn’t managed Apple’s trick of bending the OLED panel around the edge. Hopefully that happens someday, more because it would look cool than for any practical purpose — I’m thinking oil-filled Ressence watch here. Surely there will be no technical hurdles whatsoever.

My review unit came in Google’s currently in-vogue “Hazel” colour, which I last saw on the Pixel 9 Pro XL and is a sort of vaguely green-gunmetal matte finish. I think it looks fine, though you don’t really see it much since the watch case is almost bisected by the curved screen glass up top. The crown on this model is still shiny chrome, which is a little conspicuous. Personally, I’d pick the silver finish I had on the Watch 2. If nothing else, it’s more neutral and should be easier to find straps with matching lugs for.

The screens on both Watch 3 models can hit up to 2,000 nits of brightness, doubling the previous model’s peak and making the watch much easier to see in sunlight. The maximum refresh rate has also been doubled to 60Hz, and the panel can get as low as 1Hz to save battery life when using the always-on display — in other words, it only refreshes once a second, like an Apple Watch. I never found the Pixel Watch 2’s 30Hz panel to be a problem, but side-by-side the Watch 3 does have much smoother scrolling.

The display also gets very dim in pitch-black environments, which is a useful feature when wearing the watch to bed; it’s dimmer to my eyes than even the Apple Watch Ultra’s red monochrome mode. Between that and the new Auto Bedtime feature that detects when you’re in bed and disables the always-on display within about 15 minutes, this is the least annoying smartwatch I’ve ever used for sleep tracking.

The 45mm Watch 3 has a 35% bigger battery than the Watch 2, and it makes a big difference. I’m getting essentially the same endurance out of this watch as my Apple Watch Ultra, which is to say I can expect it to be nearly tapped out after 48 hours with the always-on display enabled. Google is only claiming up to 36 hours of endurance, but with my personal use I’d need to go pretty hard to kill the Watch 3 in under two days. That’s just a huge improvement on the prior generation, when it was a selling point that the Watch 2 could reliably make it through 24 hours.

The Watch 3 has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 processor as the Watch 2, which isn’t surprising; that was the big upgrade last year, and performance is still solid enough to keep up with the faster screen. Google did achieve 20% quicker charging speeds this time around, with the 41mm Watch 3 taking 15 fewer minutes to get from 0 to 100%. I can’t speak to that model, but the 45mm watch has been reliably speedy in my testing on the same puck I used for the Watch 2.

Other new hardware features include an ultra-wideband chip for securely unlocking your Pixel phone when in close proximity, although the tech can’t yet be used to find the phone — your only option is to remotely tell it to play a sound. The Watch can also now detect a loss of pulse and call emergency services, which thankfully I have not been able to demonstrate, as well as automatically lock the screen when it’s underwater.

I am just going to tap out of evaluating the Pixel Watch 3 as an advanced fitness tracker because I’m really not qualified to compare it to the Garmins of the world, or even the Apple Watches. I will say that it’s been good at automatically detecting my walks, bike rides, and workouts, and I like the new “Morning Brief” notification from Fitbit that gives you a rundown of sleep and exercise metrics right after you wake up. If you’re only casually into this stuff, like me, I think the Watch 3 does the job, but I’m sure DC Rainmaker or The Verge’s Victoria Song will have more useful advice for serious enthusiasts.

Overall the Pixel Watch 3’s software is pretty good, and it’s the closest anyone’s come to replicating an Apple Watch-style experience for Android. But it’s not quite there for me, and it mostly comes down to the watch faces and app ecosystem. I’m not necessarily a hardcore smartwatch power user, but I do care a lot about the faces, and Apple is way ahead of Google when it comes to providing a range of customisable, functional options.

There are only three or four native Pixel Watch faces that I find hit an acceptable balance of aesthetics and flexibility for daily wear. Part of that is to do with the state of Wear OS apps — there just aren’t as many that offer useful complications. I can unlock my bike or turn on my air conditioner right from my Apple Watch, whereas the Android versions of those apps don’t even run on Wear OS at all.

Google has work to do on its own apps, too. The new Pixel Weather app is a great addition to the latest Pixel phones, but it hasn’t come to the Pixel Watch 3, so you get plain-text notifications with a prompt to open on your phone. Notifications in general have a habit of piling up on the Watch; they’re not grouped by app, so you end up with a long list of alerts to scroll through without useful ways to interact with them.

For the Pixel Watch to make sense over something like a basic Fitbit tracker, it needs to offer more as a platform in a way that a simpler device couldn’t. What’s here is good, and I think Google made the right call by ensuring that the basics were solid. But three generations into the Pixel Watch, there could and should be more.

I know a lot of people have strong opinions on phone sizes, but I never really did. Maybe because I test so many, I just use anything until it feels normal, which usually takes a day or so. Clearly there is no universally perfect size, so I figure it makes sense to make the most of the pros and cons of what’s available.

I used to feel that way about watches, too, but I’ve come to realise that I shouldn’t. It’s different when you’re strapping something to your body. I liked the Pixel Watch 2, but it turned out to be just too small for me. The 45mm Pixel Watch 3 is not — it’s my size. It might as well be a different product altogether.

This may not be my go-to watch for the rest of the year, but I do think the Pixel Watch 3 is the best conventional smartwatch you can pair to an Android phone. If you prefer the original, smaller case, the 41mm Watch 3 should be just as good, except perhaps on battery life.

A year ago, my main takeaway from the Pixel Watch 2 was that Google fixed the processor. This year, it’s that Google fixed the size. Next year? Honestly, I’d be happy with some better watch faces.