Google Pixel Watch – Android smartwatch with activity tracking – Heart rate tracking watch – Polished Silver Stainless Steel case with Charcoal Active band, LTE

So far has been excellent. Bought used but the condition was as new. Everything seems fine after 2 weeks now. Very pleased.

Love the watch I can reply to text messages and answer calls. Has a lot of features including the weather and maps. However the battery is poor but most smart watches have poort battery. I had a Garmin before and this watch is more of a smart watch than a fitness watch. Has Fitbit too. Definitely recommend.

I have had a string of smart watches over the years and none has been perfect. In many respects, the Huawei GT3 is my favourite but it has one Achilles Heel – no near-field communication, so no Google Wallet features. So I thought I’d give Google’s flagship an outing. And I’m pretty impressed. Which isn’t to say it’s perfect. To itemise the good first, the screen is lovely. It’s clear, bright and, given that the watch diameter is only 41 mm, remarkably large in appearance. That’s because there’s no real bezel to speak of, since the face gradually merges into the base. The diameter certainly suits me, as I have quite narrow wrists but that’s about personal preference. Second, the crown behaves as it should. That is, you can turn it to scroll the screen regardless of what is displayed. (Not all apps play nice with it but that’s not Google’s fault.) Third, there is one other control, a button, flush with the case, slightly above the crown. This lists recently used apps and is quite useful, given that not all apps can be selected as tiles. Fourth, the watch runs the latest version of Wear OS, as you’d expect. But it does so in an unusual way. When you first pair the watch with your phone, a new app (called ‘Watch’) is automatically downloaded to the phone. If you had a previous Wear OS watch, it remains linked via the old Wear OS app. All this happens without any input from you, so it’s very straightforward. Watch does everything Wear OS did plus a few new tricks but not always in the same way. It’s easy to get used to, though. Fifth, the Fitbit health features (including ECG measurement) are all bundled into the watch. Sixth, the microphone and speaker are good quality. You can hear a phone call very clearly and the caller can’t hear any difference whether you're using the watch or your phone.So what are the downsides? Well, first there’s the perennial problem of battery life. Of course it depends on what apps you have open all the time and how often you interrogate the watch but my experience is that it loses about 2% of charge per hour when set to ‘tilt to display’. That’s not too shabby but remember I’m used to a Huawei beast that will happily last ten days with ‘always on’ selected. Second, and inexplicably, Google has included an oxygen saturation sensor (SpO2) and then not implemented it in software. I assume it will appear in an update but why it wasn’t included initially is beyond me. Third, the full Fitbit suite is only included for 6 months. After that, you have to pay for those components that are in the ‘Pro’ version; and it’s quite expensive in my view.All in all though, I’m pretty happy with the watch. It’s got more right than wrong, especially for a first outing.

Good appearance and apps but battery life short in comparison with other makes.

I would consider using the watch as an alarm as one of the most basic and simple functions of any "smart watch". When set as a repeat alarm for weekday mornings, the watch would decide to change the days to Sunday to Thursday. Just once and I thought it was me - on the third time, this was the final straw. I googled it and it was shown as a known problem back in March, I bought the watch in June so I would really have through this should have been fixed.Other "niggles" - as stated by multiple other users - the battery really isn't great, made me worried about using it in case it ran out when I needed it.Got stuck in the updating cycle - managed to fix with a restart.When used to answer calls on the watch, the speaker was very crackly.Positives: Looks good, tracker was accurate enough for walking, NFC worked well for contactless payments.Overall - I couldn't cope with the niggles and returned the watch.

After trying various cheaper health tracker watches that can do ECGs and finding that all of them basically don't work properly I decided to spend a bit more on the Google Pixel Watch with Fitbit.The health tracking features work pretty well, probably thanks to the Fitbit integration. I find that the step counter is really quite accurate and the heartbeat monitor seems to be good as well.The ECG measuring is very neat and produces a PDF you can give to your doctor. It seems pretty real and accurate and shows the live chart on the watch screen while taking the ECG.So while I got this watch for the health tracking/ECG features, I'm pretty impressed in general with the new WearOS and the integration with my (Samsung) Android phone. It's looks quite cool and seamlessly integrates with the phone.Some people complain about the watch's battery life - it's not an issue for me. It definitely gets through a full day on a single charge with the screen always on. I don't wear it at night so thats when it can charge, which is fine.The Fitbit app suggests to wear the watch also at night in your sleep to track sleep patterns, breathing etc. That sounds interesting but then it becomes an issue when you should charge it as I don't think it will last more than 2 days with screen always on per charge.

Overall, the watch is great - I particularly love that it has sound as well as vibration, the Google maps on screen, a screen lock code/pattern and also the emergency SOS function to call your chosen contact and/or 999 in the event of an emergency (fortunately, I haven't needed to try this feature). The problems I have found are:1) the battery life is poor - I charge to 100% immediately before going to sleep, but it is at around 60% when I wake up - I have the battery saver option turned on which slows the battery down a bit but not a great deal2) the charger is a phone port connection, meaning you can't charge it through a plug or usb port (I can only connect it to my phone which then drains my phone battery)3) the alarms are glitchy. Sometimes they go off, but on several occasions they don't go off at all. There are also times when it will only make sound or only vibrate rather than doing both as I have set them to. A few alarms have only made a simple click sound which can barely be heard