The Pixel Watch is official: $349, good looks, and a four-year-old SoC

Google lost interest in smart watches for years, and now we're supposed to trust them again? I had a watch with Android Wear, after the updates stopped Google's own apps started losing features they had when I bought the watch (like offline music support).

I'd rather buy a watch from somebody that doesn't treat it like a small side business they can shut down at any moment. Plus, this hardware is very underwhelming.

Have the announcement ready for this time next year:

"Google kills off Pixel Watch after low consumer demand in favor of FitBit."

A word to the wise, don't invest your own time and money into google products unless you want to gamble.

Google/Alphabet should stick to internet infrastructure based products. It is increasingly becoming evident that they don't have customers confidence nor are they keeping up with the times with such botched launches & cancellations.

Playing on your strengths is not a bad deal. If they cull some of these product lines for good, and reinvest in core set of Workspace products, better search & competing GCP with AWS/Azure seriously (good documentation, product support etc), it will go a long way to recover the trust & brand value. You don't want to be seen as the Yahoo! of 2020s. That's a death sentence in slow motion.

As a computer scientist, Alphabet is no longer my first preference to get hired. The lustre of the company has jaded considerably in last 5 years (with the exception of AI ventures)

I think the "good looks" part is subjective... reminds me of those Oakley "over the top" sunglasses: https://www.maxim.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/oakley_atob...

I'd like to be a part of the meetings where it was decided to go forward with the product. "We're not price-competitive, we're using a SoC from the Apple Watch 4 era, and the bezels are wide enough to ride a bicycle on."

"Looks good, when does manufacturing start?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am, perhaps not I've explained myself clearly..."

I mean, is this some tax write off scheme to balance profitable products? What business hinkiness am I missing that makes this a viable product? Because what I'm not imaging is someone in the viewing audience saying, "wow, it's about time Google, this is the watch I've been waiting for!"

Looking at the Google Store page that compares the Pixel Watch with existing Fitbit smartwatches (https://store.google.com/magazine/google_pixel_watch_compare), I'm not sure why most people would buy the Pixel Watch. It's more expensive than the Sense 2 and Versa 4, but it is not a clear upgrade in terms of features.

* If you're an athlete, buy a Garmin

* If you're in iOS user and want an iPhone on your wrist, get a iWatch

* If you like to incinerate cash, buy fireworks... or this watch. The lack of compatible wristbands is enough reason to avoid, let alone the inevitable outcome of you losing access to your investment once Google drops support for bringing a half-baked product to market.

I'm glad they released Wear OS 3.5 and hope it soon comes to other watches. When Samsung and Google merged OSes merged to make Wear OS 3, it didn't have Wear OS apps available and was only available on Samsung's watches. Wear OS 3.5 adds Wear OS apps and should be available for other watches.

The Galaxy Watch 4 and 5 should get apps. Fossil has Gen6 series that should get update.

Very questionable hardware design decisions. A raised watch crystal to mimic the Apple Watch, more likely to scratch and shatter (with zero aftermarket support for add on protection). A traditional round case, less useful for displaying text and mostly suitable for displaying analog watch faces. Only comes in a "small" 41mm diameter size, the screen display further reduced with the internal bezel and round case.

Funny, the Pixel Watch has been added to the Fitbit web site, where on the comparison table it looks quite inferior to Fitbit offerings and costs $50 more. But wait, it has features like "Google Play Store" and "Gmail" which no one asked for.

So expensive watch, with previous generation SoC that is older and worse than competitors, at a price point nearly $100 more than said competitors.

Here we go again... This seems like a product explicitly designed to fail.

I just want an affordable watch with data storage. Anyone know of one?

A Fitbit is better than this in almost every way. As someone who's been wearing a smart watch of some kind for nearly a decade at this point, there are only really three players in this race: Fitbit, Garmin, and Apple. Everything else on the market is a joke by comparison. That's setting aside the fact that nobody should ever trust a Google product launch of hardware at this point.

The 10mm (5 mm around) bezel, sneakily hidden in marketing photos < my calculations are correct) takes up about 25% of the listed 41 mm watch diameter...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/behold-the-fat-...

>good looks

I clicked the link and thought "God, that looks like shit." And Google is going to cancel support for it in a year and a half anyway.