The Pixel Watch 2, which looks identical to the Pixel Watch 1. (credit: Google)

The Pixel Watch 2 is launching alongside the Pixel 8 today. Google's second self-branded smartwatch is sporting a modest update, with the same design as the first version, a new SoC, and a skin temperature sensor.

As previously reported , the Pixel Watch 2 is jumping from the Exynos SoC of the first watch to Team Qualcomm, and now this is shipping the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5+. That's sort of an upgrade but not a huge one. Both the new and old chips run four Cortex A53 CPUs—the Exynos 9110 in the Pixel Watch 1 was built on a 10 nm while this is taking a big jump to 4nm. Any CPU upgrade is nice, but the Cortex A53 is 11 years old, so it still feels like Qualcomm is building these things in a cave.

The Qualcomm chip should bring a better modem if you're getting the LTE version, which is still $400, while the Wi-Fi only is $350. The rest of the spec sheet is mostly the same: 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, and IP68 dust and water resistance.

• 

  It's finally here, the metal Pixel Watch band. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

When the Pixel Watch came out in October , it seemed like a decent-but-first-generation swing at a smartwatch (even though Android Wear came out about nine years ago). Part of what gives off the first-generation vibe is the Pixel Watch's lack of watch band variety. Eight months after the watch's release, Google is taking a big step toward fixing that problem by introducing metal watch bands. The " Google Pixel Watch Metal Links Band " was briefly for sale on the Google Store Friday before being sold out.

Google's metal watch band is $200, which might seem expensive for a $350 watch, but that is on par with what Samsung charges, and Apple's metal link band is $350. We have one of these bands in person now, and it's worth every bit of the $200 price tag. Google's watch band feels just as premium as a band from a luxury watchmaker, with an incredible amount of weight and a solid-feeling clasp section. With the default amount of metal links (you get six extra in the box), the Pixel Watch plus a metal band weighs 145 g, which is mid-weight luxury watch territory.

The band links have an interesting attachment mechanism. I'm used to bands that either have a long screw running through each link or a pin you slide in from the side, but the links on the Pixel each connect with an internal spring bar system. Fold one of the links in half, and you'll reveal a set of openings to insert a special pair of included tweezers. Squeeze the tweezers, and you'll compress the spring bar, retracting the two pins and disconnecting the link from the watch band.

Enlarge / The first-generation Pixel Watch. It's a perfect, round little pebble. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The first Pixel Watch represented a promising but first-generation-feeling return to the smartwatch market for Google—will a second-generation version do any better? 9to5Google reports it will at least come with a new system on a chip: the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1. This change would have the Pixel Watch line changing from Samsung to Qualcomm SoCs.

The original Pixel Watch shipped with an Exynos 9110—not a bad chip by any means—except that when the Pixel Watch hit the market, the Exynos 9110 was four years old. As a 10 nm, dual Cortex A53 chip, it was ancient by technology standards. By the time the Pixel Watch came out, Samsung already had a next-generation chip on the market, the Exynos W920, and had shipped watches with the new chip.

While the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear W5 still has the same A53 CPUs, it has four of them, and the chip should be a lot more power efficient thanks to its 4 nm manufacturing process. The Pixel Watch 2 is expected to come out by the end of the year, and by then, the Snapdragon W5 SoC will be no spring chicken either. The chip was announced in July 2022, and the first products hit the market a month later in August 2022 —that's what a good technology rollout looks like, by the way. The Pixel Watch 2's assumed October 2023 release date would be 15 months after the chip was announced. That's better than four years, but time still seems to be Google's biggest enemy when it ships a smartwatch.

Enlarge / The Pixel Watch. It's a perfect, round little pebble. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

What good is a watch that can't help you keep track of the time? That's a problem the Pixel Watch has been facing recently, with reports of the watch missing alarm times . Google says it has the problem nailed down, though, and that a fix will be out eventually.

Google doesn't explain what the problem is, but it's most likely related to Android's power-saving "Doze" functionality. The Pixel Watch complaints mostly have to do with alarms for the morning, so the watch was in an idle "bedtime mode" for the night, and the right part of the OS isn't awake to know that it's time to set off an alarm. Doze mode is a constant problem for non-Pixel Android phones, which get aggressive sleep settings from manufacturers and frequently miss push notifications . More aggressive power savings on a watch with a tiny 300 mAh battery makes sense, but Google apparently went too far. Most reports of faulty alarms only say that the alarm was delayed by 1–10 minutes, not missed entirely, but that's still annoying and makes it hard to trust the Pixel Watch for important tasks.

The rollout for the fix is a bit strange. First, this announcement is for Google's March 2023 update for the Pixel Watch, but there's not much of "March" left—usually, these come out in the first week of the month—and Google says the update will take a week or two to hit everyone. That still won't fix your alarms, though. You'll also need an update for the clock app, which Google says will arrive via the Play Store "in the coming weeks." Having to change the OS and the app suggests this wasn't a small bug and that Google needed to create a special carve-out specifically for alarms.

Enlarge / The Pixel Watch. It's a perfect, round little pebble. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Why is the Pixel Watch so expensive ? The device's $350 and $400 price tags are well above the closest comparable products from Apple and Samsung, especially considering Google's first-generation smartwatches use slower, older parts compared to other products. The company is charging more for less, and while the Pixel Watch is a nice piece of hardware, it's hard to make the price make sense compared to faster products with better parts, like the $250 Apple Watch SE and $280 Galaxy Watch 5.

Counterpoint Research 's report details the Bill of Materials (BoM) for Google's Pixel Watch, and comes to the conclusion that the $400 LTE version device costs $123 to build. Companies always need to build big profit margins into their products to cover R&D, labor, and other costs, and to justify the endeavor, but the $123 bill of materials shows Google is just charging more than the competition rather than facing some kind of supply chain problem.

For comparison, we can look at Counterpoint Research's last bill of material estimate for the Apple Watch, which happened in 2021 for the Apple Watch Series 6. The Series 6 had an MSRP of $400, the same as this LTE Pixel Watch, but Counterpoint's bill of materials had it costing more than the Pixel Watch: $136. Just like how it feels in the market, Counterpoint says Apple is offering more watch for less money. Apple is a company famous for having the highest profit margins in the industry, yet comparing these estimates would give the Apple Watch a 66 percent profit margin, and Google a 69 percent margin.

Enlarge / Fall Detection on the Pixel Watch. (credit: Google)

With the launch of the Pixel Watch in October, Google started slowly trying to claw its way back into smartwatch relevance. A few months later, it's launching a big feature that has been on the Apple Watch for four years: fall detection .

As Google describes the feature, "fall detection uses motion sensors built in to your watch and on-device machine learning to determine if you’ve taken a hard fall and will call emergency services if you don’t move or respond within a certain timeframe." Like on an Apple Watch, if a fall is detected, you'll get a full-screen pop-up asking if you're OK. If you don't respond, an alarm will sound for the next minute, and if you still don't respond, the watch will call 911. Fall detection has been a big reason at-risk people like the elderly have an Apple Watch, so it's good that Google is finally delivering this feature.

The Apple Watch version, along with car crash detection, had led to some false positives , with the watch dialing 911 when the users weren't hurt. Google says it has worked to stop that, saying, "Worried that doing burpees or hitting the ski slopes will trigger an accidental emergency call? Your Pixel Watch knows the difference between taking a hard fall and performing a vigorous physical activity or even quickly recovering from a small stumble—thanks to our machine learning algorithms and rigorous testing." Google calls out skiing, burpees, jumping, and swimming as activities that could cause false positives, but hopefully it has worked out the bugs through the "rigorous" testing process.

Enlarge / Everything except the earbuds are on sale. (credit: Google)

Black Friday might have come and gone, but Google's Black Friday deals are still trucking. Google reimplemented many of the deals this week, which were the first and/or best discounts we've seen for many of Google's new products. The highlight of the group is definitely the Pixel 6a , but you get decent deals on the Pixel 7 , Pixel Watch , Chromecasts , and Google's smart speakers , too.

The Pixel 6a , normally $449, is still out there for an incredible $299 . Let us remind you this comes with a flagship-class SoC that is every bit as fast as the $900 Pixel 7 Pro. The Pixel 6a is a great deal even at $449 , and honestly cannibalizes the more expensive phones quite a bit, but Google seems more interested in trying to grab as much market share as it can right now. (Google is apparently not even happy with this, and the Pixel 7a rumors move the phone even further into the high-end line!)

If you really want the more expensive Pixels with their bigger, high-refresh-rate displays and newer cameras, you can still get deals on those, too. The 90 Hz, 6.3-inch Pixel 7 , normally $599, can be had for $499 , and the 120 Hz, 6.7-inch Pixel 7 Pro is down to $749 from the normal $899 price. Google's fine print actually says all these Pixel phone deals will be around until Christmas day.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

This week is everyone's favorite shopping holiday: Black Friday. Google's Black Friday deals are already running on the Google Store and Amazon . Many of these represent the first discounts for Google's new hardware announced last month.

First up, we have phones, with Google offering $150 off the Pixel 7 Pro ( Google , Amazon ) and Pixel 6a ( Google , Amazon ), and $100 off the Pixel 7 ( Google , Amazon ). That Pixel 6a deal is a serious head-turner: $150 off the already-good $449 price makes for a $300 device that will meet most people's basic smartphone needs. Remember that the Pixel 6a has a near flagship-class Google Tensor 1 SoC. With Google (and really every other Android SoC vendor) not doing much performance-wise year over year, you'll get nearly the same benchmarks from the Pixel 6a as the normally $900 Pixel 7 Pro, but now for a third of the price. It has a great camera, water resistance, Wi-Fi 6e support, and a fast and clean build of Android with day-one updates. You're not going to wow anyone with a 60 Hz display, but if you just need a basic smartphone, this is a steal for $300.

The Pixel 7 Pro for $150 off is also a great deal. That makes for $750 for a phone with all the fancy extras , like a 120 Hz display and wireless charging.