Newsletter
Google’s Pixel Watch 2 has officially been announced alongside announcements for the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, and for the launch of Android 14. The watch comes with a range of improvements, not the least of which is longer battery life. As improvements go, this is one of the most important. Because you want the watch to last throughout the day at the very least. The Pixel Watch 2 will do just that as Google claims it can stay operable for up to 24 hours on a single charge.
While that’s not earth shattering by any means, it’s better than last year’s Pixel Watch. And that’s a step in the right direction. Worth noting is that this is based on having the always-on-display enabled. Which makes it a little more impressive that it can stay powered on for an entire day. Because the display is constantly lighting up anytime you raise your wrist to look at it.
Outside of the longer battery life the Pixel Watch 2 has a handful of other improvements. Google has upgraded the sensors on the underside of the watch case to make it even more adept at tracking your heart rate. Using a multi-path heart rate sensor, the watch is capable of swapping between single and multi-path modes. All depending on how hard your workout is.
The Pixel Watch 2 uses an all-new quad core CPU for buttery smooth performance
Another big upgrade for this year’s watch is the upgrade to performance. Google says it’s now “buttery smooth” thanks to the all-new quad-core CPU being used inside the watch. Specifically Google is using the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 5100 with a Cortex M33 co-processor. The watch also comes running on Wear OS 4 out of the box which also helps with both the battery life improvements and better performance. As the software is lighter and makes more efficient use of the battery. Similar to how we saw those incremental improvements with the jump to Wear OS 3.
This performance boost should help with other newly added features like the automatic workout tracking. For users of the original Pixel Watch this should be a welcomed change. Since the original was missing it. The Pixel Watch 2 will be available from October 12 in two versions. The Wi-Fi model can be picked up for $349, and the LTE model can be picked up for $399.