At an event today, Google unveiled its Google Pixel Watch alongside the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones. The company said that it’s a premium device and a natural extension to the Pixel family. Pre-orders are open now, with deliveries starting on October 13.
When you go to buy the Google Pixel Watch, you’ll have a choice between the Bluetooth/Wi-Fi model, which costs $349, or the 4G LTE model, which costs $399. When you pick either edition up, you’ll receive six months of Fitbit Premium and three months of YouTube Music Premium for free. There are also accessory bands that you can pick up for between $49 and $199.
To make getting new bands on your watch easier, Google has adapted a similar mechanism to how camera lenses attach to a camera body, to the watch. This makes it easy to change the look of the watch from a range of 20 available bands. In addition to the bands, Google currently offers 19 customizable watch faces where you can change the colours, layout, and background picture.
The watch features 32 GB of on-device storage, so you can install apps from the Google Play Store including Adidas Running, Calm, Spotify, MyFitnessPal, and more. One of the cool things about this watch is Fast Pair which lets you quickly pair your Pixel devices, you can use this feature to make a call on your watch and hand it over to your phone at any time, you can even use connected Pixel Buds for better call quality. For those who don’t want to keep getting their phone out, you can control music with the watch and view turn-by-turn directions when you’re on the move.
On the health-front, the Google Pixel Watch includes Emergency SOS to alert first responders or trusted contacts that you’ve been involved in an emergency. Next year, Google will roll out fall detection, so you can automatically inform emergency services if you experience a hard fall. If you become unresponsive, the feature can auto-dial.
With Fitbit integration you get all the fitness features you’ve come to expect from that services such as exercise modes, heart rate monitoring and more. There’s also support for Atrial Fibrillation detection and sleep monitoring. By upgrading to Fitbit Premium, you get even more features that provide deeper insights.
While the device works best with Pixel devices, you can pair the Google Pixel Watch with any phone running Android 8.0+. To find out more, just head to the Google Store.