OPINION: With the recent strides that Wear OS has taken in devices like the OnePlus Watch 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, the gap between Google’s wearable OS and Apple’s watchOS has been narrowing. What I didn’t expect from the Pixel Watch 3 was for Google to take a turn and go after Garmin instead.
This isn’t to say that Google has completely taken its eye off the Apple Watch – far from it. With the ability to stream the feed of your Nest cameras and doorbells directly on the watch, as well as utilise Google Maps offline, Google has certainly tightened up the allure of its ecosystem on the Pixel Watch 3.
What I’m specifically referring to are the advancements that Google has made in the Pixel Watch 3’s fitness tracking, and how they’re almost all aimed at the running community which has long been tied with Garmin.
For example, you can now create running routines on the Watch 3 itself, with specific warm up and cooldown times, as well as revamped media controls to boot, making the experience of running with a Pixel Watch 3 feel far more seamless than on the Pixel Watch 2.
There’s also a greater emphasis on recovery via the new Fitbit Morning Brief which can let you know right away exactly how well you’ve rested and whether your body is ready to take on a heavy workout, or if something lighter might be a better idea.
This is before mentioning the additional benefits coming to Google’s Fitbit Premium service. The biggest highlight here is the use of Google AI to analyse your previous workouts and make suggestions for the best ones to tackle on any given day, further optimising your routine.
Deja vu for Garmin?
It amounts to one incredibly tempting package, but to any Garmin user, it all sounds eerily familiar. Creating your own training plan has long been part of Garmin’s bread and butter, and in concept at least, the Fitbit Morning Brief seems identical to Garmin’s Morning Report. Speaking from my own experience, these are the features that have kept me going back and forth between Garmin’s wearables and the Apple Watch SE 2 (unfortunately Apple has yet to make inroads here, but there is a Training Load feature on the horizon in watchOS 11).
The only area where Google has beaten Garmin to the punch is with the use of AI. Whoop has already shown how AI can offer impressive insights in the world of fitness through its AI Coach, and so the ball is now firmly in Garmin’s court to try and catch up with the competition in this regard.
Alternatively, if Garmin doesn’t want to go down the route of AI then in order to avoid being left behind by the competition, it needs to expand its smart capabilities, and fast. For instance, Garmin Pay has been left to gather dust while both the Google and Apple wallets have gone from strength to strength, and the list of banks that Garmin has partnered with is so small that I simply never use it.
There’s also very little in the way of third-party app integration. Beyond support for the likes of Spotify and YouTube Music, there’s nothing official in the way of smart home control, wellness apps like Calm or even everyday apps like Trainline. Even compatibility with Apple Find My would go a long way, and while some of these requests might be fairly difficult to achieve, they are going to be the sticking point going forward as smartwatches ever encroach into the world of fitness.
While Garmin certainly has the lead on the Pixel Watch 3 where battery life is concerned, not to mention the fact that its watches work with both iOS and Android, Google has definitely picked up some ground here. When you factor in its smart capabilities and the way in which the Pixel Watch 3 complements Google’s ecosystem, it’s easy to see it becoming a more tempting buy for some, particularly Pixel users.
To find out more about how Google’s new wearable stacks up against Apple, take a glance at our write-up for the Pixel Watch 3 vs Apple Watch Series 9. Similarly, we’ve also compared the intergenerational changes in the Pixel Watch 3 vs Pixel Watch 2.
