It looks like the new Google's Pixel 4 watch comes with yet another incompatible change in charging technology. This is a ridiculous situation. The original Pixel Watch used one type of wireless charging. Then the Pixel Watch 2 & 3 removed wireless charging and swapped to a different charging mechanism. And now the 4 has changed again. So three different charging cables in under three years.…
The website claims 280mAh. That’s a smaller than the newest Pixel watches - but then it is only about 10% of the cost of those models.
Agreed! But that rather depends on what you want to use it for. This model is charge only. But it could be useful to use it as a USB drive to store music, or to get health data off it. The main advantage for my personal use-case is being able to charge while wearing it.
Yes! This does have always-on heart rate monitoring and step count. The screen is only on when you glance at it or tap the button.
Agreed! But as the Pixel watch has gone through three different charging standards, all of which are incompatible with other watches, we don’t seem to be any closer to solving that problem with wireless.
That’s a personal preference. My Pixel watch stand is fiddly to use - the magnets don’t always align. And the puck charger is pretty lightweight and moves around easily. By contrast, my lightweight USB-C cables don’t move my watch when it is charging directly.
I agree! But sometimes it is nice to experiment with things to see what works. And I’m very happy that this normal-sized watch is able to charge with the same cable I use for my toothbrush, eBook, headphones, fan, and phone.
Hold on, so now you want to use USB C for data transfer? Which means you want to what? add more storage to the watch? That sure seems like a solution looking for a problem you’re only floating as a result of choosing USB as the charge port, which we probably shouldn’t do.
And that’s not just much less battery than on the Pixel at 420mAh, it’s even smaller than the CMF Watch 2, which reports 305mAh and is only seventy bucks (and if anything seems smaller than all of your examples). So yes, there is an impact on battery. And no, that’s not acceptable. Because again, ALL smartwatches need more battery than they currently have.
The point of the always on HR monitoring and screen isn’t that they exist, it’s that they are a massive battery drain. A smartwatch where you turn those off will last several times more than the same watch with them on, particularly on entry-level devices like ones you point at. And you would ideally wnat those on in a perfect smartwatch while still getting multi-day battery life. Right now we just don’t have that because you can’t work your way around physics.
Now, for an experiment? Sure, go nuts. Put a solar panel in there. A hand crank. Who cares, weird hardware is weird and weird is fun.
But to solve the problem with the ever-changing charger standards from the mainstream manufacturers weird won’t cut it. You need a solution that fits all cases with near-optimal performance. USB is just not it for this form factor, and if anything focusing on it distracts from the very real need to come to a proper standard in this space, which I find somewhat annoying.
Sure, why not? My headphones have a built-in MP3 player which I can load up with 32GB of music. Flash memory is tiny and cheap - why shouldn’t my watch have my music collection on it? Is grabbing a CSV of my data via USB easier than trying to send it via BT? Might be. Let’s find out.
For you, maybe. This £16 one has lasted nearly 5 days of doing continual heart monitoring and is still on 40% battery. Even better, I don’t need to take it off if I want to charge it. Weekly charging is better than my phone or laptop.
I slightly disagree with you about the screen needing to be always on. I’m not always looking at my watch, so it might as well save battery where it can. I don’t leave my laptop screen on when I walk away from it, and that has a much bigger battery.
On that we can agree! This is a fun experiment.
I disagree. I think it is OK to have some choice in the market. Some people will prefer magnetic wireless, some wired, some plutonium batteries.
Like, mate, I don’t have the power to enact anything. I’m just one guy blogging. I’m not involved in the design, manufacture, or standardisation of anything watch related. I don’t understand why you’re getting annoyed by me talking about it though.
Flash memory is tiny, but it’s not replacing anything, it’s being added, which is a problem for cost and size. If you were going to take BT out then… sure, but that’s not what’s happening here.
Now, the conversation is different if you reframe it as “I just like this quirky dirt cheap watch with a USB port on it”. At that point I have nothing to say other than… sure, why not.
What I don’t like is the notion that USB C is either a better alternative or a candidate for standardization, which is how the post came across to me.
Oh, and I disagree about the always on screen, too. In all honestly, the two things that make smartwatches still less polished than traditional watches is a) battery life, and b) the fact that there is at best a second of lag when you try to check the time and at worst you need to shake your wrist to try to get your watch to realize it’s being looked at so it decides to wake up.
There’s no question that having a display of the time on at all times is better. It’s just not practical with the energy costs and battery storage. At one point I bought that Garmin watch that has a standard old digital watch screen on top of the modern display (speaking of weird). It was a neat idea, but it turns out that the battery life for it on normal use wasn’t much better than other watches and the dumb thing still had a backlight it turned on via motion detection, so it was just as laggy as a normal smartwatch.
I’d take a better iteration on that tech over a USB C charger any day, if we’re doing weird.
In which case, you might like the eInk screen on the Watchy. I reviewed it at https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/06/review-watchy-an-eink-watch-full-of-interesting-compromises/
Screen is always on but eInk gives it great battery life. Although the rest of the watch is even more experimental than the USB-C one 😆
Hah. That’s the kind of weird I can get behind, but I definitely wouldn’t want it to be the default.
Also I’m not sure how I feel about the possibility of the watch dying and it getting stuck on giving you the wrong time. I guess it’s how old analogue watches worked, but there’s something to knowing when your watch is dead.