As someone who sports some of the best smartwatches primarily for health metrics, the lackluster improvement in battery life in the category has long been a pet peeve of mine. Those health metrics will only be as good as the amount of data I have. If the watch says 24 hours on the box, it should go 24 hours. But as we all know, that’s rarely the case for most users, let alone those like me who push their smartwatches with GPS-based workouts and a healthy amount of notifications.
It’s a problem that particularly plagues Wear OS wearables like the Pixel Watch, though the Apple Watch isn’t entirely immune to it either. In fact, I’d been eyeing the Pixel Watch ever since it was announced but opted for the Apple Watch Ultra primarily for the super-sized battery. Regardless, range anxiety on smartwatches is real, and it makes me long for my old Fitbit that could easily go a week or more on a charge.