After years of rumors, Google has finally released its first smartwatch. The highly anticipated Google Pixel Watch is here, and I’ve been testing it since soon after its announcement, putting it through its paces and checking out every detail.

The Google Pixel Watch is one of the few Android watches that looks like a classy timepiece.

The Pixel Watch runs on Google’s Wear OS3, and it is compatible with any Android phone running Android 8.0 or later. While its sleek design matches well with the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro phones, you don’t need to have a Pixel phone to take advantage of this watch’s capabilities. Only one feature is exclusive to the Pixel phones, which is using the watch as a remote control for the camera.

However, it isn’t at all compatible with iPhones. That’s not surprising, of course, since the Apple Watch doesn’t work with Android phones. The Pixel Watch stands as Google’s answer to the Apple Watch for Android users, but is it a convincing choice? Let’s dig in and find out.

Price: $350 |Case size: 41 millimeters | Processor: Exynos 911010nm | Display: 450 x 450-pixel OLED, always-on screen, 1,000-nit maximum brightness | Connectivity: GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3, 4G LTE cellular | Storage: 32GB | Battery: 24 hours in normal use | Weight: 1.3 ounces

The Pixel Watch looks familiar. It has a circular face, the same as favored by most non-smart watches. The rounded design makes perfect sense: A clock’s hands move round a circle, after all. The face actually looks more like a traditional watch than Samsung’s round Watch5 and Watch5 Pro, and it stands in contrast to Apple Watch’s rectangular shape.

The bright OLED display looks crisp and sits inside a round casing that’s somehow neat, svelte and full of personality. It doesn’t have the large, flat screen of some smartwatches. Instead, it has a gentle dome on top and a matching one at the back. The one on the back is there to ensure strong contact between the heart monitor sensor and your skin. The watch looks sleek and attractive, but the rounded shape has one downside: You can’t display as much text as you can on a rectangular display like the Apple Watch, which makes it harder to read notifications.

The Pixel Watch’s small size doesn’t help in this regard, either. Some on-screen interactions were more fiddly than I expected, like tapping in your four-digit passcode, for instance. Google pulls off a neat visual trick: Even though the bezels around the display are quite thick—and make for even less screen real estate—the watch rarely shows the bezels thanks to clever, edge-hiding watch face designs. That effect is helped, perhaps, by the domed glass at the front which disguises where display and bezel meet. Sometimes you notice it, but mostly it looks great.

The Pixel Watch has a 41 millimeter case, the same as the smaller Apple Watch Series 8. Apple also makes a smaller Watch (the 40 millimeter Apple Watch SE) and three Watches that are bigger than the Pixel Watch (measuring 44 millimeters, 45 millimeters and 49 millimeters). This puts the Pixel Watch at the smaller end of the spectrum.

Like the Apple Watch, and millions of non-smart timepieces before it, Pixel Watch has a crown centered along the face’s right edge. I used the crown to activate menus and scroll through them with ease as I navigated among the Pixel Watch’s features. I had less luck with the wide, multi-purpose button just above the crown. You can long-press the button to activate voice commands if you don’t want to say “Hey, Google”; or, double-tap the button to open up recent apps. I found this button quite tricky to press, as it sits flush to the watch’s casing, closer to the wrist and the back half of the watch. My fingers never acclimated to the position, even after a week of wearing it.

The only other markings on the casing are a microphone and speaker. The rear of the watch, as is common among smartwatches, has a series of sensors designed to track your heart rate, blood oxygen and ECG. As already mentioned, the back has a domed shape which makes it easier for the sensor to make contact with your wrist.

Google Pixel Watch heart rate sensor on the back.

The final part of the design jigsaw is the band, which appears to seamlessly attach to the watch’s casing. Google has several band styles, and all of them connect in a unique way: You press the lug just to the left of the strap and swipe the strap sideways to remove it. Attach the next strap by performing the process in reverse.

The supplied strap is a made of silicone, similar to the Sport Band on the Apple Watch. It even has a similar pin and tuck mechanism. (Tip: Don’t tighten it too much when you put the pin in place as the tail of the band needs to tuck in, which tightens things further) The strap attached securely and felt good on my wrist.

The watch felt luxurious on my wrist, too, with a smooth, stainless steel finish. Where Apple has three metal finishes (aluminum, stainless steel and titanium), Google has just the one, which helps Google bring the Pixel Watch in at a lower price than the Apple Watch Series 8, which starts at $399. And if you want to compare stainless steel models, then the Apple Watch (which has LTE cellular connectivity in that configuration as standard) costs $699, while the Pixel starts at $350, or $400 with LTE connectivity. (For more perspective, the Pixel Watch’s closest Android rival, the Samsung Galaxy Watch5, starts at $280 for the 40 millimeter model in an aluminum case.)

Like the Apple Watch Series 8 and Apple Watch Ultra, the Pixel Watch has an option to set the display to always-on, instead of waking when you raise your wrist. This feature is handy, and one you may find hard to turn off once you’re used to it. But beware: Keeping the display to always-on noticeably depletes the battery.

Google bought Fitbit in 2019, and the Pixel Watch is the first product to integrate its health and fitness features. With Fitbit baked in, it makes sense that Google includes a six-month subscription to Fitbit Premium so you can get a taste of the full package. It’s easy to put all of your fitness data on the watch face, for instance. And you get the excellent accuracy of Fitbit devices inside the Pixel Watch’s enclosure. While it is good to see Fitbit surface in a Google device, the app looked dated.

The Pixel Watch’s heart rate monitor runs constantly in the background, so you can see your heartbeat with a quick glance. This is very cool, and something the Apple Watch can’t match. On Apple’s timepiece, you need to tap the display to see the latest figure. Accuracy seems near-identical across the Apple Watch and Pixel: When the two were sitting side-by-side on my wrist, the readouts were within one beat per minute.

The gesture-based Pixel Watch interface is straightforward, with swipes from the top, bottom, left and right delivering different results. You can access the apps by pushing in the crown and rotating it to scroll through a list. This is better than on the Apple Watch, where you’re initially faced with a choice of tiny circular app icons to move around or the (much better) list option.

Google Pixel Watch (left) compared with the larger Apple Watch Ultra.

One feature on the Pixel Watch works only with the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones: You can use the watch as a remote camera shutter, adjusting settings and triggering the shutter for your phone’s camera directly from your wrist. I found this a handy alternative to using the camera’s timer function.

The first Apple Watch back in 2015 was often very slow to react. It was infuriating. Sadly, the Pixel Watch has a similar plight, with a slow response blighting the overall experience.

For instance, I tapped the watch face to open the Settings app and experienced a long delay before anything happened—so long that I tapped again. The same thing happened when the app finally opened, and I tapped to select an option.

These delays are annoying and distract from using the watch. Apple solved this problem with software updates on the first Apple Watch, so perhaps over time Google can improve the responsiveness here. For now, though, it’s frustrating. Similarly, I found changing the watch face complex, requiring an unintuitive series of swipes and touches. The watch faces look great when you finally get what you’re after.

While some fitness trackers have battery life that goes on for weeks, smartwatches typically need recharging much more often. The Pixel Watch requires a daily recharge, but I found it could get through about 24 hours with ordinary use, and almost two days with the always-on display turned off.

Although the stated battery life for this and the Samsung Galaxy Watch5 are similar, the Pixel Watch lasted a bit longer in my tests. Additionally, the Pixel Watch lasted longer than the Apple Watch Series 8, and I found its battery strong enough to get you through part of the day even if I forgot to charge it one night. It’s also strong enough to track your sleep through the night (which takes about 20% of the battery while you slumber).

Google Pixel Watch and strap.

The Google Pixel Watch is an attractive device which looks great and is comfortable to wear. Its lack of responsiveness and sluggish performance can occasionally grate, and certainly makes you feel you’re using a first-gen device (which is the case here). But the Pixel Watch’s 24/7 heart rate readouts are a standout feature, and its Fitbit integration, though not perfect, works very well. Battery life takes a knock when the always-on screen is on, but even so, the watch has enough juice to get you through a full day with ease.

The Google Pixel Watch is a better value than the Apple Watch, but a better comparison is with Android-friendly smartwatches like the Samsung Galaxy Watch5. The Watch5 costs less and includes a blood pressure monitor (not found on Pixel Watch), and it has an aluminum casing vs. Pixel Watch’s stainless steel. Looking at those two models, battery life is around the same for both, but Google’s smartwatch adds well-managed Fitbit compatibility.

While Google lacks the slickness of Apple’s timepiece, the Pixel Watch is arguably the best-looking smartwatch, certainly more attractive than the Samsung alternatives. Overall, for Android users, it is far ahead of the competition there.