David Pantera left his phone at home.² He and other Google employees (often referred to as “Googlers”) got an early opportunity to try out the fitness features on the Google Pixel Watch before its launch in October 2022.

The watch was engineered from the ground up with fitness in mind. Built with the best of Google and Fitbit, it’s the ideal exercise partner, especially when paired with Pixel Buds Pro 2 during a workout^3,4 or your Pixel phone to dive deep into health stats.³ Googlers like Pantera have been discovering how these health tracking tools can help take workouts to the next level.

“I can tap or swipe my Pixel Buds to navigate my songs and volume, and the Pixel Watch is there to play the music and to track my workout stats, but neither is getting in the way of my performance or focus,” he says. After a strength-training workout and a round on the elliptical – just two of the 40 exercise modes available on the Pixel Watch – Pantera glances at his stats. Then he opens the Fitbit app on his Pixel phone for more details, including a graph of heart rate zones and how much time he spent in each, along with calories burned during his workout.³ “That has been super helpful to track my progress over time,” he says. 

When Pantera got an early opportunity to try out the Pixel Watch, his biggest delight was the ability to pair it with his Pixel Buds Pro 2 and go for a workout without needing to take his phone.^2,5

Longtime Fitbit users are familiar with Active Zone Minutes, which give you credit for heart-pumping activity. Brett Lider, another Googler who got an early chance to test the Pixel Watch before it launched, uses the watch along with the Fitbit app to keep tabs on his Active Zone Minutes, his step count, and the length of his workouts.³ Google uses GPS and motion sensing to accurately record step count, distance, pace, speed, and location – meaning Lider can rely on Pixel Watch to monitor his speed and compare it to previous workouts. “It helps me understand whether I’ve been faster or slower on the route,” he says.

Googler Louis Gray put the Pixel Watch to the test on a 100,000-step trek around the Bay Area in a single day – a repeat of a similar journey he went on in 2014. “I wanted to see how the 100,000 steps would show on the round display of the Pixel Watch,” says Gray.

He was also watching his heart rate monitor closely, to see how often it climbed to 120 beats per minute – the magical “fat burn” zone.⁶ He joked to himself: “If I walk hard enough, I can convince myself to eat just about anything I like.”

Whether you’re walking 49 miles like Gray or taking a short stroll around the block, your heart rate is helping to inform many of the metrics that matter in a workout. The Pixel Watch measures your heart rate through a persistent green light on its back panel. The light reflects off red blood cells, allowing the watch to pick up your pulse. Using on-device deep learning, the Pixel Watch takes the sensor inputs to determine your heart rate. This feeds into Active Zone Minutes, which is one of the ways the Pixel Watch helps you know how much fat you’re burning and whether you’re getting enough exercise (or if you need a rest).

DeCarlos Love, product management leader for the Pixel Watch, says that’s what Google’s machine learning is designed to solve, as it cuts through the noise by recognizing unusual patterns. 

“Machine learning is something Google does really well,” he says.

The Pixel Watch can also help track your sleep.³ As you settle in for the night, it evaluates your sleep quality by considering whether your heart rate is high or low and how much it changes. This information is available on the watch, but it’s also synced with the Fitbit app on your phone so you can see more details about how much sleep took place in light, deep, and REM stages, plus your patterns of sleep over time.¹ Pantera plans to use his Pixel Watch to find out whether his sleep changes depending on the day of the week and what he’s done that day. “I’m curious to learn that about myself,” he says.

And you can learn lots about yourself. The Google Pixel Watch combines the experience of Fitbit with the intelligence of Google, making it easy to see your Sleep Profile, understand your overall health, and track your fitness goals.