David Pantera did. 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.

Googlers like Pantera have been discovering how the health tracking tools on this fitness smartwatch can help take your 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 then a round on the elliptical – just two of the 40 exercise modes available on the fitness watch – Pantera glances at his stats, then opens the Fitbit app⁵ on his fitness tracker 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.¹ “That has been super helpful to track my progress over time,” he says. 

When Pantera got an early opportunity to try out the Google Pixel Watch, his biggest delight was the ability to pair it with his Pixel Buds Pro³ and go for a workout without needing to take his phone.⁴ He can keep his Google Pixel phone at home and review his stats on the Fitbit app post workout.¹ 

The Google Pixel Watch is a fitness watch engineered from the ground up with workouts in mind. Built with the best of Google and Fitbit – this fitness tracking watch is the ideal exercise partner to help you reach your activity goals, especially when paired with Pixel Buds Pro during your workout³ or your Google Pixel phone to dive deep into health stats². Discover the benefits of the Google Pixel ecosystem now.

Long-time 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 Pixel Watch before it launched, uses it along with the Fitbit app to keep tabs on his Active Zone Minutes, his step count, and the length of his workouts. Google uses precise Location and Motion features to accurately record step count, distance, pace, speed, and location – which means that Lider can rely on the smart health 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 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 Google Pixel Watch keeps tabs on your heart rate through a persistent green light on its back panel. The light reflects off the red blood cells allowing the fitness 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 this health monitor 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 Pixel Watch, says that’s what Google’s machine learning is designed to solve, as it cuts through the noise by recognising unusual patterns. 

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

The Google Pixel Watch can also help track your sleep.¹ 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 synched 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.² 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 understand your overall health and track your fitness goals.