Your new workout partner: Google Pixel Watch 5 | Lab Report

Google just released a whole bunch of new products that is made by Google Event

Four flavors of the Pixel 11 phones, new Pixel earbuds, a Pixel tag to rival Apple's AirTag

and what I'm here to talk about, the Pixel Watch 5. If you were just looking at the Pixel Watch 5, you would probably mistake it for the 4

because there are zero, count them, zero external changes to the watch. And that's probably a good thing

Most reviewers, including the wearable tech experts at PCMag and CNET, enjoyed the design

and it seems that Google said to themselves, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But like the watch 4, it also comes in a 41mm and 45mm option for the size of the watch face

The screen specs are also the same with a 3000 nit peak brightness, the same AMOLED display, the same Corning Gorilla Glass 5, and the same IP68 waterproof rating

There are new finishes and watch bands available, including a very striking hot pink color

As you may have guessed, the real changes to this watch are under the hood

and if you been paying any attention to what Google has been focusing on the past few years Gemini Intelligence integration is a massive selling point for this watch First the processor has got an upgrade to the Snapdragon W5 Generation 2 Accelerated which Google says will boost CPU performance by up to 12 This should mean that

the display will be a little snappier and the app should load faster, but we won't really know until

we test it. Google has also increased the amount of onboard RAM from 2GB to 3GB and increased the

internal storage from 32 gigs to 64, which means you can save more media onto the watch for playback

and load more offline maps. The extra memory that's packed into the watch probably explains

what I think is the biggest tangible change to the Watch 5 compared to the 4, which is the price

Google hiked the price of the 5 by $50, which means the 41mm model starts at $400

Considering the intense competition in the wearable tech market, that could be a deal-breaker

for some of you. On paper, the battery has also been upgraded

but it only went from a 455 mAh battery on the larger model to a 465 mAh And according to Google the new AI features will eat into any battery gains So expect the same 30 to 40 hours of use with the always display Again the real upgrades are

to the AI features. Google's introducing a workout builder function that guides you through strength

training exercises from Google's library. If you have a Google Health premium subscription for $10

a month, you can even take a photo of your environment and equipment like dumbbells or

resistance bands, and Gemini will create a workout for you on the watch based on the photo and other

custom parameters like duration and intensity. Google's also introducing new health monitoring

features on the watch 5 called Health Guardian that keeps track of your vitals and can alert you

if something like your breathing or blood oxygen goes way out of baseline. The watch will also track

your blood pressure and insulin resistance, which might help you identify hypertension or diabetes

As of now, the blood pressure and insulin resistance monitoring has not gotten FDA approval

and will arrive as a software update later on. Google also says that sleep tracking and monitoring

other recovery metrics are 15 more accurate than the four but we can confirm that yet GPS has also improved according to Google despite not having an upgrade to the dual GPS system Google says machine learning has improved GPS accuracy so much that it outperforms the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8

As a longtime Garmin user, I am skeptical of that claim, but it would be pretty remarkable if it does

show not to be accurate. Again, we'll just have to wait and see. Gemini Intelligence will also work

in the background to try and be more helpful. For example, if you have a flight and you arrive at

the airport, the flight information will get pulled up onto your watch display without you

having to do anything. So there are some cool new features and hardware upgrades on the Pixel Watch

5, but a lot of those features that are related to the software, like the improved GPS accuracy

are also coming to the Watch 4 via an update. This plus the price hike might mean it could make more

sense to hang on to your Watch 4 until the future Watch 6, but there are enough tangible things to

make the Pixel Watch 5 pretty tempting