As someone with smaller wrists, I’m glad that the Pixel Watch started out at 41 mm. Going into the Pixel Watch 3 , I fully expected to be happy with the smaller model’s tiny screen increase due to shrunken bezels, but the 45 mm version is giving me the best kind of doubts. Ideally, using a smartwatch requires significantly less scrolling and tapping compared to phones.
As Google’s Wear OS apps got richer over the last year or so, I’ve found myself interacting with the Pixel Watch 2 much more. The experience has not been particularly ideal, with the Gmail and Tasks Tiles only showing two items being a bit ridiculous. Meanwhile, the bezels are thick enough to feel constraining.
45 mm Pixel Watch 3 vs. Pixel Watch 2 You can see meaningfully more on the 45 mm Pixel Watch 3. Compared to the PW2, it’s 40% more screen and watch faces take full advantage of that.
Active is the flagship face with 5 circular and 4 ring complication slots. When the Adventure face on the Pixel Watch 2 attempted that, it was just too cramped. On the PW3, legibility and glanceability does not suffer whatsoever with that much information.
There are various other new faces that shine on the Pixel Watch 3 thanks to the big screen. Field (left below) shows 4 circular + 4 ring complications and 5-minute markers without cluttering the face. Meanwhile, Track (right) has been updated to let you monitor up to two metrics, while also having space for a third slot.
Tiles get a meaningful boost on bigger scr.