Google Pixel Watch 4 Review: Easily the Best Android Smartwatch of 2025

Try one of these fitness trackers to help you meet your exercise goals. In this weekly column, Wearables Editor Michael Hicks discusses the world of running watches, fitness apps, and training trends, in his quest to get faster and more fit. The easiest way to think of Google Fit is to imagine its Apple equivalent – Apple Health. If you manually start an exercise, the data should be reasonably accurate.

Linking apps and devices to Google Fit

I’m still waiting for Google to use its Maps advantage for fitness. If Google let you create workout routes in Maps — with the option to use street view to make sure it’s safe for pedestrians or cyclists — and then upload them to your watch, that’d be fantastic. Someone would have to bribe me to count my steps during a half-marathon, but I found it interesting that my final step count on my Garmin (23,041) was significantly higher than on my Pixel Watch (21,852). For my 19-mile run, the gap was smaller (34,260 vs. 33,960), with Garmin still estimating more. Again, though, the final result was 5.00 vs. 5.01 miles (16m), and you’d be surprised how many dual-band GPS watches stray slightly off track. The Pixel Watch 3 tended to be significantly worse, particularly for hikes.

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  • It works with apps like Sleep as Android to track how long and how well you’re sleeping.
  • Breathing exercise apps like Breethe and Prana Breath ensure you inhale positivity and exhale stress, while Google Fit logs in your relaxation time.
  • It has a temperature, blood oxygen and ECG sensor and comes in 41 and 45mm sizes.
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  • This ensures all the key data you wish to see from individual apps can be pulled in and viewable in one place.
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  • Let’s say you use a Nest Hub for sleep tracking, a Wear OS watch for general day-to-day activity, and a Polar watch for tracking your exercises.
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  • Let’s explore what makes it stand out and if it’s right for you.
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Whether you’re using a Fitbit, Apple Watch, Xiaomi Mi Band, or any other compatible device, Google Fit can act as a central hub to track your activity, monitor your health, and stay on top of your fitness goals. With seamless integration across various devices and apps, it ensures that no matter what tracker you use, your data is always accessible and up-to-date. So, whether you’re just getting started or you’re a seasoned fitness enthusiast, syncing your tracker with Google Fit helps you make the most of your fitness journey. There are dozens of dedicated fitness tracker options to choose from that come in the form of wristbands, shoe insoles with activity-tracking features and smartwatches. We’ve rounded up our favorite trackers based on price, form and function.

Move Minutes and Heart Points

To see the distance that you’ve gone, is madmuscles reliable or how many calories you’ve burned, fill in your height, weight, age and gender. You can track your walks, runs, bike rides and more on Google Fit. Check how many steps you took and see how long you rode your bike, played football or went skiing. Google worked with the American Heart Association (AHA) to create two goals based on the Heart Association’s activity recommendations. You’ll need a mobile device and a Google account to get started with Fit. It’s really great to see Google has finally caught up to Apple and Samsung this year.

A sleep- and temperature-tracking wearable

It’s best used alongside a fitness tracker but you don’t actually need one for it to work. Overall, Google Fit is a solid start to what could one day be a powerful fitness application. For now, it’s simple, clean, and compatible with many other fitness and health apps. Additionally, Move Minutes and Heart Points are genuinely useful metrics to help people get and stay healthy.

Exercise Trackers

The battery can last as long as 10 days, so you won’t need to charge it as often as other Fitbits. But beware that the screen is small, so it can be more difficult to read than other trackers and smartwatches. Whether you’re walking, running, or cycling, Google Fit uses your phone or smartwatch sensors to track your movements. It keeps tabs on steps, distance, and calories burned so you can see how active you’ve been.

Not all of these are by definition fitness apps, but I wanted to look outside the box to find you more interesting options. This will take you to a summary of your daily, weekly, and monthly views of your Heart Points and steps data. If you scroll through your history and want more details on your activity stats for a specific day, click on the day to find all your recorded activities. From there, you can click on an individual activity to see more minute details like distance, steps, calories, and pace metrics. Google Fit can’t track your sleep data by itself, but it can keep track of the quality of your sleep by working with apps like Sleep as Android and Calm. Like those apps, Google Fit can chart your sleep data as well, so it’s viewable in the same place you’d find the rest of your fitness stats.

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Best value fitness tracker

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Google hasn’t shared its methods, but I’d guess it’s similar to Garmin’s SatIQ mode, pinpointing with L5 signals when the L1 signal is disrupted. Before beginning, ensure your device is linked via Bluetooth to your phone. If something you’ve tracked isn’t appearing in Google Fit, double-check that you’ve allowed the app permission to track. Heart Points are essentially a way of grading your effort levels in a given day, with more intense sessions of exercise granted more points – and vice versa. But getting the most out of Google Fit requires a fair bit of permission granting – and there are a few tricks you’ll want to know if you discover it’s not pulling in data correctly.

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Google Fit: Activity Tracking

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google fitness app android

Let’s say you use a Nest Hub for sleep tracking, a Wear OS watch for general day-to-day activity, and a Polar watch for tracking your exercises. You can connect all of your devices to Google Fit and see your data in one place. If you’re more familiar with Apple’s ecosystem, think of Google Fit as Google’s version of Apple Health. It also links with several powerful fitness trackers and smartwatches. There are benefits and downsides to Google’s app, all of which we’ll explore in our comprehensive Google Fit guide. For example, though the multi-path optical heart sensor is the same one in the Pixel Watch 3, new AI and software algorithms improve its accuracy.

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Is Google Fit not tracking correctly?

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There is a monthly subscription to use Strong, but it’s a lot cheaper than the aforementioned planning apps. To get your Fit info without the need to open the app, add a widget to your Home screen.

If you use a fitness tracker that automatically guesses your activity but records it incorrectly, you can change your data in Google Fit as well. Activities can also be color coded, which can make tracking and adjusting your data a bit quicker. IPhone users… just look away because the Pixel Watch 4 doesn’t work with Apple’s glass slabs.

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View which apps and services are linked

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It works with apps like Sleep as Android to track how long and how well you’re sleeping. Google enhanced its step count algorithm for walking with a stroller or trekking poles in March, then reverted it in April because some users had inaccurate results. After that whiplash, we’re back where we started, and I’ve typically found that Fitbit step counts tend to fall slightly short of my actual numbers. This is performed during the initial setup of Google Fit, but, of course, you’ll want to know how to link any new apps or trackers that you add along mad muscles review the way – and manage existing connections. Google Fit is definitely useable if you only have a smartphone to record data, but the experience is amplified greatly by adding permissions for apps and other devices.

Synced with Google Fit, they ensure mothers-to-be and new mothers stay fit https://madmuscles-review.com/workout-apps/strava-app-review/ and informed. Start your yoga journey here with step-by-step guidance on foundational poses and sequences. Uses psychoacoustic principles to help you fall asleep faster and wake up recharged. A suite of calming sounds, meditations, and bedtime stories to promote quality sleep.

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