Exclusive: Google Pixel Watch 4 Teardown Shows Easy Repairability

Google’s first Pixel Watch was fashionably late to the wrist computing party, arriving in 2022 when the market was already quite mature. And while the smartwatch has since cemented its place among top-tier wearables, it has one red flag: It isn’t repairable.

For the past three generations, Google has been replacing broken Pixel Watches instead of repairing them. “Watches and wearables are still fairly nascent," a spokesperson explained at a 2024 Climate Week panel when asked why the watch wasn't repairable. Meanwhile, Apple recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Apple Watch.

The good news is that repairability is one of the top improvements Google has made to the new Pixel Watch 4, which was announced today alongside the Pixel 10 phones. The Pixel Watch 4 retains its domed glass design but can be disassembled with a screwdriver, and it uses largely the same-size screws throughout its construction. A customer won't void the one-year warranty if the watch is disassembled for screen or battery repairs, and Google will sell replacements for those components at iFixit.

There are several other small improvements to the smartwatch, like longer battery life and a new gesture that lets you talk to Gemini by raising your wrist. The Pixel Watch 4 starts at $349 for the 41-mm Bluetooth model, while the 45-mm variant is $399. (The versions with LTE connectivity cost $100 more, respectively.) You can preorder it now, but unlike the Pixel 10 phones that are available this month, the watch won't be available until October 9.

Watch Repair

Google invited me to its Mountain View, California, offices to take an exclusive look at a teardown of the Pixel Watch 4. (Google paid for a portion of my travel expenses to see its research facility.) Junyong Park, an industrial designer who worked on the device, began disassembling it, manicured nails and all. Park says it was a “tremendous collaboration” between the design and engineering teams. “We're pretty proud of how this turned out.”

There are two T2 screws located under the watch band pocket—unscrew those, and you can access the internals of the Pixel Watch 4, no need to fuss with any adhesives. At this stage, the Biosensor Hub, which houses the heart rate monitor and other sensors on the back of the watch, is still connected. Google intentionally made it so that this connector doesn't need to be removed for battery replacements. Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, which has partnered with Google to sell the spare parts for the watch, says these kinds of connectors can be fragile, so it's always better if the device's design lets you replace components without having to unplug them.

To remove the battery, remove the haptic motor with the T2 head on a Torx screwdriver. Two more screws hold the battery, but once they're out, you can disconnect the battery from the board and be done. You'll notice that Google used T2 screws throughout that entire process. This is intentional, as you can use the same Torx screwdriver for battery replacements, reducing the number of tools needed for repairs. (A Torx screwdriver is commonly used in electronics repairs and is included in the repair kits sold by iFixit.)

To replace the display, you'll need to unplug the Biosensor Hub. Then disconnect the battery brackets, unplug the display connector, and unscrew the four screws that hold the glass to the housing. (These are a mix of T2 and T5 screws.) Overall, it looked fairly simple, and it took Park less than 13 minutes to remove these components while talking about the process and answering my questions.

Francis Hoe, senior product manager for the Pixel Watch, says the Pixel Watch 4 should still maintain the IP68 water-resistance rating after servicing. A silicone O-ring helps create a seal when the two halves of the watch are placed back together. Hoe, who has been the product lead since the Pixel Watch 2, says Google always wanted to make its smartwatch repairable. “It has taken us a little bit longer to get to this place—it required a lot of change internally in the product; those types of big architecture changes take multiple years.”

The Fix Is In

The design changes in the Pixel Watch 4 are a big step forward for smartwatch repairability. While you can replace some components in an Apple Watch or Galaxy Watch, they're not as easy to repair yourself. Apple's Self Service Repair program doesn't cover the Apple Watch, and on iFixit's repairability rankings, the Apple Watch Series 10 scored a paltry 3/10. (The Pixel Watch 3 earned a 4/10.) Samsung tells WIRED that user repair is supported on its Galaxy Watches (the Galaxy Watch Ultra earned a respectable 7/10 on iFixit), but this doesn't include the battery due to safety reasons.

“Smartwatches ought to be a mature product at this point,” Wiens says, though he notes that challenges around serviceability are harder on a smartwatch compared to a smartphone due to its smaller size. Repairability “should be possible; it's just a matter of will,” Wiens says. “It's going to be more challenging. It's going to be easier and lower cost to make it less repairable.”

That echoes what Anna-Katrina Shedletsky says. Now the CEO of Instrumental, Shedletsky spent six years at Apple and was one of the product design leads on the original Apple Watch. She says the priority at the time of the Apple Watch's debut was to design something people would actually want to wear, not repairability. Other concerns took priority too, like water resistance and figuring out the intricacies of where to place the Wi-Fi antenna on the metal frame of the watch.

“I think we did a pretty good job—it's much harder to make than a phone, but it had much lower return rates," Shedletsky says. “It's really hard to get all the stuff in there that you need; most of the stuff that you'd require for repairability requires extra space.” She also noted that the square shape of the Apple Watch made it more challenging to seal. “There's a reason most watches are round, because you can make a better seal that way. You couldn't use an O-ring on a design like this; it wouldn't work.”

Timely Update

What else is new with the Pixel Watch 4? While it may win points for repairability, Google's latest wearable isn't earning any plaudits for environmental impact: For the third time in four generations, Google is changing the charger. The smartwatch now charges on its side, allowing it to rest sideways, like a clock. It's not just for show—charging is faster, too, going from 0 to 50 percent in 15 minutes. There aren't many third-party chargers for the Pixel Watch at the moment, but Google says we'll see more options with the latest generation.

The design is largely the same, except the Actua 360 display is domed for the first time, resting under the domed glass. It slightly improves the visibility of the watch face at various angles, and it looks spectacular. The bezels are 15 percent slimmer, meaning you get 10 percent more screen, and that screen can hit 3,000 nits of brightness, making it 50 percent brighter than the Pixel Watch 3. The watch's haptic engine is stronger, so you can feel more precisely when there's a notification or alert, and the clearer custom speaker should make it easier to hear answers from the Gemini voice assistant.

Speaking of, one of the new capabilities on the watch is a gesture to activate Gemini. Just raise your wrist, and Gemini will wake up and listen, eliminating the need to say a hotword or press a button. The company had to train the algorithms to differentiate between a wrist raise to check the time and a wrist raise to speak to Gemini. (There are settings to turn off this feature or adjust the sensitivity.)

The Pixel Watch 4 also has a redesigned smart reply system, utilizing a new on-device Gemini small language model optimized for the smartwatch. These smart replies aren't personalized to you, but they'll show up more consistently as reply options when you receive a message. Google says they generate 80 percent of the time, whereas the previous quick replies only showed up 20 percent of the time.

You'll see a performance boost thanks to the new dual-chip architecture—Qualcomm's Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 paired with a machine-learning microprocessor—delivering more processing at half the power. That also means 25 percent longer battery life, bumping Google's claim up to 40 hours of run time for the 45-mm watch and 30 hours for the 41-mm model.

Google says the Pixel Watch 4 is the first smartwatch with SOS satellite communications, allowing you to connect to emergency services directly via the watch instead of a phone. Several smartphones have this capability, including Pixel phones, but this may prove useful for folks who tend to leave the phone at home when going on a run.

As for health features, Google focused on upgrading sleep tracking this year. It says the watch is more accurate at classifying your complete sleep cycle, precisely detecting when your body is in REM, light, or deep sleep. A new skin temperature sensor can detect when your temps veer out of your usual range, which could help you identify if you're under the weather. It maintains many of the same features as before, including Cardio Load, Loss of Pulse Detection (which became available in the US earlier this year on the Pixel Watch 3), Fall Detection, and Car Crash Detection.

Fitness-wise, you can stream cycling workouts to your phone, turning it into a bike computer of sorts, and the new dual-frequency GPS radio allows for more accurate route tracking. There's a new “AI-powered activity recognition system,” meaning if you forgot to track a workout, the watch will still track your activity in the background and give you credit for it—it classifies the activity and will send a summary afterward with your cardio load, calories burned, and other metrics.

In October, Google will introduce a redesigned Fitbit smartphone app with a new AI Health Coach, powered by Gemini. Google says you'll be able to “ask virtually any health and fitness question,” and this is available for older Pixel Watches and Fitbit devices. It'll launch as a preview—sort of like a beta—and is only available in the US at the start for Fitbit Premium subscribers. Google says this health and fitness coach is built with “leading industry experts and through scientific research,” though keep in mind it was just over a year ago that Google’s AI Overviews recommended adding glue to pizza sauce.