Welcome to the BirdCast, the flagship podcast of the Google Pixelbook, my maybe favorite computer of all time that is now long gone and Google refuses to keep making new ones. We're not going to talk at all about the Pixelbook on this episode, but I miss it dearly, and I just, Pixelbook, if you're out there, just know that I loved you. Anyway, I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the podcast, we're going to do something a little new. We have a bunch of Google reviews over the last few days and really the last couple of months, and we've seen a theme among the Google reviews, which is that they're all very good. Google made some good gadgets. So we're going to talk about Google's good gadgets, and then...
We're going to play a little bit of a new game about them and see if we can figure out which of Google's good new gadgets is the best of Google's good new gadgets. It's going to be a good time. All that is coming up in just a second. But first, I just realized I have three pairs of headphones connected to my computer right now, and I need to go disconnect those before something horrible happens. This is The First Cast. We'll be right back.
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Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. All right, we're back. Let's talk Google. Allison Johnson's here. Hi, Allison. Hello. V song and many cats. Hello. Hello. V for the folks on YouTube.
Teach us about the cats. Who are the cats? This is Petey. He is the younger baby cat, and he loves to disrupt my work. That's why I bought a cat bed that attaches to my desk so he can feel like he's part of my day while staying out of the way. And then back here, we have my big boy, Pablo, who is currently taking a nap. This is the dream. This is the life. All right. I have brought you guys here because I want to try a new thing that I've been wanting to do for a while. But first, all three of us reviewed Google products this week. And I just want to quickly breeze through them because they all have in common that they're all very good. And they're all very good.
in kind of the same way, which I think is really fun and really interesting. So, Alison, let's start with you. You reviewed the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, the worst named phone in phones, and really liked it. I would say for like the one big specific reason, you really liked it, right? Yeah. You can kind of boil down the changes to two major things. One is the new Hinge, which is hard to tell from the outside, but you can appreciate it in certain ways. And they added...
Qi 2 support with the magnets and everything. So you have like MagSafe, which I loved. Yeah, but the main update here is that this is the first folding phone with an IP68 rating, meaning it is fully dust resistant. This has not existed on any folding phone in the past. And it's important for a folding phone because dust getting into the hinge, it can move under the screen and then the screen is toast. It's ugly. And it's been kind of a thing that prohibits me from, or I don't feel good recommending these phones to people. They're $2,000. A single grain of dust can bring it down.
But I took Google at its word. I brought the phone to the beach, like air quotes. We have a beach in Seattle. It's man-made. But there's plenty of sand. And I set the thing down to take a photo of it on the sand, thinking it would just kind of like gracefully sit on top of the sand, you know, propped up against a log and all this. Yeah, V is making the face for anyone not watching this. V is making the face that I feel in my bones right now, which is this is true.
psychopath behavior. It was not. That's not how it works. Yeah. Let me just put this new gadget down on the sand. It'll probably be fine. It's like the last words a reviewer ever says. Yeah. I had it unfolded, of course, because you want to do that. Set it down on the sand. Sank immediately, like half an inch down. That's how sand works. Exactly. Yeah. Which all came back to me as I watched the sand work its way. You know how it's like immediately everywhere. It was around the corners of the screen. It was up in the hinge. It was in the back of the hinge. I was like, well, I'm committed to this. And I just took my photos.
I picked it up and I was like opening and closing it. There was a crunching sound coming from there. It was crunching. And I was like, oh, God. And then I was like, why not then set it next to the water and get a picture of the phone with the waves gently like, you know, coming ashore and not touching the phone. So I did. I set it down next to like a seashell and a little piece of seaweed. And I was like, I'll just be able to grab it out of the way if a wave comes. That's not how it works.
Wave came and got about halfway over the unfolded folding phone. And I snatched it up and I was like, I have to call Google now and tell them their phone is busted. This is it. I killed it. But it's fine. I did take it. I tried it off. I got any of the sand I could see out of it. When I got home, I used some of the compressed air to get rid of the rest of the sand. And it was fine after that. And it's still going. Isn't it the best feeling in the world when you just pick it up?
And you, like, touch the screen and you, like, you jiggle some stuff around to see if it's all working. Oh, it's fine. My phone is fine. That is, like, the relief that comes at that moment is so spectacular. I cannot even describe. Yes, I felt that. I felt $1,800 worth of that. Well, I'm thrilled for you. I also like imagining the call to Google where you're like, hi, so I buried your phone in the sand and then I essentially threw it in the ocean. And now it's broken. I'm so sorry. Oops, sorry, guys. It turns out you're not supposed to do that. I did it for journalism. You know, I did it for the blog. But, you know, I survived.
Were you wearing the Pixel Watch 4 at that point in time? And did it give you a high heart rate alert? That's what I need to know. I have gotten so many of those frigging alerts over the past week. But they come in late. It gives you a little notification that's like, you seem stressed about.
22 minutes ago. And I'm like, is that different? There are stress notifications which come in a little after it's noticed that you may have had feelings, physiological feelings. And then there's also abnormal heart rate alerts. You're at rest, but your heart rate is really high. You good? So I was curious if the latter was coming. But if it did have the, we have detected a moment of emotional distress, that's also amazing. Yeah, it might have. I was honestly too distressed.
But yeah, I seem to get a lot of those notifications, honestly. Oh, I do too. Don't worry. We're in the thick of Techtober and Techtober just ended. That's the peak you were having. This is the beauty of both of your products that you both reviewed. You reviewed the new Pixel Watch. And these things, Google has spent a long time making good gadgets with stupid mistakes. And some of those mistakes were like, if you look at it wrong, it will just fall apart into 100 pieces in front of you. Or like if the wind blows on it, it will scratch. And in both the watch and the phone.
Google seems to be like rapidly actually solving those problems. And you're like, I can now wear this lovely round smartwatch out and not have it scratched every time I bump up against another person on the sidewalk. And it's like, these are just the little things. And this is what I mean by I think we all kind of had the same experience. I reviewed the Pixel Buds headphones and there is no single like earth shatteringly great thing about them. It just does all the things and does it pretty well. And that is like.
kind of the ballgame. It turns out that it's like, if it just does all the things and doesn't have glaring weaknesses, I'm probably really going to like this product. And I feel like V, you had that experience with the watch too. It was like, none of this is like mind-blowing new stuff. It's just like a really good smartwatch for the first time ever. I did have a moment where I was sitting here and I was just like, holy fuck. Did Google, is Google the maker of the best Android smartwatch right now?
Hold on. Wait. Google? Because, like, you know, the very short TLDR of Android smartwatch history is that up until 2021, they were kind of dog shit because Google had really neglected Wear OS 2. And it wasn't until they, like, joined forces with Samsung to create Wear OS 3 that stuff started to get better in the Android space. But I would say up until this year, Samsung was still technically the best or the most all-around Android flagship smartwatch maker. And, you know, Samsung...
has kind of been coasting for a while and their big update this year which you know i still have this watch right here with me was squirgle let's do a squirgle guys and there's gemini on there but that's google's thing but like squirgle um and so you know i've been having this watch here and i've been staring at it while also staring at the pixel watch 4 on my wrist and going like i i think google's done it i think they are the android smartwatch to beat because um not only do they implement gemini in a much smarter way even though i think it's still very hit or miss um they just all around have been innovating and iterating year after year, making progress. And this year, they made a freaking ton of progress. It was like, I think Allison uses this descriptor a lot, but it was like a bunch of updates in a trench coat. And now you have a Pixel watch and it's a big adult now. And I was genuinely just sitting here like, oh my God. You know, it is really smart that they added a domed display because when you look at it, you do have a lot more screen space. It is really smart that they extended Material 3 Expressive over to the smartwatch because now everything is more glanceable.
Raise to Talk, I don't have to be a Power Ranger for that to activate. It actually does not activate for me when I do that. You just have to do it very gently, and there it goes. We have Raise to Talk for Gemini. And, you know, they made it repairable, which, you know, I'm going to credit TheVerge.com with some real durability testing, much like Allison's beach extravaganza. You know, Chris Welch, RIP, too. Well, you know, not RIP, but our beloved former Chris Welch. He's not dead, but he's dead to us. He cracked the first Pixel watch, and he has no idea how.
He had no idea how he did that. Then for the Pixel Watch 2, I woke up one morning and it was scratched to hell and back. You can look at our Pixel Watch 2 review to see the damage that was done. It was so bad that when I texted the picture to Google, they sent people to my house to pick up the watch. And they were like, we must investigate what happened to this. We must study what happened to it. What criminal came through your window and just scratched up your watch and left? No, they actually sent it to a lab to see what happened so that we could investigate. And all they said was abrasions happened. And it was scratched up really badly. And internally, I've been told by my various comms friends at Google that they blame this guy, Petey.
because he was looking at that time. He's so sweet. Look at him. He's innocent. He's sweet and he's innocent. He has done nothing wrong in his life, but he is mischievous and likes to put smartwatches in his mouth and chew on them, especially when he was a kitten, which, you know, he was a little baby when Pixel Watch 2 was happening. So now they curse this cat. And I take credit for the fact that the Pixel Watch 4 is repairable because we have...
done fucked up, too, of the displays over time. And, you know, other people have as well. And it was like a big thing online that the Pixel Watch was not at all repairable. And guess what, guys? Now there's little screws and they're not proprietary screws. iFixit is going to sell manuals and a repair kit so you can do it yourself for battery replacements and display replacements. So that's... Thank you, Petey, for your service. He's innocent. He didn't do it. I don't believe that he did it, but in case you did, thank you for your service. No, he did it, but he did it on purpose for the cause. Somebody had to. Do you know what I mean? Right to repair doesn't just do itself.
PD really believes in right to repair. Exactly right. He does. He does, because he's always, you know, like a cat knocking shit off just to see how repairable it is. So, yeah, that's what PD could be. I fix it, and cats are the ones really getting this done for us, I would say, in general. But so, okay, so this brings us to the game I want to play here, which is, I think, basically between these devices and the Pixel 10.
Google has had a very good year of gadgets. And I think it's at a place where it's probably, it probably has the best lineup of gadgets it's ever had. And so I want to do a thing I've been wanting to do with a bunch of companies and I was going to do it with Apple first, but I want to do it with Google first. And it's a game I call company gadgets, comma, ranked. And so what we're going to do is I have made a list of six Google gadgets and we're going to rank them in order from best to worst. And this is taking all things into account, right? Like each one is going to have a different set of competitors. So it's how it relates to its competitors. It's what it costs. It's how you feel about the company. It's all these things all considered. And like, we've never had a way.
to be like, are the pixel buds better than the pixel fold? And damn it, we're doing that today. And maybe we'll never do this again, but I hope we will again. And I think it's gonna be very fun. To do it, our producer, Travis Larchuk, has invented an entire new thing for us to do. Travis, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. Yes, I have vibe-coded and interactive for David to control during this segment so that we can see the six products that we're going to rank and their relative rankings to each other.
I need to know just a little bit about the vibe coding process. As you know, a bunch of you over the summer did a vibe coding experiment, and I think none of you did it properly, and you all did a bad job. But Travis, I think, did a good job. So I want to know what you did. How'd you do it? I'm going to tell you how I did this, and then you're going to concede that vibe coding is much more difficult than you're claiming that it is. All right. So basically, all I wanted to do was create a thing where there were six boxes, and you could put the little pictures of the things, and you could drag them into the box, and the boxes are numbered one through six, and then you can rearrange them if you want.
And the issue I kept running into, which has happened every time I've tried to vibe code something, is it'll give you something that's almost all the way there, but something's wrong with it. And so then you'll say, hey, can you not have it so that the boxes overlap each other? Or can you make the text be bigger or the text not cut off? And it'll be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that. I did that already the last time that you asked. Yeah, everything's great. And then you say, no, it's not. It's exactly the same as the last time. And then it'll be like, are you sure?
I think I found the problem and it will change nothing. Yeah, it'll be like, oh yeah, I definitely found it. But it's like, no, you didn't. You broke the whole thing. So I've come up. I have pit Gemini and ChatGPT against each other or maybe in collaboration with each other. So I will take a thing that one of them has stalled out on.
and I will give the code to the other LLM and say, can you fix this thing? And it'll fix it. And so I just ping ponged back and forth from Gemini to ChatGPT. That's so sweet. Three or four times having one edit the work of the other one because ChatGPT doesn't know that Gemini thinks that it solved all the problems. So it's going to go in. So anyway, I present to you. Do you see what I mean though, David? This is fantastic. This is everything I ever wanted it to be. I actually, I think they like make them check each other's work. It's just like a constant fresh eyes solution. I love this for you. So Travis, thank you for explaining. And with all of that.
Let's play this game. If you're on YouTube, you're going to see this. If not, don't worry about it. This is called a Rank-O-Matic. Bye, Travis. Thank you. Bye. Okay, so we have six gadgets that we're going to do this with. The six gadgets are, and this is like a slightly imperfect thing, but this is the best way I could think to do this. We have the Pixel tablet. We have the Pixel, regular Pixel. We have the Pixel A series. This one's the Pixel 9A, but I mean sort of the whole A series. We have the Pixel Fold. We have the Pixel Buds. And we have the Pixel Watch.
And we're going to rank these six devices slash they're kind of categories-ish from one to six. I almost included like Fitbit and Nest, but that got too messy. So we're just doing a Pixel thing here. Do you guys want to start at the top or the bottom? I kind of think the bottom is actually going to be the easiest. I want to start at the bottom. I want to start at the bottom. And I know what it's at the bottom too. It is the fucking Pixel tablet. Sorry. Yeah. We should have all said it at once. This is easy. Yeah, we're all very much on the same page about that. The annoying part of this is I don't even think the Pixel tablet is like all that terrible. It's just that absolutely nobody should buy it because Google has no interest in it. Android tablet apps are bad. And this thing. It's so expensive. Someday this thing will be $99 on Amazon.com and I will buy it that day. And until then.
It should not exist. You know, it has one good idea that there's a dock that you constantly charge your tablet on because my iPads... And it has a speaker dock. Great idea. Great idea. But also the problem is, is because it does that, I never use it as a tablet. So... You have one? I have two.
It just lives on the dock. It just lives on the dock in the two places. Like we never take it down. It's our smart home. Like, you know, Jen had me. Well, Jen walked me through building a smart home. And after I told her all of my woes and the structure of my house, she's like, I think Google's system is for you. And so now I have two Pixel tablets and I hate them equally. Fair enough. All right. Well, that one that one was easy. I had a feeling we were all going to land on this place. I'm sorry to the Pixel tablet. I think I feel like from here, things immediately get difficult. Yeah. But let's build up from nothing. Allison, what do you have at number five?
Oh, this is tough. Gosh. Well, I know what I want to be number one, so I'm kind of working backwards. I think, okay, if this is kind of in terms of who should buy these things. No, it's best products. Just best? The point of this exercise is that it is extremely all-encompassing, right? And so it's like...
Part of it is should you buy it, obviously. Like part of this ranking is going to be ranking in which they are good and thus you should buy them. But I think like price is a part of it, but it's not the only part of it. And so it's like I'm putting all of this together on purpose. I would propose that number five should be the Pixel Fold. That's what I was thinking. I feel bad. It's good. It's a great phone. But as far as like mass appeal, you know, it's not something I would still recommend, even though you can take it to the beach and drown it.
So our former colleague and now Googler Dan Siefert is like forever just running around on threads telling people about all the cool things you can do with a foldable phone. And I believe him. I think he is earnest about it and I love him for this. I... I don't think Google or anyone has done a good job of making the case for why you should have a foldable phone other than like, look, big screen. I love big screen. Only Allison at tech events whipping out her foldable phone. The only time I have ever wanted foldable phones were at two tech events where my peers, Allison at one of them and my friend Sam from Engadget at the other, were like, I got a live vlog. This Wi-Fi in Brooklyn Navy Yard is crappy. Let me just pull out my foldable phone that can handle any awful CMS.
And they're just blogging machines. And I've gone, do I want a foldable? That's the only time I ever wanted a foldable. It was a triumphant moment for the fold. I think that I would put, I feel better about putting the Pixel Fold at five because the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 exists and it is so much thinner and lighter and like more comfortable to hold and carry. Don't bring it to the beach, but yeah.
This feels good. V, any objections? No, you know, yeah, no, I agree. Also, like, you're going to go to the beach, and at the beach, you're going to want to read. And as our good friend Dan Seifert always says, reading is one of the primary uses for the foldable phone. So if you're going to go to the beach and you want to read...
on your phone. I mean, come on. You can't be defeated by a tiny grain of sand. No. This is true. All right, no, I think we're doing the Fold. I feel good about the Fold, in part because it's also still $1,800. For all the ways it's getting better, it is still twice the price of all the other phones. And that's bad. And that's true of all Foldable phones. Okay, this might be dumb. I think I want to put the Pixel Buds fourth, despite the fact that I just gave them a nine, and I think they're terrific. But I want to do this for one specific reason, which is that there are...
so, so, so many good pairs of headphones out there. It's not that these are not very good. It's just that like in the scheme of things, I think the price on these is very good. But I also like there was just a Prime Day sale that had the Pixel Buds Pro 2, which are even better, but usually $100 more expensive, $60 off. So I'm like, okay, if I have $130 to $150 spent on headphones, give it a minute and shop for sales and you can buy a lot of really good pairs of headphones. And I don't think the Pixel Buds are like so spectacularly better than everything that they deserve sort of massive ranking, even though I think they're great.
That seems fair. They're not like standouts in the way that some of these other things are, I think. And I kind of think if we put Pixel Buds forth, I think the top three all qualify as like actual standouts in certain ways. I will say, though, like, look, these are purple and they're so cool. And I love them. And look, look at that. Come on.
David, this was the line in your review, and I commented this on the review, that I was like, yes, as The Verge's foremost senior purple reviewer, I loved your love of purple and the assertion that we should all have purple headphones. And I think all tech makers should get on that stat. But to your point, you know, for four and five, I was debating between the Pixel Fold versus the Pixel Buds. And I think the 1800 does justify the number five. But the thing that was kind of...
for me about the Pixel Buds was when we went to see the content capture and the hands-on, Google itself was just like, well, look at our phones. Look at our watch. And in the corner over there is the Pixel Buds. Right. And that's the thing. They're very good, but you, I mean, I said this in my review, like you, it's very hard to find a bad pair of headphones these days, which is like a lovely thing about the world that there are a lot of great headphones out there at all price points. But I was looking just to sort of test my price tolerance against others. And like you go to the Wirecutter and their favorite pair of under $100 headphones is like a brand you've never heard of that people absolutely love. And so it's like, okay, headphones.
You're spoiled for choice. We can make the Pixel Buds fourth, even though they're very good and the purple is awesome. And if you have one, I will give you a high five on the street. All right, that's three. So let's pause here and take a quick break. Just to recap, at number six, we have the Google Pixel tablet. Easiest decision of the day. At number five, we have the Pixel Fold. At number four, we have the Pixel Buds. We're gonna take a super quick break, come back and rank the top three. We'll be right back.
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Just to reorient, we have three things left on the board. We have the Pixel, which is like encompassing of all the normal Pixel line, the Pixel, the Pixel Pro, the Pro XL. That's the Pixel. We have the Pixel Watch, which frankly, already a coup to be just in the top half of the list here. And we have the Pixel A series, including the Pixel 9A. That's our top three in some order. Let's get back into it. I think we have to put a phone here. Yeah, I know which one I want. Yeah? Which one do you want to put? Number three. I will put the regular Pixel number three, even though it's very good. Okay. I think we agree on what number one should be then.
Do we? We'll get to that. Do we? Okay. I think we might. No, the Pixel is great. I think it's like you want an Android phone that just feels like uncluttered and unbusy and does it takes good pictures and it has G2 and all that. Like, great. This is this is a phone you should get. But it's I don't I don't know. Like there is you can get that, you know, that that is a thing that exists. It doesn't feel as special. But let me do this is an open question. I might be completely wrong in setting myself up for failure here. If I'm just like a regular person.
And I'm like, Allison, what Android phone should I buy? And you are allowed to ask me no follow-up questions. Aren't you recommending the Pixel? Okay. Yes, but my follow-up question is, what is your wireless carrier giving away for free? Because probably that's what you're doing. No, no. Yeah. I'm like, are you paying out of pocket? And then...
All right. I have two follow-up questions here. No follow-up question. Well, so this is the part where I'm torn is I think right now the Pixel 10 is the best Android phone. And I actually don't think it's like super close. Yeah. And I think that that's a like meaningful, powerful thing. And I don't think that's been true for a while. I think Samsung really like figured out a lot of stuff and got way ahead. And I think Google has just sort of slowly, resolutely caught up and just the like day-to-day experience of using a Pixel to me is so much more pleasant than using Samsung software still that like I just, again, like I, all the people in my life who use Android who.
don't want to spend a lot of time thinking about their phone have pixels and are happier for it. And I think that is like that means something. But there are phones that cost as much as the Pixel that are also terrific, which is why I think the Pixel belongs in spot three. But OK, so my question, though, is that we're also ranking these things against each other. And if we're going with a phone for number three, you know, people don't upgrade their phones every year anymore. And if you are making a long term choice between an A series Pixel phone and a Pixel phone, are you actually going to say that the A is better than the Pixel? Because I have been using the Pixel 10 XL for.
Pixel Pro, you know, like one of those things for testing in the summer of Android watches. And I feel like, oh, my God, it's really good. I'm like, I've been an iPhone girly for a really long time. I'm like, oh, this is really nice. I enjoy this quite a bit, except that I'm always accidentally circling to search unintentionally. But it's a really great phone. It feels like I've been so delighted by it this past summer that I'm just like, oh, well, if it were up to me, I would be pleasantly.
chuffed to spend the extra money regardless of carrier deals for for the mainline phone versus the budget especially if i'm you know a normal person and not a reviewer with like 50 phones in my bag um i don't know i kind of i'm just like i so here's here's where i'm landing with this i feel like a nice 800 phone solved like that exists that right now i recommend the pixel like that's when you should get but it doesn't feel like uh A standout in the way that I think the A-series Pixel phone is like, it is a phone I recommend to like not phone people. I made my parents buy them because I don't want them walking around with phones that are security risks.
The amount of software updates it gets and what you get in the price point, I think, makes it far and above, like, yeah, you're not going to find this somewhere else, not in this country. So I'm tipping my hand, but I really like the A-series Pixel. We do agree on the order. Oh, yes. I'm with Allison. I think we're going to put the Pixel third because for exactly that reason, I think when you think about what is it competing with, the Pixel has real one-to-one competitors in a way that the A-series just doesn't. So that's, V, I appreciate your point.
Tell PD I'm sorry. No, I defer to the phone expert. I'm the wearable lady, so I defer to expertise here. All right, so this leaves us with, in sixth place, the Pixel tablet. Fifth place, the Pixel Fold. Fourth place, the Pixel Buds. Third place, the Pixel. We have two left. We have the Pixel A series and the Pixel Watch. I believe Allison and I both want to put the A series number one. V, would you like to make the case for why the Pixel Watch should be number one? Yes, because you could... I think it's how far it's come, one, and where it is going. Again, you could make the argument that...
you know, in the world of budget phones, there is massive innovation coming. I don't know if I fully believe that on my side of the tech review sphere, but every conversation I've had with the Pixel team, every conversation I've had with tech companies about what's coming next, it leads me to believe that we are going to be living in a wearable hell soon, which is... And if you look at the scope of things, the only real competitor that the Pixel Watch has now is the Apple Watch, as far as flagship things go. And I don't say this lightly. This was the most intriguing and the most interesting and the most A-plus of the wearables smartwatches that I have tested this year. You think the Pixel Watch right now is better than the Apple Watch? It is more interesting. That's not what I asked.
It's almost on par. In some ways it's not, but it almost is. The fact that it has Fitbit integration and Fitbit does health in a way that is smarter. Okay, Workout Buddy, it's fine. But they are coming out with an AI coach where the look that I got beforehand truly left me sitting there going like, if they can pull this off, this is major. You know, they are starting to innovate on certain areas that Apple just has not. Apple Watch is still not repairable. These are. That's major. I think you also can't underestimate how much better Gemini is than Siri. And like if you...
If you are a believer that AI interactions and AI input in particular is like a real reason to get a smartwatch, and I think that it is, that is such a giant advantage for the Pixel Watch. Siri sucks so bad. Yeah. My husband has gotten used to me being able to ask Gemini questions on the watch, and he goes, ask your watch. Can you ask your watch this thing? I'm like, hold up. I decide what I ask my watch. You should just start to reach out your arm and be like, you ask. Yeah. I don't care. You talk to the robot.
It's just such a massive leap to the point where it's like, I'm going to have to talk and we're going to have to reconfigure our buying guide because this is the best Android smartwatch on the market right now. Like OnePlus, sure, the battery life is better. But the fact that this can go from 14% to 27, no, 14% to 97% in 34 minutes is massive. I did a test where I had this Ultra and the Pixel Watch 4 and this is the Ultra 3. They were both at 14% and 15% respectively. I charged them for the same amount of time. The Pixel Watch went to 97%. The Apple Watch Ultra went to 55%.
So it charges faster than the Apple Watch Ultra. Battery life-wise, I got a pretty good amount on the larger watch, which is the 45mm Allison got, I think, a day and a half on the smaller watch. I think I got, I forget the exact number. It's in my review. My brain is Swiss cheese, but it was a good amount on there. I think it was around 55 hours.
At least 48 hours I got comfortably. And the fact that you can just charge it in 15 to 30 minutes and it's going to be most of the way charged, you kind of solve the battery problem. Fitbit is much better at sleep tracking than the Apple Watch is. You have a wider, robust thing. The only thing that it's not better at is GPS tracking, which whatever. The maps are good enough, even though it has dual frequency GPS right now. They both have satellite connectivity. But frankly, at least in my neck of the woods, I hiked up three mountains in dense state forests.
And at no point did I lose cellular coverage on either watch. So I have to go travel down at Thanksgiving to Tyaskin, Maryland, where my in-laws are from. And there is a nut farm where there's only one bar of service and you have to stand in a certain way. So I have to go test satellite there because nowhere in the tri-state area that I've been to in the last three weeks is without cell coverage. So I'm just saying.
You know, I will accede if you guys really want to put the A series first, but in terms of like cohesive vision, where this thing is going, the massive strides they've made in four years, it's just blown me away. I think you both will say that I am a grumpy pants. It's very hard to impress me. We've said a lot of mean things about Pixel watches on the verge. We have said so many mean things. And look at me now. I am saying this is the best Android smartwatch on the market. And I don't say that lightly.
There is a real case to be made that this is just the best smartwatch, period. Like, especially for like, if you're not like a capital F fitness person and the thing you want is like all the other stuff that they talk about for smartwatches, there's a run of those things that the Pixel Watch does better than the Apple Watch. My only complaint just coming from the Apple Watch to the Pixel 4 now, it feels like a tiny bit slower. It is like just a beat behind where I'm like pressing a thing and it takes a second to like pop up. You know, I don't know. You're the expert on this. Maybe you can tell me if I'm...
imagining things. I literally just got a notification across all three of them at this point in time. That's too many notifications. It is, it is. My arms are constantly buzzing and I've just gotten used to it. What a sentence. I think you could make the argument that the Apple Watch has gestures and that this is only kind of starting to catch up in the gesture space. So in terms of hands-free computing, this is a little bit ahead. But again, Gemini on the wrist, light years ahead of Siri on the wrist.
In terms of like the Series 11, yeah, okay, that wasn't a major upgrade year. Like I legitimately said that the Apple Watch SE3, look at me, I'm just pulling smartwatches out of thin air. The SE3 was the most compelling Apple Watch this year. And I love the Apple Watch. I think it's a great smartwatch. It has been leading the industry for close to 10 years now. This is a real competitor. For the first time, I'm just like one-to-one. The ideas are there. The cohesive vision is there.
in this mad blitz review period where i've been writing like 10 000 words a week or whatever and thinking about all these wearable devices because why are there so many wearables this year i don't know they want me to die but um you know it's the one that at least of the wrist-based things, has really impressed me. And it's a surprise. It's why I, if we were doing this with a Pixel Watch Day, I would not be arguing this hard, is what I would say. I also would have ruthlessly started making fun of you if you had started arguing that hard. No, I think you're right. And I think the, like, what is the best smartwatch question is A, very complicated, and B, totally moot, right? Like, no one, I think, buys a watch first and then a phone. So you're just buying the one that connects to your phone. And, like, it's sort of the end. But the fact that they're even meaningfully close and you don't have to miss one if you have the other, huge victory for phone buyers everywhere. Allison.
Was that, are you convinced? Did that change your mind at all? This is tougher than I thought now because the argument that there's more innovation and there's more coming to get kind of excited about, I totally see that on the watch. Okay, so can I, let me just pour cold water on that really fast. One of the core beliefs of the verge is that we don't review products based on future potential. And this is, we can redo this ranking at some point, but this right now is the best, what is the best Google product right now? Yeah. And I think the strides thing is real, right? And the distance Google has come is amazing. But like, if we're going to give,
You know, I would have to sit here and be like, well, if Siri gets better and I don't want to do that. So we can't do that. Yeah. Well, there's also like a phones are such a known quantity and like a solved thing where I had talked to my hairstylist and I recommend, you know, I had her buy a Pixel. But then I'm like, have you thought about a watch? And I kind of I kind of evangelize like smart watches now because I find them so useful. She got a smart watch. She got a Pixel watch and she loves it, too.
So I see that to my side, Allison. Come, come. So the other thing is, Allison, the point you made about whatever phone you're getting for free from your carrier is also a knock against the Pixel A series. Because the case I would make for the Pixel A series is that for a very long time... you could not buy a good phone for less than about $800. It just didn't exist. There were lots of phones at like $200 that were fine. And you could get like a perfectly functional Android phone for not a lot of money. That's been true for a very long time. But that sort of middle space where it was good, but not like feature complete, but was at a like meaningfully cheaper price point, literally did not exist. And then Google showed up and was like, well, we're gonna do the A series and has now gotten to the point where the A series is meaningfully close to being as good as all of the high-end competitors.
to the point where now I'm like, okay, well, you can have the $800 or $900 or $1,000 phone, or you can have this $400 phone that makes this one compromise. What are your thoughts? And I've had the same experience you have where a lot of people in my life just very happily bought A-series phones and have never looked back. And it's like, sure, you don't get some of the high-end stuff. You don't always get the fastest processor. You don't always get the best camera, but you get a very good phone for literally half the price. And it reinvented the existence of that thing. And I want to give the Pixel A-series a lot of credit for that.
Except, particularly in the U.S., there is a strong chance that you are trading in a phone and thus getting whatever you get for almost no money. Yeah. God, that is the ugly thing. I think what I one of the things I appreciate about the A-Series is that it is within the realm of possibilities that you would pay out of pocket for this thing. And it's, you know, that that varies. And there's financing you can do if you're even doing that much. But as far as like we're so in the grasp of these carriers and the deals and the upgrades, and it feels so like kind of refreshing that the Pixel A-Series is over here is like if you want to break free of that and you can like it.
cobbled together 500 bucks, you can still trade on your phone and probably get some money off of that. That exists and you can just own it and you can walk away with it and it's your phone and you haven't made a huge sacrifice as far as, you know, performance or features. You don't get a telephoto camera now, but, you know, you can probably make do. That's my one thing to keep the Pixel 8 series phone in the number one spot. It just feels like it's the phone that can break the cycle of carrier deal addiction. All right, Allison, I'm gonna make you do an incredibly unfair thing. I'm sticking with the Pixel 9a as my number one.
V has made, I would say, a surprisingly great case for the Pixel Watch. You have to break the tie. Oh, my gosh. Well, I was going to ask Petey, but he just ran away. Petey is looking out the door. He's like, let me out because the whatever. But I will concede that there are times when I am using Gemini on the wrist and I'm just like, I'm just pull out my phone. So we're talking about that. I would not be mad for the Pixel Watch to be.
Number two. I'm just saying it's the best Android smartwatch out there. It is. And so if we're talking about Google products as a whole and we're talking about like the best thing that it does, you know, I'll be satisfied if it's in the top two. I think on this list, number two for the Pixel Watch is like there is going to be rejoicing on the Pixel Watch team for this to even be number two on here. I'll be satisfied for it to be number two. So Allison, go with your heart. I made my case. I'm going to go with Pixel Watch number two as the like happy to be here. It's love in its life in the number two slot there. Pixel 9a reigns supreme. It's the phone you get your dad to buy.
Honestly, the Pixel Watch was just happy to be nominated. You know what I mean? It's an honor just to be here at the awards ceremony. It's getting Best Supporting Actress, even though it didn't even think it would get nominated. It just came for the free alcohol, and instead it got nominated. And that's a huge victory. Yeah, I'm quite satisfied. So just to recap, at number six, we have the Pixel Tablet, which is the one team at Google that should feel bad at the end of these rankings, I would say. At number five, we have the Pixel Fold. Number four, we have Pixel Buds. Number three, we have the Pixel, which I should say encompasses just the Pixel, Pixel Pro, just the regular Pixels. Number two, we have the Pixel Watch. And at number one...
The best product Google makes. I think we got this right. It's the Pixel A series. Yeah, we nailed it. I love this. I really can't believe that Google is good at smartwatches now. Like if you asked me this five years ago, I would have laughed at you. Google makes good gadgets consistently. This inevitably means in three months, Google will shut down the whole Pixel line. They'll all go into the game. But until then, I'm very excited about this. All right. Thank you both for doing this to me. This was delightful. Travis, your tool worked fabulously. This was great. We're going to have to do this again. I enjoyed this exercise very much. And I think it's going to be fun with some other companies too, especially ones that have like even weirder and more disparate.
product lineups to talk about. Like, are the AirPods better than the iPad is a question I'm going to say out loud to both of you at some point in the future. And I'm very much looking forward to it. I'll be thinking about that. I don't know. I want the Dyson rankings. Ooh, that's a good one too. Yeah, let's do vacuum cleaners versus that weird hair dryer. Versus face masks. Which weird hair dryer? Yeah, yeah. Oh God, there's more than one? Okay, I don't know. We're going to have to call in like $1.5 million worth of Dyson gear and then we'll do this. It's going to be awesome. All right, well, until then, we need to take a break. We're going to come back. We're going to talk about AI and some studies about what AI is doing to our brains. But until then, via Allison, thank you both. This was great. We'll be right back.
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Listen to Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Support for this show comes from Airbus. Every experiment we've ever done down here on Earth has involved gravity. So when the International Space Station launched in 1998, it opened up new frontiers for research in human biology and medicine. An opportunity to see how DNA strands, stem cells, and more might grow and evolve without the weight of the world on them. Now, a game-changing new space station, Starlab, is launching double-study agriculture, medicine, robotics, and more. And Airbus, who lead the ongoing design and engineering of the station, have designed it to be the next evolution for early research and real commercial production.
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about my favorite thing the light phone here it is hi this is lucas i'm on my way to school right now campus i'm a student at oregon state and i've been living with my light phone since about may or so and i love it um it's absolutely fantastic it's been my primary phone since then and every time i grab it out lots of students end up asking about it and it seems i'm not the only one who has switched to like a dumber phone i'm curious if more people not just students are switching finally okay thank you okay so i bring this to you allison because this is the thing i've been grappling with a lot is i think the the stories you hear about people wanting to get away from their phones and wanting to reset their relationship with their phones and understanding the ways that their phones are problematic influences in a lot of their lives, you and I have been hearing those stories for forever. And I think my reaction to them for the longest time has been like, OK, that is like a statistically insignificant but interesting story, right? That like what actually turns out to be the case is everybody pretty much just really likes their phones. But it's somewhere in 2025. It has felt to me like the tide is turning and there is not necessarily light phone specifically, but this idea of wanting less phone. And I mean that in the broadest way possible seems to be real. And I want to know if that is how it feels to you or if not.
I do think it's real. And I hear it more, I guess, anecdotally from friends who are like, oh, I don't know. I've been thinking about just going with a minimalist phone and getting a compact camera and calling it a day. And I always just hesitate a little bit. I'm like, well, I'm going to be the bummer here. But like you probably it's tougher than it seems. And it sounds like Lucas is loving it and is having a great time with it. And that's incredible for him.
I have just struggled every time I've tried one of these sort of minimalist phones or it's a flip phone and you're kind of like, it's a throwback. And my kind of go-to recommendations are, you know, maybe a minimalist phone is for you. Here are some things to try before you. Throw everything away. Start your life over again without apps. Casey Johnston actually has a really good guide to dumbing down your smartphone. So kind of you basically do almost like a hard reset and you get rid of your apps and you clean it up and you make it just less enticing. I think a lot of people could do that and find themselves very happy with it. And the other recommendation I go to is maybe a cellular smartwatch, which was the little experiment I ran recently. And I found there are a lot of cases when I could.
leave my phone at home, just go be out in the world, still have the ability to text and make a call if I needed, pay for stuff with my, you know, tap to pay. That is well within, you know, you don't have to go buy a whole new phone. You don't have to get into a whole new system. You can get the smartwatch that exists for your phone and try that. But those are my big two things that I think a lot of people would be happy with. I agree. I've started recommending.
people buy the cellular smartwatch, which was not a thing that I felt before. It was normally like it's, there will be times where it's really useful, but unless you're a person who goes on like really long runs and needs that kind of thing, I was like, just get the Wi-Fi, that'll be fine. But I do think now the opportunity to take that with you and have this sort of, if somebody needs me, they can get me peace of mind, but still be mostly disconnected is actually really powerful. I wonder, as you're talking to, you know, the companies that make phones or even the carriers or any of those folks, do you have any sense that they're starting to reckon with some of these changes? Like, are the folks building phones thinking about how do we help the people who are trying to reset the way that they're using their phones?
I think they do. And there's a real tension. You know, I don't I don't know how far we can hope that they will go or expect them to go because they're kind of in the business of keeping us on our phones. You know, maybe that's more down to the app makers than the people who make the hardware. But I mean, there are really good tools on your phone for, you know.
monitoring your screen time. I don't find that super useful, honestly, but focus modes. And I kind of find it funny that Apple's latest idea about how to rein in your notifications is to just like invent a new focus mode that filters most of the noise out. So the tools exist. And I think there is an understanding that people want this and we want help.
bringing some balance into how we use our phones. So poke at those things, I think, if you're kind of feeling this. But I don't know if we can hope that the phone makers are going to rescue us from our addictions. Yeah, I tend to agree. And I think the thing that I've always wondered about these companies is, A, they obviously have tons of incentive to keep you on your phone. But I've always wondered, like, are they going to get to the point where the narrative against phones becomes so huge?
that they have to make some of these changes or else they risk losing people. I don't think we're there yet. I mean, I know for sure we're not there yet. So we're definitely not at the point of like Apple and Google and Samsung need to be worried about people abandoning their phones in droves. I don't think that's coming. But I do think the sort of human awareness that like my relationship with my phone is not what I want it to be and I'm not really in charge of it. I think.
That is something people have come around to more and more all the time. Yeah, I think so. And it feels like the big, you know, the Apples, the Googles and Samsung are very gently kind of prodding us like, hey, here's a focus mode or maybe set up a bedtime routine if you want. You know, don't worry. No worries if not. So I don't know. Maybe they will get a little more robust, you know, as people ask for these things more. I hope so. Yeah, agreed. I did, by the way, reach out to Kai Tang, who's one of the co-founders of The Light Phone, to ask about this specific question. And he told me that...
the Light Phone is sold out of all of its inventory and that the gap between what they sell and how quickly they can build them means right now that the wait time for a Light Phone 3 is two months and actually getting worse, which is, he described, a problem but a good problem to have. So I think, again, I don't think the Light folks are producing phones in the quantities of, you know, the Apples and Samsungs of the world, but this thing, they've been at this for like a decade and I think that they have seen the sort of movement towards it really build. And I think I'm starting to talk to more and more startups who are building gadgets about this idea. And there's real energy in like, what else is there for us to find out there? And I think everybody thinks we just haven't figured out the mainstream answer.
which makes me worry that there isn't one. But at least it's fun to see people continue to poke at this. And I think for me personally, I stole a bunch of Casey's idea. Casey was on the Vergecast a while ago explaining some of this stuff and I deleted a bunch of my apps. I made my phone background black and I offloaded all of my fun apps onto a different device. I have this last year's Pixel Fold, which I need to return to Google at some point, but I keep around for testing reason. I'm just lazy to ship things. Leave me alone. And this is now my fun phone. This is where TikTok is. This is where Instagram is. This is where all the things that I want to...
just screw around on a screen with live. And this phone is now mostly for like talking to my family and attempting not to look at very often. And that has been awesome. Obviously, most people should not buy two phones. That's insane. But if you have two phones lying around, I highly recommend it. Yeah, I my job is to use my phone as much as possible. I'm pretty jealous right now. Get a job that requires you to have tons of screen time and then guilt is gone. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just I open up TikTok and I'm like another day at work, another day in the content minds. Yeah.
This is what we do here. We do this for you, people. Allison looks at her phone all day for you. Subscribe to the Verge so she can do it even more. Please. My family's starving. All right, Allison, thank you as always. I'll see you later. Thank you. All right, that's it for the Vergecast. Thank you to V and Allison for playing my silly game with me. Thank you to Travis for going through the true rigors of vibe coding this insanity for us. And thank you, as always, for watching and listening. If you have questions about any of it, if you think we got the rankings wrong, if you too want to make a forceful argument for the Pixel Watch, get at us. Vergecast at the Verge.com is the email. 866-VERGE-11 is the hotline.
if you if you think the pixel tablet should have been higher if i'm being honest i don't really want to hear it send that to allison leave us out of it but anything else i'm very curious what you think of the rankings and even still who you would like to see us rank next this is a fun game i had a good time we're gonna do this again what company do you want to see us rank next Also, last housekeeping thing. Thank you to everybody who has been watching and listening to and sending us feedback on the version history episodes so far. We've done two. If you haven't caught up, we did hoverboards. We did BBM. Both have been very fun and very chaotic. We have six more already lined up for you to do and we're already starting to make the next batch of them too. But I want to hear everything about what you're thinking. What should we be making episodes about? What should the version history questions be? I already have some ideas about how we're going to change those, but want to hear all of your feedback, all of your thoughts. Again, vergecast at theverge.com, 866-VERGE-11. I'd love to hear from you. Until then, The Verge Cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Travis Larchuk. We will be back on Friday.
with Nilay Patel. Presumably to talk about Brendan Carr, but all of the other things going on this week, because as ever, there is a lot going on this week. The gadgets keep coming, the AI people keep spending money, and we'll be here. Until then, rock on. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all-in-one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com slash vox. That's odoo.com slash vox.
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