Google unveils the Pixel Watch 5 with a smarter Gemini and advanced health monitoring

At its Made by Google event on Wednesday, Google unveiled the Pixel Watch 5 with a smarter Gemini experience, as well as advanced fitness and health monitoring. The new smartwatch, which starts at $399, can track blood pressure patterns and insulin resistance, as well as deliver personalized help and better sleep tracking.

Google says it designed the watch to deliver personalized and proactive help right when it’s needed. For example, the watch will proactively suggest relevant actions or information based on a text message’s context, like instantly pulling up a smoothie place your sister sent you.

You can raise your wrist to ask Gemini a question, handle requests like finding a nearby lunch spot with navigation, or use Gemini offline to manage timers, alarms, and workouts with your voice.

The watch will also dynamically surface timely updates right at the bottom of the watch face, like flight info, ETAs, and other helpful reminders.

The Pixel Watch 5 is also launching with “Health Guardian,” a suite of new proactive health and safety tools.

The tech giant says the smartwatch uses sensors and machine learning to track blood pressure patterns before they can put strain on your heart. Google says the feature was tested against 24-hour blood pressure monitors and uses an advanced waveform model trained on more than 1 billion minutes of data from over 500,000 people.

The insulin resistance feature is designed to identify changes in metabolic health that may be associated with insulin resistance and an increased risk of developing prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. The feature combines signals from sleep, heart rate, physical activity, and other health data. A large sensor model then analyzes these signals over time to identify long-term changes in insulin resistance.

Google will give users a summary of their blood pressure and insulin resistance trends every month.

There’s also a new feature that can detect a persistent drop in oxygen saturation and will contact emergency services if the watch determines that a breathing emergency may be occurring. This feature is launching in select European countries before expanding to additional regions.

Additionally, the watch’s sleep-stage tracking is 15% more accurate, and there’s also a new bedtime watch face that reduces nighttime distractions. A new “Smart Wake” feature wakes users at an optimal point in their sleep cycle, while a new sleep breathing quality metric tracks minute-by-minute changes in blood oxygen levels.

As for fitness, Google says the Pixel Watch 5 delivers its most accurate GPS route tracking yet, with route mapping that’s two times more accurate than previous generations. The improved accuracy is designed to provide users with more precise workout and running data, including a closer match between your recorded route and the actual course.

The Pixel Watch 5 features the Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 platform and has 12% more CPU performance and 50% more RAM than the previous platform. Google says the Watch 5 is 20% faster overall.

The Pixel Watch 5 supports up to 40 hours of battery life and is available in new colors, including Canyon Fog and Olive. The 41mm version starts at $399, while the 44mm starts at $429. The smartwatch is available for preorder starting Wednesday and will be available on August 20.