Pixelated - A Breath of Fresh Air

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Welcome to episode 102 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner, Damien, and Will catch up on some of their opinions and impressions surrounding Google I/O, before pivoting to discuss Will's review of the Fitbit Air. Sponsored by Proton Unlimited: Pixelated listeners can save 30% on an annual subscription to the company's suite of privacy-friendly services by signing up using our link. Thanks to Proton Unlimited for sponsoring the podcast. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Amazon Music Apple Podcasts Overcast Timecodes 00:00 - Intro and Google I/O final thoughts 25:29 - Fitbit Air review 56:32 - Wrap-up Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more Everything Google announced at I/O 2026: Gemini, Search, Android XR, & more Review: Fitbit Air is a near-perfect fitness tracker with an imperfect AI Health Coach Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts The Sideload 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek Space Explored Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or reach out to our producer. And for even more Android discussion, dive into the official 9to5Google forums!

Welcome to Pixelated episode 100 and 2. I'm your host, Will Saddleberg. This week, I'm reuniting with Damien and Abner after their whirlwind trip to Google I.O. They both catch me up on what I missed on the ground and offer some big picture thoughts now that we're one week removed. Then it's my turn to talk about my review of the Fitbit Air, Google's first displayless tracker designed to compete against Woop. From tracking and sensors to bands and health coach, there's plenty to cover, and it all

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Thanks to Proton for sponsoring Pixel needed. So I'm back not too jet lagged from traveling half the planet from Google I.O. I am slightly sunburned. I must admit, I am slightly sunburned. I didn't put too much sunscreen on. You will bake in shoreline. That's the thing they don't tell you. You will bake sitting in shoreline.

I will S-PF t-shirts. So that's my new strategy for that. I mean, it was sensible, but I think in terms of an I-o, this easily one of the most fun events I've experienced. I think last year was pretty decent, but this has been far and away the most fun I've had at I-O. And it's a bit weird, isn't it, like in terms of the announcements? It's so AI-heavy that you think it wouldn't be the case,

but maybe the Android show leading into it is like the perfect way to get you, to kind of get the, set the pulse racing before I.O. I don't know. Am I right in thinking about that? Or is that a weird way to think about it? Yeah, it was, I have to say my IEO takeaway compared to at least the past two years and really last year, which is the first proper AI show. I would say the vibes are very chill in terms of the announcements weren't too,

pie in the sky. They are actively shipping. They are here. So the vibes were very chill. There was, from like a competitive standpoint, it did not feel like Google was in a lush that they were racing, that they were pressed by the competition. It just felt chill. I think they've hit the immature phase probably a bit faster than expected, though at the same time, three years in this new AI reality is a long time. What, uh, besides it being chill, I guess, what was like the, uh, the, the, the overall because, because it's easy, it's easy to get sucked into like the online reaction of things, I suppose, especially when you have so many people watching the live stream.

So I'm, I'm curious, you know, whether it's fellow journalists or anyone else, like kind of what was the, what was the feeling after the presentation, uh, after the main keynote on the ground? I, it's a weird one, isn't it? I feel like, I feel like, I feel like, is someone, who has gone from that first keynote that Abner alluded to a couple of years ago when it was like, we're going to AI everything, to having some tangible products there that people are using, it definitely feels like IO is going more, leaning even more heavily into the developer side of things. And it felt like there was a lot more developers to speak to after the keynote.

In terms of the journalist's reaction, I'm not actually sure to be quite honest with you. For me, obviously, we had a bit of a briefing ahead of time. and knowing things from the Android show kind of preparing us for what was going to be announced on stage. I was kind of like, I'm kind of surprised at the way Google keeps market in some of these features. I think we've spoken about it ad no zoom now that everything is an email or everything is a list or like a presentation.

I think maybe there could be more tailored, more tailored marketing or like kind of messaging around how AI can work because I definitely feel like I wanted to see more of like how an average person can truly use AI to like kind of improve their productivity like from my so I would so I would say to that is so it's yes this is what they're trying to pitch the big message you're trying to pitch is agents these things that developers and more business people are already using it's now time for regular users to use it. We saw that at the launch of Gemini Spark and that's actively rolling out. So I think Ben had a good post that they're a good opinion afterwards that this is starting,

they're starting to make it a bit more practical for people. And I think Google's messaging conveyed that in terms of like, this is, we're trying to find helpfulness. Google's defaulting to their helpfulness messaging. So yes, we have these AI features in Gmail and more of your subscriber. But I think this Gemini spot thing, this agents, the idea of being able to offer tasks to people, being able to offer tasks to bots, basically. I think that this is our first chance of seeing whether people actually want this, how people adopt into their lives.

This is additionally, these agents, they're the first really new thing coming out of LMs. Like these other experiences, like you could uncharacterably view them as like advanced auto-correcter with that help me write stuff. But these agents, they're the first really native thing to come out of LMs. And I think that's going to be a very big test case to see how people adopted. are people ready to offload some of their tasks in their lives to AI? I think it would be best for most people kind of like to dip into it slowly.

But obviously, it's only available, isn't it, to the top? Is it the ultra-subscribers? Yeah, the ones who are paying the most amount of money and only in the US. So I'll kind of save judgment until I hear from people who are actually testing us out in the real world. But I guess one of the bigger ones, the bigger update. that came to everyone straight away. And we actually had it before the keynote,

was that brand new Gemini redesign? I think this is something that Google probably needed to do for a while, and they've gone ahead and done it. And I do like the look of the new interface. It's very, very minimal compared to what we had before. It feels there's a YouTube-beness to it,

like YouTube's own design language, thin out. Well, they're kind of moving away from very thin icons. I was, I guess, the previous one. but there are strays of that YouTubeness in it. But yeah, this is a full redesign. It's been in testing for a bit. And I think we've talked about in the part before, but I hope this is like their platform for the foreseeable future

because there is definitely a period where like the Gemini overlay changed two or three times in the matter of months. So I hope this is now stable. I hope this is their platform for growing things. yeah like Damien said they probably needed a full refresh but I hope this is the foundation for the foreseeable future yeah I mean that that also reminds me that we're going to talk about in a little bit but the redesign of Gem and I kind of coincided as well with those rollout of those new icons that we talked about in the previous podcast like the workspace icon suite is everything

feels like glowy and I feel like that's that's kind of like a signature of what Google are doing right now in terms of like just just talking more broadly about IO I think the one's the one feature outright that I didn't think mattered and then seeing it on stage as good. That universal cart function is something that I genuinely can see myself using in future. Like having something that gives me that price history or the insights on what is the cheapest time to buy things. Like I can genuinely see that being useful to people

because usually we're using tools to do this elsewhere and having it done kind of natively on your phone or on desktop or whatever. But I think that's fantastic. I think that's a really, really cool utilization of AI. Like, this is the application I want to see, things that actually do save like work. And it's not very explicitly AI. AI is making powering the use of suggestions, but it's just a, it's not explicitly about AI. Yeah, I think that's a good way doing it.

And I think that's what good. I personally think, given, I mean, given the Pope's just written a big massive thing about and be becoming anti- the Catholic shifting out of AI. I feel like we should have a little bit more of like the, I think I'll just go back to the messaging just ramming AI AII in that format doesn't always sell well. I think it's better when you have like these practical examples

and I think that's a really good practical example. I think again, right, you said, help me right. I mean, how often do you use help me right? I barely ever use it. Maybe I'm in the minority there though, I guess. I was, I'm absolutely in that opinion. and I kind of still feel that. But I think one thing, we're all writers,

maybe that's our bias there, but most people objectively hate lighting anything. So maybe that's one thing I've been told, and that's kind of stuck with me. I noticed I haven't really answered your question properly there, will, though. I think the reaction after the fact was still focused quite heavily on hardware. I think a lot of people were talking about the Android XR. changes and stuff like that.

I think... That's a surprise. That's the big surprise. Another nice surprise. Yeah, I think there will always be room for hardware at I.O. And I think talking about XR and talking about the new functions and forms that are going to come out is still part and parcel of a keynote of this kind of magnitude. So it was really nice to talk to people about and get differing opinions on augmented reality.

Because I'm still kind of on the fence, but I think this is the first time I've seen it. You've tried to... I tried it for the first time. I mean, how was it? It's nice. It's nice. I feel like this is what I wanted from X. I don't want a big bulky headset. I mean, I'm a child of the 90s.

We tried this before. This definitely feels like in glass. I mean, I don't wear sunglasses, but I don't wear reading glasses. So I can maybe see someone with reading glasses being more kind of drawn to this. But having things like that heads up display for maps and stuff look fantastic. And I'm really excited to see what that next wave. wave looks like.

Oh, yeah, you tried the monocular glasses where there's one display. Gotcha. And I think what you're talking about is when you're starting navigation, turn-by-turn turn-turned-goo maps, if you look down, you can see a full map. And wasn't it just like a video game? I know. I kept walking around telling everyone, it's like Redo Redar Redemption. It's like GTA.

It is. I think that's the closest approximation to it. And yeah, I hope that that becomes a bigger core component of what Google trying to push in the next six to eight months because it's like, yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't think it's particularly groundbreak and it is very, very cool. Oh, that pains me to hear you see.

I don't, I don't think it's, I don't, I can't imagine everyone's going to suddenly go out and throw a pair of glasses on. No, specifically, like this display technology, my first takeaway two years, two years ago when I tried this was that, I was shocked that this display technology was ready and that Google has been working on it behind the scenes. And I guess that really puts in perspective how to most people a screen is just a screen and they won't really appreciate that all the work that it took to miniaturize this and put in front of your eye. It's just another screen to them.

He definitely felt like another screen. I wonder if this is if part of the reason you get a reaction like, like, the one you just got from Damien Abner. And this is to take nothing away from the technology. I agree with you. I think it's really impressive that displays can be that small and look that way. But like, I think part of that disappointment comes from just the ongoing evolution of technology, right? Like when you, when Steve Jobs gets up on stage and he's like, I put a thousand songs in your pocket,

that is a lot different than that little mini map that you can display on your smartwatch. is now in your glasses. It's like, it's like, it is, it is a smaller, it becomes normal. Exactly.

Exactly. There is a big difference between, forget your CD collection, forget your CD player. This thing in my hand that I'm holding that is the size of a deck of playing cards is now what you carry your music in. Versus like, oh, well,

you already had all the navigate. And I don't mean to use maps as the obvious example, but it is the obvious example. Oh, you already, you already had this on, every other device on your person. Now it is closer to your eyes,

but that it does make it difficult to feel like it is the same sort of leap, I think. I also think it's just difficult for something that is inherently visual, like individually visual, i.e. you put it in front of your eyeballs. Very, very difficult to showcase that effectively. Yeah.

Like without trying to yourself. So I didn't, I mean, pun intended here, I didn't have a frame of reference until I tried them on. And then I was like, okay, I can understand why this is a big deal. and again, it's a lazy, I know it's lazy to say, seeing that mini map was like GTA, like a video game.

But I think for a lot of people, that is what they were like, oh my God. They tie it to something they've experienced elsewhere. And I think that is the closest approximation. I do, I can 100% see this being useful when traveling, for instance, like those live translations. Sadly, sadly Google didn't even really do a great deal of doing that in the demo section where they could have had posters in different languages. Yes, you spoke to somebody and they translated for you in real time and that was fantastic.

But I think being able to have like a poster or something similar and having it translated to you in real time would be, I think that was a demo they showed off when they first unveiled Android XR and XR glasses. I do want to see more of that because I think that's where the real world application might be useful to people. But yeah, they're probably going to price it out of us like Warby Parker Gentle Monster. They're not cheap glasses anyway, so they're going to be extortionate. hopefully Samsung can bring that price ceiling down a little bit because I do think, I hope it isn't like a $1,000, $1,000,000 entry price for these, in air quotes, high-end options. I sort of, not to keep going back to this, but I sort of wish that, you know, I think

the display is cool. And even on the displayless glasses, right? Like, I think they present. There's an audio mode. Well, so that's what I was going to say is that I wish, I think these companies are doing themselves a disservice by not kind of pushing them as a like, and maybe the tech, maybe the sound quality just isn't there yet. I have not used them.

But like push them as like, like you're, you always have earbuds in now. Like, like, absolutely will do that. They all absolutely. But like I feel like they need to start now. Like that is in my opinion, you know, if I'm talking about things that, um, sort of shape how I'm, what I'm carrying through the day or whatever, right? Like, it's the thing I think about is like, oh, if you made it so that I never need to think about bringing a pair of earbuds again, like, that is the biggest selling point to me more so

than we moved the map from your wrist or your pocket to your eyes, you know? Like that, I would love to see them sort of be like, hey, we are not just, we are not just including speakers in this, but we are making sure that audio, you know, through, through bone conduction or whatever is as good as it can be. I mean, you said audio there, and my ears have pricked up and my brain is tingling over this. Like, one thing that there's literally just come to me right now what we're talking about it is there was absolutely zero mention of Google Home and this new Gemini Home speaker.

Like, why have we not heard from this yet? I fully expected, I don't even know why I've just remembered it now. This could be the remnants of jet lag, is that we heard nothing about it at all. At I oh, we heard zero. I mean, shouldn't it have been available right now? Didn't they say spring 2026? I thought they were dedicated sections to it. They have three weeks.

Yeah, they have a few weeks. Okay. I think they're going to miss it, but who knows? To me, it's summer. To me it's summer. We're on the cusp of June. We're six months into the year. Surely that's that summer period.

Like, I feel like it's a bit weird that Google didn't even show it off. I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to show off this hardware. No, I agree. Do you know what I mean? No, the lack of this and Abner, you, I feel like you might disagree with me on this. and I'm obviously speculating on nothing, but like the absence of this, the speaker that they had already announced

many months ago at this event made me, at this very Gemini focused event made me go, like not even a mention of it. I'm like, is something wrong here? Like I'm not saying there is something wrong, but this was the moment where I went,

you guys should have brought this up by now. It's starting to feel a little bit like you're dragging it out. It's definitely not the hard width. I'm sure the hard way. No, I think it's a, I think it's a Gemini is not working the way they wanted to be working thing. Maybe your Gemini has progressed so much that it isn't the product that it was. Could be that too.

When they were initially announcing it. I'm, okay, I'm going to play the positive side of the argument here and say, I probably is more towards that. Maybe they need a little bit more processing power to put new models in, I guess. But yeah, all of this integration with Gemini is great, but I think, again, hardware for me kind of always wins. and I think that the new glasses coming out. I'm very excited now.

Yeah. Now I've tried to see what happens. To wrap that section up. So the first, we got the Warby Parker and Gentlemancers made by Samsung, powered by Qualcomm. We got the first two designs. We efficiently have a launch period, I guess, coming this fall. These are the audio only grasses first. And to your point, we're about headphones.

I'm sure that will have to be a big marketing point. I hope so. About, yeah, headphones, the headphone cases, they're still kind of big, honestly. I mean, even the smallest ones, I'm thinking of, you know, I have the pixel buds 2A on my desk at the moment.

Like, that's not a large case by any means. No, but it is something I have to fit in your pocket. Yeah, it's something I have to put in my pocket. It has to think about. It's still bulbous, yeah. Exactly. And so the, and look, I am one of those people.

who it's like, I love, oh my God, the invention of smart walks. Like, do you know what the smart lock brought me? The ability to leave my house without a key. That's the biggest thing. Like, that's all I care about is, is like, oh, I'm going on a walk. I'll be back in 45 minutes. I don't need to carry keys on me. It's great. It's awesome.

And I feel the same about like, you know, the less stuff. I mean, that's why like cellular smart watches. I love like going on runs or walks without anything on me. anything on me while still also being connected in case of an emergency or so on and so on. And the ability to basically like with smart glasses that have good bone conduction speakers be like, oh, hey, I'll be back and, you know, an hour I'm going for a walk and just walk out the door because I have my smart watch and I have my smart glasses on and I don't need to think about anything. That is sort of the eye.

It's not obviously not quite to the same degree, but it is closer to the iPod-esque leap in tech that I am envisioning. Do you think, to play devil's advocate, do you think that you both as glasses wearers have this probably further in your, I say further, more kind of, how would I describe it?

I'm flailing for words, this is definitely some sort of jet like kicking in. Is it that you are glasses wearers so you're more personally invested in the form factor than someone like me who wear, where I think, I mean, I wore glasses as a child,

I don't need them now, and I probably will later into my life and need glasses, it for me it's finding an integration until I saw it it was like I don't see the utility there but hearing you both talk effusively about it is making me more excited that is a big hurdle obviously then again most people are familiar with sunglasses so yeah I would be so curious to see adoption stats based on whether people the buyers are already wearing glasses versus nongrass whereas but yeah that will be a big thing especially as Google's push which I'm sure

they'll go into more when they announce this. These are, you're supposed, they want you to wear these all day. They're not like Rayban-style sunglasses where you just wear them when you're doing something, when you're going outside. So the term was intelligent eyewear, which is, I have to sit on that a bit about whether that's a good brand thing or whatever. Intelligent eyewear, okay, that is just quick run to a thesaurus and get a different term for smart classes. No, but it's interesting.

It's kind of like, I think tracking it on the long term. They originally called it AI grasses, but I feel like... That's an awful idea. Yeah, in the... Yeah, I thought that was a horrible idea when they did Rassier, too. Yeah. But especially in this moment where AI, societal AI, reckonings, et cetera, et cetera, it does feel like we might...

They are moving to intelligent eyewear as a thing. And it's just... So we'll see where that goes. Yeah, I like the... holistic way that Google's kind of changing the... If they're going to throw AI into everything, it needs to be more holistic the way they're describing it. I'd prefer it that way.

It definitely feels less... I mean, you're going to be wrong. There's a lot of people that you buy and... Yeah, yeah. That's a better way to talk about it. And honestly, like, is that going well? I know they are selling a lot, but is this damaging to the wave hands brand?

Possibly. I don't even think possibly, I think, 100%. Yeah, I think people have created slurs for people who wear these meta ray bands. Yeah, and they are raybands. He's so specifically tied to that raybans now. So we'll see how that goes. I mean, one more thing I want to talk about IO before we get into the Fitbit because I'm intrigued to hear your guys' experiences as someone who's only just picks up their retail unit.

Android Halo was teased. God, I don't know much about what this is going to be. It looks really strange. was a very, very brief teaser, about nine seconds of a little animation. Android mentioned in keynote, is that about the limit of it? Probably. So it's, okay, so officially it is to show live updates and when you're, when Gemini's doing task automation, to see that a live progress indicator.

I feel like what this actually is is probably there. what is it called an iOS? Dynamic Island. It's probably that, okay, it still annoys me how Android makers try to copy Dynamic Island. The key of Dynamic Island

is that there's a physical hardware thing that Apple is trying to overcome. It is, and they adopted, they read into that. But Android, they just put in this,

like, live updates today. They just appear in the status bar. There's not enough height. That still annoys me to no end. Well, I guess we'll find out more late this year. I mean, it would be a great shock if it wasn't detailed more deeply when the Pixel 11 series, which we assume is. And what its relation to pixel glow is, if any. Yeah, 100%, 100%.

But yeah, let's get into some new hardware, as I say. It's always the most fun bit for me. Fitbit Air has now been made available publicly. You can go out and buy one today. I'm wearing my fog version. I know, Will, that you pick the best. as well. You're a fog guy. No, I went out and got a fog one too.

We're all fog. We're all fog. That's awesome. Tell me, tell me, because I, this is perfectly timed because I've only read a few paragraphs of your review. It's just gone live as of this podcast being live as well. Go read it. The first four paragraphs are fantastic, but we're going to hear from the man himself.

Tell me a little bit about this, about your initial thoughts when you first opened this, because my experience was that, wow, this is a lot more minimal than I expected. Yeah, I feel like the best way I can open sort of a hardware conversation is to tell you guys that this is the only sleep tracker I've ever worn that I have found comfortable enough to not be annoying during the night. I feel like that's like a good starting place of like what I think of this hardware because it's like, you know, I have worn. I basically only do sleep tracking when I'm reviewing wearables because you have to. No, you're right. That's the only way to do it. amateur hour. This is all amateur hour from three sweeptacker me.

Well, so it's, okay, for me, I can, I can value what people get out of sleep tracking. For me, I always feel like I just like, I know when I've gone to bed too late or woken up too early or, you know, didn't have a good night's rest. Like, the sleep tracker will definitely tell you those things like sooner than maybe you'll realize when you get out of bed and you shower and then you're like, I, the coffee is just not kicking in today. But, uh, but, but largely speaking, it's basically been like, you know, the, the data I'm gathering is not, um, not, uh, doesn't give me enough to change my own habits or lifestyle in exchange for any amount of discomfort. I might feel my wrist. And I just, I like, because I have a smart watch on all day or, or a regular

watch on all day. Not to mention this band because I'm essentially wearing things on both wrists right now. I like being able at the end of the day to be like nothing on my wrists going to bed. Hardware rate. That is my signal for the weekend. For years. Fair. I don't wear my smart watch when it's the weekend. It's a syside if I can sweep in. But so the way I'm integrating the Fitbit Air is during the day I'm wearing the pixel watch and then once I'm off hours I put on the fit bit air and I wear it to sweep and I take it off when I wake up. And it's perfect for that, to be clear. Like, that is exactly the use case.

I think Google wants you to have because it means you've bought two wearables from them. But it also, like, it just is like, it is like a really sensible way to be like, oh, I, you know, I have my standard pixel watch for during the day when I need notifications or whatever. And it's doing all the fitness tracking in the background. And then at night, it's like, well, I don't, you know, I don't even want to mess with, with Do Not Disturb or anything like that, I just want to take my watch off.

Well, exactly. And so it's like you can just throw this on and it's the only thing it can buzz you for is if you set an alarm. Like that's it. So Will, you wear a smart watch every day. Well, and you still have the benefit of tourists. But how has it been going from a tracker

to a smart watch? Because from... Yeah. because for me it's i just miss the time yeah i mean it's it's truly anytime i don't so this is i'm speaking more so um in the evening and and at night when i have switched to just wearing the fitbit air because i do tend to wear it on my non or i wear it on my dominant hand and then have a smart uh smart watch or a regular watch on my on my non-dominant hand so at night there's nothing you know let's say 8 p.m. or something. I have switched to just wearing the Fitbit Air. Um, I will say,

uh, including like last night. Like it's the most recent. So even though I've had this thing for two, a little over two weeks now, it's still happening. Last night I went to check my, check the time, looked at my wrist, looked at a fabric band. Did not learn what the time was because there is no clock on this thing. Um, I've done that so many times. It's, it's, it's, I don't think I'll, I, unless I stop wearing a watch completely, I'll never unlearn that behavior. I've been wearing a watch since I was like 10, so it's not going to happen. I just can't get over the fact that this is the company that bought Pabble, and I've never used an E-ink in any of the technology.

Dude, I'll take 12 LEDs, LED dots to spell out numbers. Like, I felt that way about Woop, too. Nike Fuel Band was a real classic, but yeah, yeah. Shame. But, but, yeah, I mean, in terms of, of, so aside from the clock thing, in terms of like the actual fitness tracking, you know, you lose a couple sensors compared to like more fully fledged smart watches, but this has pretty much everything that you would want. I, I have started, especially when weightlifting, I will

manually start fitness tracking within the app, but I have not, I have not manually started runs or walks. And it has actually, you know what, I took a walk last night that I'm now realizing it might not have detected. Let me see. Okay. I did do a walk last night that it straight up did not detect, which had I not scheduled my review out prior to this, it probably would have been in the review. But I should also say that that is on a non-premium account that I've switched to, which is a whole other thing we can talk later about in the thing. But largely speaking, it has tracked my walks and runs with absolutely no problem. In fact, I'm actually.

actually really shocked at how accurate, uh, it's run tracking has, it's automated run tracking has been considering I'm going out without a phone on me. So it's just using motion, because there's no GPS. It's just using, I guess, like motion and time basically. And getting my distance pretty much dead on, uh, even discounting like it will, it will even know like, oh, he's walk. It's like he's in a walking cool down now. I, I can stop counting this as a run. Uh, which is, is, which is interesting, it's really excellent auto tracking, which is you need in a device like this where you have absolutely no way to interact with the, with the device. So I've been, I've been very pleasantly surprised about, about its fitness tracking. I really don't feel like

you're getting much of a downgrade compared to, you know, even a pixel watch unless you, unless you run phoneless like I do and need it for music. In that regards, do you think that, I mean, Who do you think the target market here is because obviously you both mentioned sleep tracking. I personally am kind of, I've been wearing it to sleep because it's comfortable. Yeah. Not because I care about my sleep tracking because I kind of know. Like Will said, I can wake up five minutes.

I know if I've had a back sleep. You and me are in the same boat on that. I feel like the data doesn't mean anything to me. Oh, no, I've had six hours sleep. Well, I know that. I know when I went to sleep. I know when I woke up like. So the thing I would say about that is like in the context of the health coach,

it does help personalize. and adjust for that. But more broadly, I think as society, as a health thing, like I feel like, sensors like this,

like the Fitbit Air that are tiny and discreet, like, you'll, I don't know, in 10 years, I feel like it'll become the norm that this is something

that everybody is wearing, either this or smart watch, just from a health perspective that your health provider wants to see. And actually, that's something AI can be good at at something at analyzing that quickly and making it available for your health provider.

I just think as a society, like the rise of small, cheap health sensors will be just incredible for health care. I mean, I can be, I can whitewash that or wash that ways. I live in the UK, so we have a national health service, so I don't think it's really something that is something to work here. I think, yeah, I think, I think, you can offer health health,

services on a national level. And you don't need to wear wristband. I think I can completely understand from that healthcare provider perspective, but it is kind of an alien concept to me in some ways because I have never once felt the need that, I mean, it helps up my partner as a nurse as well, so I kind of, she's like, why you'd be in a hypochondriot, there's nothing wrong with you. That's a big caveat. I think that's another big caveat. But yeah, I can, I do feel like if we'd have, we probably would have hit that phase a while ago. Then again, there's a lot of people out there where an Apple Watchers anyway.

So where is this health data being analyzed directly by anyone? I don't know. I can completely see your argument, Abner, but at the same time, I'm like, we probably need a massive leap before it reaches a stage where everybody's wearing the Fitbit Air 3 or whatever it is. I think without a GPS,

I'm kind of like, yeah, how are we analyzing the accuracy of it? Do we know how, do we know how, is compared to the pixel watch. Have you been out on tested the pixel watch and or another smart watch similar to see it? I think wearing an Apple watch with mine, mostly so that I am able to, I'm not like, because when you're wearing a pixel watch in a, in the Fitbit Air together, they're not like, they do, they do work together, but they're not like tracking different, uh, data together. Like, it's not like, um, the, the, the, um, the comparison I would use is if you buy a, a, a, a

Galaxy Watch 8 in a galaxy ring that they will like, what is it? The watch will do more of the fitness processing if you're wearing them at the same time to save battery life on the ring. That is not happening here. They're basically just tracking the same data and just pulling from one of the sources. So I used my Apple Watch because obviously that is a completely separate profile, right? completely set like it the the fitbit air's eyes i am only wearing the fitbit air and the apple watch's eyes i'm only wearing the apple watch and so i'm able to use these uh that basis as a comparison point um and and i mean part of the problem here is that like how am i supposed to know if the apple watch is accurate as well right but i would say that like for the most part um you know

the distances and everything uh uh lined up perfectly on this you know compared to the cellular plus GPS Apple Watch compared to a non-cellular, non-LTE-connected Fitbit Air, not even Bluetooth connected. Again, I was running no phone on me. It's not connected to anything. And the only difference, typically if I would see a difference in mileage, it was, it was slim. It was, you know, give or take, point one miles, basically. And it usually had to do with, like, oh, like, you know, the Fitbit tracked.

the three more minutes of me walking than the, than when I stopped the workout on the Apple Watch manually or whatever. But like, you know, heart rate was dead on between the two devices, you know, give or take one beat for a minute. The, I'm trying to think of what other metrics. I just, you know, pace was fairly accurate between the two. Again, give or take probably 10, 10 or 15 seconds. But considering the,

lack of sensors on the on the watch for GPS and and being connected at all times. I'm I'm I'm impressed by its it's a it's it's it's fitness tracking especially for $100. I mean, you ask who who this is for. I think Google wants this to be for anybody and everybody who wants a fitness tracker. It has not been sold by a smart watch or maybe specifically doesn't want a smart watch because they don't want a thing strapped to their wrist buzzing all the time. There's a cyclicalness to this that it's, okay, the hardware, it's good, it's excellent, its Fitbit could have made this any time in the past five years.

Weird you say that. My first thought was this feels like a throwback, but in a good way, in like the best way possible. This is so much better than it would have been five years ago because like the battery life is insane. The fact that, I mean, this thing is so small and light. I feel like everybody I've talked to who unboxes this thing is like, I mean, literally been yesterday like DMD and was like, oh, I guess I just didn't realize how small

this thing is. No, I didn't. I think I opened the box and I was like, when the box came and it was small, I was like, yeah, that's fair enough. That's a regular box size. That makes sense. But it's about the same size as the pixel buds. Pixel buds.

Pixel buds. Yes. Yeah, exactly. And I'm so surprised at how thin the sensor arrays in the back of it. Exactly. And just five years ago, this would have been twice the size. And so I think it does make a difference that this is launching now. you know, in terms of battery life,

and I know what we're going to, but in terms of battery life, like, you know, I actually think Google has undersold the battery life on this thing. They're saying up to a week, I'm seeing, you know, probably closer to eight or nine days on a charge.

And the thing, in the thing, you know, you throw this thing on the charger for 20 minutes while you're showering, you'll be good for another four days, like truly. Yeah. Like battery life is not a concern. Yeah, the charger is,

it's obviously reminds me the pixel watch for charger. Yes, correct. It's very similar. It's USBC on the one side. You know. Finally. Well, and the nice thing is that like, again, it's, you know, I could see some people maybe being annoyed that it's another proprietary charger that you're plugging this thing into. But like, unless you are going on a two-week vacation, you do not need to bring this with you on a trip. You could go on a week-long vacation, and as long as you're leaving at 100%, I do not think this thing will die on you. And so, like, all of that comes together into $100 package that I think is like, if you want a fitness tracker, thumbs up. The real question marks, and not even thumbs down, just question marks come in on health

coach, which I think is where we're going. You want to do the bands first before? Oh, yeah, really quickly on the bands. The performance band is the default. It's like a very lightweight fabric band. It's the best of the three. Yeah, Velcro, which... I think they've knocked out the park.

I think that is the best... It's arguably one of the best bands I've had on the default band. To me, I genuinely think it's better than the original... The pixel four default band. Yeah, I agree that. So, like, the good news is you are... When you buy this $100 wearable, you are getting the best band.

Active is a very, very run-of-the-mill silicon band. There's nothing special about it. It is not using the same, like, slightly upgraded material that, like, the pixel watch band uses. It's just silicon. And there's no, like, holes in it. So I found it pretty unbreatvable and not super comfortable. I really only wore it when I was, like, actively running.

And I was really only doing that to avoid making, like, the, fabric band sweaty. And to be honest with you, I actually did, uh, I got, what did I, I got something on this on the band and I cleaned it and it cleaned really easily. And so I would almost suggest if even if you, unless you were running, you know, every day, uh, you could probably get away with just running with the performance band on and cleaning it every few weeks. And then, uh, or, you know, whenever it's needed. I have no idea how, how frequently you would need it depending on how you're sweating. Uh, the final band is elevated. This is somehow, I found this out right before we started recording a $50

band, I did not know that. That this band is half the price of the actual wearable. Do not buy this band. It is not good. It is not comfortable. It is designed to be like dressier. I don't think it's like, I wouldn't, it looks like a fitness tracker still.

It doesn't, it's not going to blend in with your suit at a wedding. And it doesn't, it's like really finicky to get like a good fit. In fact, I like very rarely had a good fit wearing this thing. Yeah, spend your $35 on another performance group band, basically. Honestly, yeah.

You can find the active band, but, yeah. Get another color. No, I actually, that's a great point. Just go buy a second performance band. Use that as your like workout band. Oh, yeah. And like, there you go. Like, because honestly, you're, you're going to have a better time if you just stick with

performance. That's the best. Swapping bands is so simple. It's really easy. So the Apple Watch has a better. band switch mechanism because it's just a straight slide. The Pixel Watch, the curvature actively impacts it, and I really don't like that. It's a cool idea on the Pixel Watch.

It's like so over-engineered that it's like a little fiddicky, yeah. I think in a few months' time we'll probably get third-party bands are very cheap. I think maybe the cheaper ones have been caught off guard or the people have been caught off guard with this release. So we'll probably get some cheap stuff soon. But yeah, I think all in all for the band side of things, I don't think Google could have done anymore. I think it blends in nicely.

I've had a few people asking me what it is. They think it's like, I don't know if you guys had them in the States, but you have the Livestrong bands back in the day. Oh, yeah. Someone's asked me if it's a, someone asked me who. That is a thrash bar. Somebody said, is this a, what charity is it for? I was like, no.

That is such a, that is such a fire. Because it's so nice and it's so nice and compact, but like I'm wearing it on dominant wrist as well. So I do agree with your sentiment before where I keep looking for a time. But I, yeah, it seems like a fantastic first attempt to a WIP competitor, even though, what is it, a third of the price. It's kind of like. I mean, more so because you have to pay for WOOP. Woop is 320 whatever for the year, but then, but then you're paying. yearly, which you don't have to do with this. You can pay a one-time payment of $100 and be good to go.

Just touch them back on Google Health for a moment, because this is coincided with the launch of the Fitbit Air. It's a brand new rebrand of the Fitbit application, new platform, new icon. I love the UI. I think the UI is fantastic. It definitely feels to me a lot more welcoming than the Fitbit app, getting that information at a glance as well. Honestly, previously, the old 3-tab app, you spent most of your time in the main feed. And now it's you actively will switch to the sleep, fitness one and your health tab. So it's a nice transition to me. Yeah, it's a good redesign visually.

I feel really strongly about this hardware. Like I am very pleasantly, you know, ban complaints aside. I feel very strongly about this hardware. I feel less sure about the subscription portion of the software. Like I agree with you guys. I like the app as well. It's, it's,

you know, I've ran into some issues with health coach as you are, as one is wanted to do with using an LLM-based, well, anything, anything LLM based, really, because you're just going to run into hallucination sometimes.

And the issue is that like, it's not even a thing that you can recreate on your end, right? So it's like when we're all testing and comparing these things, it is difficult to be like, well, I saw that or I didn't see that. And so I do think Abner and I are going to kind of fall in different places on health coach. And I don't think either of our opinions are, you know, more important than the other or whatever. I have a list in the review that I think is worth reading. But basically, I over the last couple weeks, and it has gotten better as I've used it. It's gotten, you know, the hallucination count has reduced.

But, you know, right off the bat, like day two, it made up a run I didn't do. It got very confused one day about how Fitbit counts. It's, oh, we, you know, we should set up health coach, by the way. It's, it's an LLM tool that is built to give you recommendations on your fitness, on your goals, on your day. You know, like Abner mentioned the sleep tracking. Like, it builds a lot of that stuff into telling you what to do on your day to meet your fitness goals. So that's what it's trying to do. it's basically Gemini but solely for for health and fitness and so so yeah so it got very confused

about Fitbit's uh you know weekly counts like what counts as a week uh it it started for getting some workouts that i did um you know it fully made up a kickboxing session uh out of out of thin air um that that it then gave me it took me an entire day to delete from my account because it kept giving me errors. A lot of this happened in the first week or so, and I would say that like in the second week, despite like, you know, eagle eye on everything that this thing is saying, uh, that the errors absolutely decreased over time, um, whether again, but I, I don't know if that's, is that the LLM learning? Is that just luck? Is that straight up just like I'm like pulling lucky draws from this prediction engine? I don't know. And so,

you know, I'm sort of at the, at my conclusion is sort of to try it. If you're buying one of these, you get three months free. So like, I don't think there's anything wrong with trying it as long as you said a reminder to cancel the subscription or at least at the very least to remind yourself of when the trial is ending. And if it works for you, it works for you. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. You know, I've switched to a non-premium account because we're going to sort of run a

second opinion piece or you know quasi review of how this works without the the premium subscription without health coach and everything. And I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it a little bit just because there is so much detail it provides and some of its responses. Some of it useful and some of it not. But without it, the app feels extremely sparse in comparison. The new app is built so heavily around health coach that it is surprising. how empty it feels once it's once it's not there. And I suppose that's what Google wants you to feel because they want you to

pay your $10 a month for it. But yeah, I'm mixed. I'm mixed, I would say. I think at the ending of your review, it was like if there are mistakes, you want them to be your own. So I like that. I like that sentiment. It's, I think

most people don't have a coach, a health coach, a fitness coach. I think for most people that experience is new. And the general premise behind AI is that it can bring these experiences to more people because it's not a thing. It's not a person, it's a thing. So I think there is absolutely a mentality shift that you have to take when using something like health coach. For me personally, it started with Gemini.

I had a post a few weeks back about the mundane absurdity of telling Gemini what's happening in your life and base and giving it more information. I think most people need that shift to occur, especially in the smaller context of a health coach. When you tell the health coach and you're feeling sick or that you're what you have to tell it these things. You have to tell the minutia of your life that you, to be honest, at the beginning, you feel stupid that you're telling this non-scentient thing that you're feeling under the weather or whatever. It requires a lot of input. And to your point, like this, Google really does have three months to really get help, to really fine-tune health coach to a point.

point where you want to subscribe to it, though it's now part of AI Pro too. So if it's there, it's there. But for everybody else. True. Yeah. You have to give it a lot of data, and I'm mixed on how well Google is messaging that. It really, like, when it gives you these summaries at the end of the start of the day, that it really wants you to talk to it. And again, to me in the beginning, it felt silly to respond to, oh, I'm feeling well,

or to confirm that, yes, I'm down for a run today. you have to give it a lot more data. And I do wonder if a, like, a Gemini Live experience is slightly better for this. But you, it's, it's not just smart suggestions in the way that products before LMs offer you smart suggestions. It's, it's an interactivity. It's a chat, it's a, it's a conversation in a way that technology hasn't been in the past. And I do think this is a good test scenario of having a personal coach as like people familiar

with the idea of a coach, people idea with the familiar idea of an assistant, even though most people don't have that. So I would say that you, it requires you to give a bit more input into the product than you'd expect. But I think at the end of the day, there is something really valuable, really powerful there. what one can get over the hump of like, why am I telling this I'm sick? I guess I wonder if, because I agree with you, I do think you're going to have to sort of, you know, if I, if I can make what you're saying sound more negative, which I don't necessarily mean to,

but you kind of have to babysit it, at least at the beginning. Yeah, that's absolutely fair. By beginning, I mean, like, you know, again, I've had this thing for two weeks. I would still say I would be, if I was still on the account with premium, I would still be babies. like you're probably going to babysit it for a month and I think this would have been a really good idea or really good uh timing for Google to have rolled out something that I would like to see chatbot developers do more of which is which is have more and they have a little bit of this in the main app but have like constant preset responses I can give this thing um and again they

they have some quick response but the second you're in the actual chat the interface basically is very, like, it feels very much like Gemini. I think Google should have leaned into this to be like, every single response is going to have like four different auto-generated responses the user can hit with a button with a tap of a button. And that way, if we are predicting how the user feels, they don't have to type it out. And then the fifth one can be, let me type out my own response or whatever,

just to streamline a lot of that baby's stuff. I've definitely felt that in the Gemini app overall too. Exactly. It's just, I guess I just wish it was like, I'm tired talking to robots. Yeah. And again, like I said, it will feel stupid for the bit. But if you can get over that, there is talking to it. And I was cynical about this too.

It's why are you talking to something that is a robot? But if you can get over that, I think it unlocks a lot of, just from a pure user experience standpoint, UI standpoint, it unlocks a lot of value that it's not obvious. And it does require more commitment than you would think for technology. But if you get there. Yeah. I would love to see, look, I'm obviously, like I said, I'm a very mixed bag on this stuff. And I find I'm very unforgiving about hallucinations. when it comes to health data and fitness data.

Like I'm, I'm, most people. Yeah, I don't, I don't think that's, I think that's, the standard should be like, you don't get to get away with making up a six mile run for me,

because now I don't know what else you're going to make up for me. And, and like, again, some of that stuff can be trained out through the use of, of memory. And I haven't, I haven't had this thing long enough.

And in fact, again, I'm on a non-premium account now. So I don't know, I don't know how well this thing's, uh, memory will work if it, if it is,

you know, what level of, Gemini memory is this thing at. But like that stuff's going to matter. It's going to need to keep memory of, of every single user using it, which is presumably why Google has it as a paid feature. But it's just like,

it's going to be tricky. It's, you're going to have moments where you're like, I didn't do that yesterday or, you know, even, even little stuff like it's, it,

it really wants like, you know, to your point, Abner, about having to like kind of train it and like, like, give it lots of information. like it does it really wants you to like take it easy in a way where I'm like man I know I did like

a 35 minute weightlifting like thing yesterday that's not that long I don't need to rest today like I don't need to just go on a walk like it's it's stuff like that where it's like you know I I I'm 30 I feel like I know my own body pretty well in a way that it can feel frustrating to have to type out a bunch of messages over a month's worth of use to a chat bot to be like, here's how my body works. And maybe that's worth it to some people.

I'm not trying to take the way from that. I'm more like, I wish Google had built in a streamlined process for this that made it. So at the very least, I didn't have to feel like I was texting constantly with an AI bot to improve my health tracking. Yeah, I guess we'll see how it pans out of time.

It's 100% time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the first iteration, isn't it? So I have no doubt that it will improve over time. I agree with you that sometimes I feel like from what I can see so far, it does err on the side of caution where it's like, don't overexert yourself. And it's like, well, I can do this.

I can over-exert myself. I know what I'm doing. Exactly. And how do you define overexertion when it doesn't really know how enough data about you? But yeah, that's the Fitbit. That's the AI Health Coach, the Google Health application. And yeah, it's been a deep dive into all things Fitbit and I.O. And we're excited to see what you guys think about the devices.

Go read Will's fantastic review. It's definitely a long read. It's one of those ones where you get the full details on just what this device can do for you. And I think at $99, it's a snip. I think it's $85 here in the UK. And there's some decent pre-order deals as well. I just want to say thanks for joining me, guys. I know we've kind of rambled on a lot about a lot of different things,

and we've ended up at the fitness side of Google's product portfolio today, which is quite rare for us, I guess. But yeah, from following on from a ridiculously hot I.O. to a ridiculously hot topic of Fitbit and Fitness. Thanks, guys, and I'll speak to you soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Pixelated, a 9-to-5 Google podcast.

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