The Vergecast - Google's gadgets, ranked

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Google is on a bit of a heater when it comes to gadgets. The Pixel 10 lineup is one of the best Android phone options; the Pixel Watch 4 is suddenly a winner; the Pixel Buds are an excellent accessory; even the Pixel Fold got some welcome upgrades this year! With the help of The Verge’s Victoria Song and Allison Johnson, we do the impossible: we rank all six of Google’s Pixel gadgets, from worst to best. Are headphones better than smartphones? Can you really compare a tablet to a smartwatch? Who knows, but we try. After that, Allison and David answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email [e-mail]!) about whether the dumbphone movement is a real one. Further reading: Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: finally, a more durable foldable Google Pixel Buds 2A review: the right kind of compromise The Google Pixel Watch 4 is the Android watch to beat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Virchcast, 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 pixel book 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 Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together.

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the chemicals lurking in your cosmetics. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. Let's talk Google. Allison Johnson's here. Hi, Allison. Hello. V-Song and many cats. Hello. Hello. For the folks on YouTube, teach us about the cats.

Who are the cats? This is P.D. He is the younger baby cat, and he loves to disrupt my work. Hence 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, I 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 Chi II 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 is not existed on any folding phone in the past. And it's important for a folding phone because dust getting into the hinge can, you know, it can move under the screen and then the screen is toast. It's, 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. Right. 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. Yeah. And I had it open. 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. Yeah.

Yeah. 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 took my photos. I picked it up and I was like opening and closing it. There was a crunching sound coming from. 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. 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. So wave, like, 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. Like, this is it.

I killed it. But it's fine. I did take it out. Like, you know, I tried it off. I got any of the sand I could see out of it. But when I got home, I used some of the compressed air to, like, get rid of the rest of the sand. And it was fine after that. And it's still going.

In 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 just to see if it's all working. And I go, oh, oh, it's fine. Yeah. My phone is fine. That is like the relief that comes at that moment is so spectacular. Mm-hmm. 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? You know what?

You need to know. I have gotten so many of those friggin alerts over the past week where, 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? Yes, there are the stress. 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 with your like, you're at rest, but your heart rate is really high. You good? Oh, I don't know. So I was curious

if the ladder 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 to notice. But yeah, I seem to get a lot of those notice. notifications honestly. Oh, I do too. Don't worry. We're in the thick of Techtober and TechTember just ended. That's peak you were having. This is the beauty of both of your products that you both reviewed V. 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 scratch 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. Like, I reviewed the PixelBuds 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 at the watch too. It was like, none of this is like mind-blowing new stuff.

It's just like a really good smart watch 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 WearOS 2 and it wasn't until they like joined forces with Samsung to create WearOS 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 smartwatchmaker. And, you know, Samsung has kind of been ghosting for a while

and their big update this year, which, you know, I still have this watch right here with me, was, squircle, let's do a Skorkel guys. And there's Gemini on there, but that's Google's thing. but like squircle. 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 think Google's done it.

I think they are the Android smart watch to beat because not only did they implement Gemini in a much smarter way, even though I think it's still very hit or miss, they just all around have been innovating and iterating year after year making progress. And this year, they made a very hard. Frickin of progress. I 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 three expressive over to the smart watch because now everything is more glanceable. Race 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 Race 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. That's the important.

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 have been told by my various comms friends at Google that they blamed this guy, Pedy, 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 the 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. not at all repairable. And guess what guys? Now, now there's little screws. And they're not proprietary screws. I Fix It is going to sell manuals and a repair kit so you can do it

yourself for battery replacements and display replacements. So, thank you, P.D., 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. That was somebody had to. Do you know what I mean? Like, the right to repair doesn't just do itself. PD really believes in right to repair. That's 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 contributed to tech journalism. I fix it and cats are the ones really getting this done for us, I would say, in general. But so, okay, so this is, 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, 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 going to be very fun. To do it.

Our producer, Travis Larcachuk, 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, 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, I want to know what you did. How did you do it? I'm going to tell you how I did

this and then you're going to, 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 come up. 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 Chat Chb-T 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 smart. Three or four times having one edit the work of the other one because Chat ChbT doesn't know that Gemini thinks that it's 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. This is, if you're on YouTube, you're going to see this. If not, don't worry about it.

This is called the Rangomatic. 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 are 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 feel like the bottom is actually going to be the easiest. I want to start at the bottom. I want to start at the bottom. I know what it's at the bottom, too. It is the fucking pixel tablet. Sorry. Yeah. We should have all set 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 try. your tablet on because my iPads and has a speaker speaker great idea great idea but also the problem is is because it does that I never use it as a tablet so you have a me I have two it just lives it just lives on the dock it just lives on the dock in 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 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.

What is what is in all this is this is the point of this exercise is that it is extremely all encompassing, right? And so it's like, our, 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'm like, I feel bad.

It's good. It is 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 you to the beach and drown it. So our former colleague and now Googler, Dan Seifert, 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.

It's lovely. I think he is earnest about it and I love him for this. 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. You know, like, I love big screen. Only Allison at tech events whipping out her foldable phones. The only time I have ever wanted foldable phones were at two tech events where my peers, Allison at one of them and my friends. Sam from NGadgett at the other, we're like, I got a live blog. This Wi-Fi in Brooklyn Navyard is crappy.

Let me just pull out my foldable foam that can handle any awful CMS. And they're just blogging machines. And I've gone, do I want a foldable? That was the only time I ever wanted a fold. 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 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 Seaford always says, reading is one of the primary uses for the foldable font. 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 gray 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. Like, 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 forth, 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 PixelBuds 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, 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 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. So. Right. And that's the thing. They're like they're very good. But you, I mean, and 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 wire cutter 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 forth. 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 going to take a super quick break, come back, and rank the top three.

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What Not says they'll match your first $150 sold in the first month. You can visit whatnot.com slash sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T-N-O-T dot com slash sell. Whatnot.com slash sell. All right, we're back. 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, the pixel pro, the proxel.

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 to be. an Android phone that just feels like uncluttered and unbusy and does, it takes good pictures and it has Cheatoo and all that, like, great, this is,

this is the phone you should get, but it's, I don't, I don't know, like there, it is, you can get that, you know, that it, that is a thing that exists. It doesn't feel as special. But let me, let me, this is an open question. I might be completely wrong in setting my 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, 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 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'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. 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 bolts in spot three but okay 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, uh, for testing in this summer of Android, uh, watches. And I feel like, oh, my God. It's really good. I'm like it, I've been an iPhone girlie for a really long time. I'm like, oh, this is really nice. I enjoy this quite a bit. Uh, except that I'm always accidentally circling to search, uh, unintentionally. But, um, 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 I, if it were up to me, would I, 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. 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. right now I would recommend the pixel, like that's the one you should get, but it doesn't feel like a standout. In the way that I think the A-series pixel phone is like, it is the 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 like software updates it gets and what you get in the price. point, I think makes it like 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 the 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

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 smart watches 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 ask. 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.

These Apple watches still not repairable. These are. That's major. I think you also can't underestimate how much better Gemini is. is than Siri. And like if you are a believer that AI interactions and AI input in particular is like a real reason to get a smart watch, 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 just 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 re-configure our buying guide because this is the best Android smart watch on the market right now. Like, One Plus, sure, the battery life is better.

But the fact that this can go from 14% to 27, no, 14% to 97% to 97% and 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 Um battery life-wise I got I got a pretty good amount on the larger watch which is the 45-millimeter 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 Tiazis. in 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 strong. 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 over the years. We have said so many mean things. And look at me now. I am saying this is the best Android smart watch on the market. And I don't say that lightly. I actually think there is a real case to be made that this is just the best smart watch period. Like especially for like if you're not like a capital F fitness person. And the thing that 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. Oh, no. That's too many notifications. And the garment was the slowest. It is, it is. My arms are constantly buzzing and I've just gotten used to it. But 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 rest. So 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 smart watches 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 smart watch. 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. I, you know, 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, 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 the Pixel Watch Day, I would not be arguing this hard, is what I would say. I also would have, like, 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 smart watch 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, one of the core beliefs of the verges 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, is the best, what is the best Google product right now? Yeah. And I think the strides thing is real, right? And the, the, like, 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 with Gemini. Yeah. Well, there's also like a phones are such a known quantity and like a solved thing where I talk to my hairstylist and I recommend, you know, I had her by a pixel. But then I'm like, have you thought about a watch? And I kind of, I kind of evangelized 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.

I'll give my side, Alison. Come. Come. So the other thing is, Alison, 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 8.

$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 going to 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, like, 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, like, high-end. stuff. You don't always get the fastest processor. You don't always get the best camera. But, like, 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. 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 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 as like, if you want to break free of that and you can like cobble together 500 bucks you can still trade in 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 um that's my that's my one thing to keep the a pixel A 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, Alison, I'm going to make you do an incredibly unfair thing. I'm sticking with the pixel 9A as my number one. V has made a, I would say, a surprisingly great case for the pixel watch. You have to break the tie. Oh my gosh. Well, I was getting this Pity, but he just ran away.

Pity is like I'm out. I want to know what is. Peti is looking at the door that's closed right now. 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 going to just pull out my phone. So we're talking about that. I would not be mad for the Pixel Watch to be number two.

To be the same. I'm just saying it's the best Android smart watch out there. It is. And so if we're talking about Google Prime, 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 if 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 and 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 award ceremony. It's getting best supporting actress, even though it didn't even think it would get nominated. And, you know, it's fine. It just came for the free alcohol and instead it got nominated. And like, that's a huge victory.

Yeah, I'm quite satisfied. So just a 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 like just the pixel pixel pro, all the, 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 smart watches 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 green. They'll all go into the green yard. Oh, God. But until then, I'm very excited about this.

All right. Thank you both for doing this to be. This was delightful. Travis, your tool worked fabulously. This was great. We're going to have to do this again. I enjoy 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 your future? And I'm very much looking forward to it. Yes. 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. Oh, which weird hair dryer? 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, V. Allison, thank you both. This is great. Thank you.

We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Anthropic. Not every question has an easy answer. And the ones that are really worth asking usually come with a head. healthy mix of inspiration and backpedaling, aha moments, and quiet meditation. When you're working through one of those problems, you want a partner to bounce ideas off of and figure out where the deeper issue lies. That's where Claude can help. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow

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Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it. Passengers who do you. been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship, disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID? Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus.

And yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning. And we assessed that individual. They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Alison Johnson's still here.

Hi, Allison. Hello, still. We're going to do a question for the Vergecast hotline. As always, you can call 866-Verg-11. You can email Vergecast at theverge.com. You can find Allison at the beach and yell your questions at her as she's dunking her phone into things. We love hearing all of your questions, and we're going to do lots more with them in the next

several weeks. We're talking about some fun stuff. So keep it locked. For now, Allison, we have a question. 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. 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 seemed...

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 a thing I've been grappling with a lot, is I think the stories you hear about people, like, wanting to get away from their phones and wanting to reset their relationship with their phones and understanding the ways that their phones are sort of problematic influences in a lot of their lives, you and I've been hearing those stories for forever.

And I think my reaction to them for the longest time has been like, okay, 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 the 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 there's a, you know, 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 I started recommending people by 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 always like, just get the Wi-Fi. It'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 this 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 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, and 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's 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. Yeah. So we're definitely not at the point of like Apple and Google and Samsung need to be worried about people abandoning their phones and 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 there, 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. 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 three 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 the apples and Samsung's of the world. But this thing, they've been at this for like a decade. And I think 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 is, 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. 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 a 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. I love that. I love that. Obviously, most people should not buy two phones. That's insane. But if you have two phones lying around, I highly recommend it.

Yeah. Yeah, my job is to use my phone as much as possible. So I'm pretty jealous right now. That's the other way. 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 is 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 theverge.com is the email 866, verse, is the hotline. 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 going to 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 when 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, Virgcast at theVurge.com. 866, Verve11. I'd love to hear from you. Until then, the Vergecast 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 Nilai 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 and home.