If you’re looking to upgrade your smartwatch and you’re trying to decide between the brand new Google Pixel Watch 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, you’ve come to the right place. Both made it onto our list of the best smartwatches, and both are strong contenders if you prefer Android over iOS.
Both watches are designed to be worn 24/7, and track an awful lot more than just your steps — both will measure your heart rate, sleep, menstrual cycle, and more. Yet as a fitness editor with over a decade's worth of experience reviewing watches, it’s always somewhere I start when looking at new watches. If you’re spending hundreds of dollars on a watch, you expect it to do the basics well.
To find out more, I strapped both watches to my wrist and took 11,000 steps, while manually counting my steps at the same time. Once I got home, I downloaded all the data and compared how close each watch got. Read on to see my results.
I took 11,000 steps with the Google Pixel 4 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 — here’s what happened
Both watches count your steps by using an internal accelerometer, which measures the swing of your arm. Each swing counts for two steps. It doesn’t matter whether you wear your watch on your dominant or non-dominant hand, or whether you’re walking with your hands in your pockets, or holding something; the accelerometer should still measure your body’s movement.
I broke my steps down into three separate walks around the city between meetings and trips to the office. Here are the results:
Walk one
Manual recording |
4,209 steps |
Google Pixel Watch 4 |
4,218 steps |
Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 |
4,214 steps |
Walk two
Manual recording |
2,688 steps |
Google Pixel Watch 4 |
2,702 steps |
Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 |
2,710 steps |
Walk three
Manual recording |
4,842 steps |
Google Pixel Watch 4 |
4,865 steps |
Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 |
4,838 steps |
Totals
Manual recording |
11,739 steps |
Google Pixel Watch 4 |
11,785 steps |
Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 |
11,752 steps |
As you can see from the results, this one is incredibly close. In fact, I’ve been doing these walking tests at Tom’s Guide for years, and this is one of the closest I’ve had to call in a long time. The Google Pixel Watch 4 counted 46 steps too many, whereas the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 was off by only 13 steps, making it pretty much perfect.
Of course, 50 steps is pretty minute over five miles. The average person takes 2,000 steps per mile, so we’re really nitpicking here, and both watches are highly accurate when it comes to counting steps.
When it comes to deciding between the two watches, things get a little trickier. Both watches start at $349, and both have a host of smartwatch and health and fitness features. From a health perspective, the Google Pixel Watch 4 has Fitbit on board, although subscribing to Fitbit’s premium service comes at an extra cost. You’ll need a Fitbit Premium subscription to use some of the more advanced health features, such as the Pixel Watch 4’s Personal AI Coach, which adjusts your daily workout intensity based on your sleep and heart rate variability.
The Samsung Watch 8 has all the fitness features tacked on over the years: advanced sleep tracking with chronotype assignments, FDA-authorized sleep apnea detection, a daily energy score, BIA body composition analysis, temperature-based cycle tracking, Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) Index of metabolic health, and more.
Both watches are excellent from a health tracking perspective, and we’ll be doing more comparisons soon, but rest assured, if you are someone who looks at your daily steps, both do so pretty perfectly, so unlike me, you don’t need to keep count.
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