TL;DR
- Apple’s large-scale study found the Watch Series 12 more accurate than the Pixel Watch 4 overall for heart-rate tracking.
- The Pixel Watch 4 matched Apple during cycling and narrowly beat it at rest under two accuracy measures.
- The newer Pixel Watch 5 and Galaxy Watch 9 missed the test because Apple selected competitors available by June.
The Pixel Watch has spent generations closing the health and fitness gap with established wearables, even becoming a strong Apple Watch alternative for Android users. Apple has now fired back with a that puts its Series 12 ahead of the — although Google’s current never got to compete.
Apple says the Watch Series 12 recorded significantly lower overall heart rate error than every tested rival across workouts and everyday activities. Despite losing the overall contest, the Pixel Watch 4 was among Apple’s closest smartwatch challengers in several measurements. The two watches were statistically inseparable during outdoor cycling under the study’s main Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) calculations.