Having switched back to my Pixel 7 Pro smartphone, I decided to give Google’s first smartwatch, the Pixel Watch, a chance. I will wear it side-by-side with my Apple Watch temporarily for a side-by-side comparison and then decide my next steps.

And so far so good: I have a vague and perhaps incorrect memory of the initial round of Pixel Watch reviews—remember, it first shipped last October—as being skewed to the negative, but using my Apple Watch experience as an obvious barometer, it’s clear to me that even this 1.0 version of the product is a viable alternative for Pixel fans. It’s a high-quality, premium wearable supported by what appears to be a reasonable software platform.

But the Pixel Watch is also a Fitbit, and this is where things get a little more nuanced, especially for someone like me who pretty much just wants a fitness tracker with maybe a few extras. By comparison, true smartwatches like Apple Watch and Pixel Watch are more sophisticated software platforms where fitness tracking is but one set of features.

I have thoughts about that. But for now, I will just say that my early experience with the Pixel Watch has been mostly positive. The device arrived at my front door Thursday afternoon, and so I set about setting it up and, for now at least, replacing the Fitbit Charge 5 I had been retesting as I wind down my time with the Apple Watch. (Fitbit doesn’t support using two devices at once, so I had to replace it with the Pixel Watch.)

The packaging is familiar and generic, with the post-Apple look and feel that everyone uses now. Unlike with Apple Watch, everything comes in a single box, which is preferable and semi-obvious, and the box contains a proprietary USB-C wireless charger (but no charging brick) and a shorter band in addition to the watch itself.

Disappointingly, the longer of the two bands is too short for my large wrists: I’ve got it on the furthest notch and it’s too tight, so if I keep this, I will need a longer band. I specifically researched this and thought it would be OK, but then I’m using a different type of band on the Apple Watch and I think a woven band might work better for me with Pixel Watch too. Or some third-party band maybe. (I had to buy longer third-party bands for my Fitbit for the same reason.)

Initial setup was simple enough but time-consuming. I plugged the charger into a power supply, attached the Pixel Watch, waited for it to boot up, and then correctly determined that the hieroglyphic graphic it displayed meant I needed to bring my phone closer to it. When I did so, a Bluetooth Fast Pair pop-up appeared on the Pixel 7 Pro, just as it had for the Pixel Buds Pro earbuds that I just returned. But this time I couldn’t just pair the device, I had to download a Google Pixel Watch app from the Google Play Store first.

OK, fine. With that done, the Fast Pair panel told me that it was connecting to the watch, asked me to confirm the PIN the watch started displaying, and then gave me a few privacy-related options to OK related to location and diagnostics. And then, after signing in to my Google account and agreeing to a “Google Device Arbitration Agreement,” I was presented with a wizard that stepped me through the initial setup.

This process held few surprises but contained many steps. Watch orientation. Band switching. Fitbit account connection. Google Assistant setup, itself a multi-step process. Lock configuration, with PIN and pattern choices (plus no lock). Google Wallet. Third-party apps to choose from and install, none interesting. And then the inevitable software update, which actually didn’t take all that long. All told, about 10 minutes of interaction.

Of course, that wasn’t everything: once Pixel Watch was set up, I was prompted to open the Pixel Watch app I had just installed, connect my Fitbit account (where I was prompted to replace my Charge 5 with the new device), and then explore all my configuration options. As expected, there are multiple watch face options, and though I stuck with the default, I customized the colors. I ignored the Fitbit Premium offer for now (6 months for free). And I looked through, but did not change, the default set of tiles, which are the app-based screens that appear on the watch’s face when you swipe left or right. The defaults look fine for now, though I put Exercise at the front, followed by Main goal, Daily heart rate, Sleep, Next event, Forecast (weather), and Google Maps.

I also spent some time looking through all the settings in the Pixel Watch app, but I don’t believe I changed much.

The Watch itself is quite nice. I do prefer its smaller, round shape and size to that of my larger and squircle-shaped Apple Watch. It has big bezels, and a future version with smaller bezels and a bigger screen would be nice. But for the most part, I can see the display well and interact with it accurately. (With one exception, noted below.)

As with the Apple Watch, the Pixel Watch sports both a physical crown, which acts as a button and a scroll wheel, and a secondary button. I’m not sure how intuitive this would be to someone else, but after using Apple Watch, I transitioned to this pretty easily. Navigation is straightforward: you swipe left/right to get to tiles, down to access quick settings, and up to see notifications. You can press the crown to access apps from the home (watch face) screen or to go home from an app. The secondary button is used to access recent apps.

I woke up earlier than usual today, so it wasn’t the best night to compare sleep results. But I went on a 40-minute walk this morning and was able to see how tracking that compared to doing so with Apple Watch. And the process is similar, meaning you have to manually start and stop tracking. Apple Watch will notice an activity like walking after 10 minutes or so and ask you if you want to track it, and I don’t believe Pixel Watch does that. But Fitbit trackers and smartwatches automatically track walking, running, and other similar exercises, and I know Pixel Watch doesn’t do that. I assume it’s a battery life concern, but it’s also a weird functional regression.

Out in the bright sunny morning, I checked both devices from time to time and ran into an unexpected issue: where my Apple Watch display was bright, colorful, and easily readable, I couldn’t see the Pixel Watch display at all. I tried a few times and finally gave up. So when I got back, I went to turn off the walk tracking and could only barely see the display. Check the quick settings, I found that the brightness was just too low, which is semi-obvious, though adaptive brightness was on and should have accounted for the bright day. I will keep checking on this one since seeing the screen outside is obviously a requirement.

I don’t have a lot of data to examine after one day, obviously, but having spent the past two weeks comparing the Fitbit Charge 5 to the Apple Watch, I suspect what each does measure will be similar, and what little I have so far does match up well enough. For example, Apple Watch reports my steps as of this writing as 5609 and Pixel Watch reports 5913.

From a fitness tracking perspective, Apple and Fitbit/Google take different approaches. There’s a lot to that, but from a high level, Apple is all about closing three rings (move, exercise, and stand), while Fitbit lets you choose from a few main goals, with steps being the default. Among other things, Apple Watch will remind me to stand each hour, while Pixel Watch will remind me to move.

Apple Watch can get a bit chirpy. It chimes in the morning when it thinks I’ve woken up but is often wrong (and in many cases needs to be told I’ve been up after having been so for a long time). It then chimes to motivate me to exercise that day. It chimes each mile during a walk or similar exercise. It chimes when it thinks it’s time for bed. On and on and on. It gets annoying. Pixel Watch doesn’t do that, so I guess that’s a win.

From a battery life and charging perspective, the Pixel Watch and Apple Watch appear to be ballpark similar enough to be considered identical in day-to-day use. That is, the Apple Watch appears to last a bit longer and definitely charges a bit faster than the Pixel, but both need to be charged daily and the experience is similar. I like that the Pixel Watch display just comes on when the device is off my wrist, though. You have to fiddle with Apple Watch to see what it’s doing.

Based on my experience with the Pixel Buds Pro, I don’t want to pre-declare how I think this is going to go. But it’s probably OK to note that I was leaning toward sticking with a Fitbit tracker going into this. And that I like the Pixel Watch more than I thought I would.

So we’ll see what happens. I will use this device for a reasonable amount of time and report back.