The Apple Watch Series 11 and Google Pixel Watch 4 are two of the best smartwatches on the market. Both are designed to be worn 24/7, and can keep track of everything from your heart rate variability to your menstrual cycle. But if you’re spending hundreds of dollars on a smartwatch, you expect it to do the basics well, so I set out to test just that.
I walked 20,000 steps with both the Apple Watch 11 and Google Pixel Watch 4 strapped to my wrist, while manually counting my steps as I went, using a trusty clicker counter. I split these steps up over several walks, and when I got home I downloaded all of the data to see which watch was more accurate. Read on to find out what happened.
I walked 20,000 steps with the Apple Watch 11 vs Google Pixel Watch 4 — here’s which watch came out on top
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.
If you own an Apple Watch, you’ll also know that Apple doesn’t include step count data in its workout summaries. You can see your overall steps for the entire day, but not how many steps you took on a particular walk (probably because steps aren’t actually that useful a metric, but annoying for me when writing these articles.) I downloaded the Pedometer+ app to my watch in order to get this data.
Here are the results from each walk, plus my total:
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Manual recording | Apple Watch 11 | Google Pixel Watch 4 |
Walk 1 | 4,209 steps | 4,089 steps | 4,218 steps |
Walk 2 | 2,688 steps | 2,630 steps | 2,702 steps |
Walk 3 | 4,842 steps | 4,684 steps | 4,865 steps |
Walk 4 | 3,147 steps | 3,109 steps | 3,186 steps |
Walk 5 | 5,506 steps | 5,458 steps | 5,658 steps |
Totals | 20,392 steps | 19,970 steps | 20,629 steps |
As you can see from the results, the winner is clear — the Google Pixel Watch 4 was far more accurate at counting my steps, overcounting by 237 steps. The Apple Watch 11, on the other hand, missed 422 steps. This isn’t to say Apple's wearable ius useless, however. The average person takes 2,000 steps per mile, so missing a couple of hundred steps over the course of 20,000 isn’t too big a deal. That said, the Google Pixel Watch 4 was ever so slightly closer to my manual recording so if accuracy is what you're after, pick up the Pixel Watch.
The Google Pixel Watch 4 also came out on top when I repeated the test with the Google Pixel Watch 4 and Garmin Venu 4 here.
As mentioned above, both watches are designed to do a lot more than just count your steps. Both watches are packed with sensors and trackers to help you live a healthier life, with HRM, ECG, SpO2 and Skin Temperature sensors on board. Both are similarly priced, the Apple Watch 11 starting at $399 and the Google Pixel Watch 4 starting at $349, and both have AI health coaches on board.
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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