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Tech companies always love to make big claims. Like the one Google made about the Pixel Watch 5: promised health, wellness and Wear OS improvements aside, there was one feature that my ears pricked up for. Google stated that the Pixel Watch 5 included its most accurate GPS route tracking for exercise. More interestingly, Google said that tracking outperformed the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro.
I’ve used both of those smartwatches and I can confidently say they are two of the best performing smartwatches available for GPS route tracking. I’ve listened to other smartwatch brands talk big about Apple and Garmin-beating performance. Did I really believe Google was going to deliver? I was sceptical, given my experience of the GPS tracking on previous Pixel Watches.
But I still had my Fenix 8 Pro and Watch Ultra 3, which made for the perfect opportunity to see these promised performance gains for myself. Having just recently made it through the millions in the ballot to secure a spot in the double-day 2027 London Marathon, my mind immediately went to the part of the marathon route I know causes major issues with GPS.
I grabbed my watches, jumped on a train, and then onto the DLR tram service to the Isle of Dogs, where the nearby tall skyscrapers always create difficult GPS conditions. I ran miles 18-20 of the London Marathon course, and then did it in reverse, to put the Pixel Watch 5’s big GPS claims to the test.
Before getting into how the testing went, it’s worth drilling down into just how Google says its GPS tracking outperforms the competition. Like the Fenix 8 Pro and Watch Ultra 3, the Pixel Watch 5 includes dual-band GPS. This means it can communicate to major satellites responsible for calculating our precise locations over two frequency bands. This can help to boost tracking accuracy when moving through tall buildings, densely forested environments and even during adverse weather conditions.
Dual band GPS setups have started to appear across a range of smartwatches and in my own testing, dual band-packing watches from Apple, Garmin and Suunto have delivered the strongest performance.
Along with the latest in GPS technology in tow, Google says it uses data it has already captured of buildings in Google Maps alongside AI to better account for the areas where GPS signals bounce off buildings. It also used GPS reference stations it has positioned around the world to help deal with the impact that atmospheric conditions can have on GPS tracking.
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If you’ve used a smartwatch with GPS, then you’ll know it’s a feature that does have a notable impact on battery drain. This is something Google had to think about here. Google has made the decision to compress the raw GPS data captured on the watch and then send it to a server where it’s processed and corrected, then synced to the Google Health app. So the processing mainly take place off the watch or after your run, ride or hike.
I decided I’d do two runs. The first would be starting from mile 18 up to mile 20 on the London Marathon course and go a little further to run 5k. I’d then stop the watches and do the route in reverse.
I had a trimmed down version of the marathon route uploaded to my Garmin Fenix 8 Pro as it was the easiest watch to do it on. I also decided that I would wear the Pixel Watch 5 on one wrist and then swap over to the other for the second run, while having the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Fenix 8 Pro sat on the opposite wrist. I had to make sure that the two smartwatches weren’t sitting too close together to prevent any accidental button presses that might impact on capturing the correct distance.
It’s also worth adding that I decided to use native workout tracking apps on all three watches to record runs.
On the first run, I had the Pixel Watch 5 on my right wrist with the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro on the left wrist. I uploaded the routes to the very handy comparison tool IloveGPX. Before that though, I had to convert the route file captured by the Pixel Watch 5 from a TCX file to a GPX one. Thankfully it was quite easy.
Even before I began zooming into the GPS tracks I could already see some red squiggles, which belonged to the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro. On closer inspection, all three watches were pretty close to each other before the Fenix 8 Pro track started to noticeably drift off. Google and Apple’s tracks for the majority of the run remain close together.
