The Google Pixel Watch 4 might actually be repairable

If something breaks on your Google Pixel Watch 3 (or an older model), there are no repair options: you have to replace it. That less-than-ideal situation may change in time for the launch of the Google Pixel Watch 4 next year, however.

As reported by Wired, new comments from Nicole Azores – who’s a manager of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google – suggest that Google is thinking about modifying the future design of the Pixel Watch so that it can be more repairable.

“Watches and wearables are still fairly nascent, and we are thinking through how to make this repairable,” Azores said at the Climate Week NYC panel hosted by Back Market. “We want to make sure that all of our products eventually become repairable.”

“I think watches being so new as a category, there are some design elements that need to be considered on how we make them repairable,” Azores added, though there’s been no official comment from Google more broadly.

Warranties and repairs

As you’ll gather from our Google Pixel Watch 3 review, it’s the first in the series to be available in two sizes, and the smartwatch comes with a brighter display and an improved internal processor compared to the Google Pixel Watch 2.

The Pixel Watches are covered by a warranty for a year, so you can swap them out for free replacements if something breaks that isn’t your fault. You can also choose to extend that coverage with a Preferred Care plan, which costs extra.

However, if you clumsily drop your wearable and smash the screen, you can’t take it to a repair shop in the same way as you can with a Pixel phone – which is bad both for users, and for the environment in terms of e-waste.

There’s no timeline on this change yet, and considering the lead times on new gadgets it might be optimistic to expect improved reliability in time for the Pixel Watch 4. If Google sticks to this year’s schedule next year, we should see it in August 2025.

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Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you’ll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.