I’m test driving a Pixel Watch, and so far I enjoy the experience. Getting disclosures out of the way at the top of this article, I received the Pixel Watch from the #TeamPixel folks to review. Neither Google nor other PR has influenced or contributed to any of my commentary on Pixel products.

The Pixel Watch is performing well. It’s a snappy and responsive wearable. Wear OS 3.5 is fun, and I enjoy the applets and FitBit integration.

I have a major issue with this watch though: the inevitable e-waste these watches will create.

A Problem of Power…

The Pixel Watch charges using a Qi wireless charging puck, which looks very similar to the Apple Watch puck charger.

It’s not easy getting the feel of a charger right.

You want the watch to align properly with the coils in the puck. Magnets help line everything up for better efficiency. You don’t want the magnet to be so strong that separating the watch from the puck requires two hands. You don’t want the magnets to be too weak, so the charger is easily separated from the watch, and it stops charging.

Google walks this line well, though I feel the magnets are a little on the light side. The watch straps can move the watch body enough that charger slides off the watch casing.

It’s a minor overall gripe for a product that SHOULD fade into the background of your day. In operation on your wrist, it’s a subtle tech companion, you just need to THINK about it a little more when you charge it.

The problem with this solution arises when we consider the number of accessories consumers will use over time.

There is No Wearable Charging Standard…

Wireless charging SHOULD be a perk.

Any Qi compatible gadget should be able to take advantage of a Qi compatible charger. In a perfect world, a Pixel Watch owner should be able to flip their phone over, turn on power sharing, and lay their watch on the back of a phone to recharge it when needed.

I still feel reverse wireless charging is a bit of a gimmick that puts additional strain on the health of a phone battery for little benefit, but in an emergency, it’s better to have the feature than not.

Unfortunately, that’s not how Pixel Watch or Apple Watch really work.

Placing a Pixel watch on a Qi charger will often result in the charge animation displaying on the watch face, but Pixel Watch seems to prevent charging once it detects that the watch isn’t connected to the official puck.

My Apple Watch does something similar. Trying to place an Apple Watch on an Android phone, it won’t charge.

This means we’re stuck mostly using the included puck and/or buying more expensive alternative “certified for” chargers.

Garbage, One Ounce at a Time…

The Apple Watch charger with a USB A cable weighs 1.1oz. The Pixel Watch charger with a USB-C cable weighs .95oz. When these cables start to wear, the user throws them away and buys a whole new charger.

Considering a single ounce of material, that doesn’t seem terrible, but multiplied by the number of products sold, the waste is shocking.

To date, Apple has sold 33 million watches, which means they’ve also shipped roughly 1,000 TONS of Apple Watch puck chargers with their watches. This does not include replacement cables.

It’s doubtful Google will catch up as significantly in this first generation of Pixel Watch, but the design of the product is already heading in a poor direction for folks concerned about e-waste.

Building a heavier cable, which doesn’t comply with any standard connector, is going to produce more waste. It’s a single solution cable that consumers won’t be able to use with any other products. It’s not repairable. It’s more expensive than a simple USB or pogo pin cable.

We should be VERY concerned about the idea of a portless iPhone, and moving consumers over to ONLY using MagSafe chargers. That will waste more electricity per charge, it’s more expensive, and creates more garbage.

This is exacerbated by similar but incompatible product functionality.

The Apple and Google watch chargers look similar, but they use magnets arranged in ways to prevent the user from swapping chargers. A Pixel Watch will be repelled by an Apple Watch charger and vice versa.

I’m tired of giving corporations a pass on these manufacturing decisions. It’s a common refrain to say:

“We shouldn’t FORCE a company to use standards!”

But, that’s what standards are for. They provide consumer benefits in operation, compatibility, and should now be designed to reduce waste and improve repair-ability.

The EU regulation mandating USB-C as the standard for chargers is already being circumvented, as that law is written for “any device that is plugged in to charge”. There isn’t any such regulation for wireless charging. Wireless charging will be better for manufacturer profits, but it will be worse for consumers in every other way.

Again, a single consumer might not notice the small additional power waste of moving from wired to wireless charging, but we’ll be multiplying that use by hundreds of millions of users. When the charger dies, you aren’t just throwing away a couple USB-C connectors, you’re throwing away magnets and Qi coils too.

This should be unacceptable.

How do we fix this?

USE F@#%ING STANDARDS!

Immediately, I get to praise Samsung’s design for the Galaxy Watch.

If Qi is to be considered a mature standard, the Galaxy Watch plays much better with third party wireless chargers and phone reverse charging modes. It uses Qi like Qi is a proper standard with interoperability.

I’m anxious to see if Samsung will copy Apple here to “encourage” more first party accessory sales.

The other solution is to make a charge puck more modular.

On older smartwatch chargers, we’d often see a shell or a case that charges the watch, and that base had a plug for a USB cable. You could use your phone charger with the puck, but if your USB cable started to degrade, you didn’t have to buy a new puck too. We could include a USB-C port on the puck to make the charger more durable.

Lastly, a more extreme solution would be adding an additional charging solution. I consider this to be less desirable, and unlikely, but it could help with the issues in charger cable waste.

My TicWatch uses a magnetic pogo pin connector, which is far less complicated than a Qi coil, and the cable weighs .65oz against the Pixel Watch’s .95oz cable.

My TicWatch can’t be charged by another type of charger, and that’s not really what we want. We could maybe see some kind of future where we get both pogo pins and Qi, but there’s only so much room in a wearable to handle this kind of power management. It still introduces the same issues with being a single gadget proprietary cable, but it literally produces less waste at end of life.

Considering Gadget End of Life…

We need to do better here.

We’re creating mountains of e-waste. We’re wasting significant amounts of power and manufacturing resources. We’re not really creating better consumer experiences.

I like the Pixel Watch. I like this watch a lot. It’s worrying me to think about how its charger will age…