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Google Pixel Watch.

Sofia Pitt

Three years after acquiring Fitbit, Alphabet is selling its first Google-branded watch with the fitness-tracking technology. It’s called Pixel Watch, and consumers can find it on store shelves starting Thursday.

I’ve been testing Google’s new Pixel products for the past several days. In addition to the Pixel Watch, there are the new phones, the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, which go on sale at the same time.

Most of the Pixel 7 phone upgrades are minor when compared with the last generation Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Last year’s phones were the first to debut Google’s self-made Tensor processor and a brand-new design. The $600 Pixel 7 and $900 Pixel 7 Pro run on Google’s new Tensor G2 chip and are the company’s latest effort to establish a foothold in the global smartphone market, which Apple and Samsung dominate.

The core of this review focuses on the Pixel Watch since it’s the first time we’re seeing how Google is incorporating Fitbit, which it bought in 2019 for about $2.1 billion.

The Pixel Watch starts at $350 for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and $400 for 4G LTE. For smartwatch users, there’s not much new here. Heartrate tracking, fitness tracking and sleep tracking have been available for years in products from Fitbit and other companies, notably Apple.

I was hoping Google’s first Fitbit tie-in would bring some more groundbreaking innovations to the wearable game, especially for the price. The new Apple Watch SE is just $250 and has the same main features as the Pixel Watch. The same is true for Samsung’s Galaxy Watch5, which costs $280.

Google’s Pixel Watch is the company’s premium watch, whereas the Apple Watch SE and Galaxy Watch 5 are base models. But the features each offer are pretty similar.

The main benefit I can see to the Pixel Watch is the beautiful, inconspicuous design. The round face and domed glass design make the Pixel Watch feel more luxurious. It’s also made out of stainless steel, which is more expensive than cheaper aluminum smartwatch base models.

Overall, it’s too little, too late for Google. There aren’t enough exciting features to justify the price, and all of the important stuff is available on other cheaper smartwatches.

Here’s what you need to know before buying the new Pixel Watch and what I noticed about the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro phones.

Pixel Watch: What’s good?

The Pixel Watch is lightweight with a lovely design. The watch face is just 41mm wide, and it emulates a water droplet, which makes it feel like a watch and not like a computer on your wrist.

I was worried that the smaller size would result in a less powerful battery. Google promises 24-hour battery life, and I was able to get a full 24-hours out of the Pixel Watch, though I didn’t use it to track my sleep.

During my first day testing the Pixel Watch, I did a workout, kept the display on full-power mode, checked email and controlled my Google Home from my wrist without needing to charge it until the next morning.

The seamless integrations with Google’s other products are another bonus. I was able to use my Pixel Watch to broadcast a message on my Google Home, announcing to my husband I was on my way home. I was also able to turn on and off lights and play music.

As a Google Calendar user, I also appreciated having these reminders on my watch.

Another benefit of the Pixel Watch is high-frequency heart rate monitoring. Most watches only measure heart rates frequently when you’re in the middle of a workout, so it doesn’t drain the battery. Google says the Pixel Watch continuously tracks your heart rate.

There’s also a cool camera feature. You can position your phone camera to take a picture, and control the camera app with your watch. You can even see what the camera is capturing.

Google Pixel Watch allows you to control your phone camera remotely.

Sofia Pitt

What’s bad?

None of its alluring features allows the Pixel Watch to stand out from smartwatches that have been on the market for a long time.

I was hoping that for Google’s first integration with Fitbit software, there would be some new technology or that the device would be more affordable.

Also, fall detection isn’t going to be immediately available on the Pixel Watch. Google says it’s coming this winter. That’s disappointing, given it’s already available on other smartwatches.

Pixel 7 & 7 Pro updates

Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro phones.

Sofia Pitt

The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro have a few nice updates, especially to the camera. The coolest feature is photo unblur, which, thanks to Google’s new Tensor 2 chip, allows you to take any blurry photo and clear it up. Even better, you can unblur any photo, not just those you’ve taken on the Pixel phone. I tried it on a blurry photo of my husband and me. Here are the results:

Here’s a photo of Sofia Pitt and her husband before using Pixel 7’s new photo “Unblur” technology.

Sofia Pitt

Here’s a photo of Sofia Pitt and her husband after using Pixel 7’s new photo “Unblur” technology.

Sofia Pitt

Like unblur, most of the updates to the new Pixel phones are software related. When it comes to the camera, Google updated night sight, which means nighttime pictures are even clearer. Again, you have the new Tensor chip to thank for that. There’s also cinematic blur on videos, which makes the subject clear and background blurry to give videos a professional quality. There are improvements to real-tone so that photos of people of different races better represent their skin color.

Google is also making our lives easier when we need to call an 800 number. When dialing 1-800 on the Pixel 7, you no longer need to wait to “Press 1 for help” or “Press 2 for reservations.” The options just show up on your screen, saving you time so you can automatically connect to the relevant department instead of speaking to a robot.

The phone also transcribes audio messages, but only if they’re sent from another Android device.

Overall, the camera is great on the new Pixel, but the updates aren’t enough to get me to switch from iOS to Android.

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SpaceX loses bid to control beach access near launch facility in Texas

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SpaceX loses bid to control beach access near launch facility in Texas

SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship booster returns to the launch pad during a test flight from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025.

Eric Gay | AP

As SpaceX awaits the results of a critical election that would turn the location of its Starbase launch site into an incorporated Texas city, lawmakers have declined to give Elon Musk’s aerospace company greater control over a main highway and public beach.

Starbase, where the Musk-led company builds and launches its rockets, is located in Boca Chica, Texas, on the Gulf Coast. Residents of the area are voting on whether to turn the small community into a city, with the election scheduled to conclude on Saturday.

On Monday, the Texas House State Affairs Committee voted against a bill that would have given SpaceX greater control over a highway and public beach access in the likely event the company is victorious in its effort to make Starbase into Texas’ newest city. Around 500 people live in the community today, including SpaceX employees and about 120 children, according to the Texas Tribune.

SpaceX has historically needed to close roads and beaches around Starbase in order to conduct test flights and launches, including for its massive Starship rockets, which Musk sees as a prelude to an eventual Mars mission. Closing off access to beaches in the area has required SpaceX to inform and attain permission from authorities in Cameron County, the southernmost county in Texas.

The frequent closures have contributed to legal complaints against SpaceX, and have drawn protests from local residents and activists, including the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and Border Workers United.

Activists in the Rio Grande Valley area, where Starbase is located, protested and formally lobbied against the bills for weeks. Related proposals could be introduced before the legislature meets again next month.

As CNBC has previously reported, SpaceX has conducted test flights or launches that have resulted in fires and harm to sensitive habitat essential to some endangered species in the area.

In one example, SpaceX was fined by the Environmental Protection Agency for polluting waters in Texas in violation of the Clean Water Act. After those fines, Musk threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach” but never filed a complaint.

Following a front-page New York Times story in July about the damages to local wildlife, including bird habitat, caused by SpaceX, Musk wrote in a post on his social media site X, “To make up for this heinous crime, I will refrain from having omelette for a week.”

That was a week before Musk formally endorsed Donald Trump for president after an assassination attempt on the then-presumptive Republican nominee at a rally in Pennsylvania. Musk then went on to spend nearly $300 million to propel Trump back the White House, and now serves as an advisor to the president with influence over spaceflight and environmental regulations.

In leading the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has helped gut the ranks of both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Aviation Administration. Under Trump’s EPA, the U.S. has promised to “reconsider” or target dozens of rules for elimination that currently limit air pollution and wastewater from energy, autos and manufacturing sectors.

Tim Hughes, SpaceX’s head of government affairs, didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor did the offices of Republican State Representatives Gina Hinojosa and Janie Lopez, who introduced the bills to give SpaceX local beach control.

WATCH: SpaceX launches third test flight of massive Starship rocket

SpaceX launches third test flight of massive Starship rocket

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Amazon considers displaying tariff surcharge on low-cost Haul products

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Amazon considers displaying tariff surcharge on low-cost Haul products

Packages with the logo of Amazon are transported at a packing station of a redistribution center of Amazon in Horn-Bad Meinberg, western Germany, on Dec. 9, 2024.

Ina Fassbender | Afp | Getty Images

Amazon is considering showing a tariff surcharge on items sold via its site for ultra-low-price items, called Haul, the company confirmed to CNBC.

“The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties.”

Punchbowl News reported earlier on Tuesday that Amazon would “soon” begin displaying the cost of tariffs alongside the price of each product, citing a source familiar with the company’s plans.

The report drew the ire of the White House, which called Amazon’s reported plans a “hostile and political act.”

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

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Alibaba launches new Qwen LLMs in China’s latest open-source AI breakthrough

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Alibaba launches new Qwen LLMs in China’s latest open-source AI breakthrough

Qwen3 is Alibaba’s debut into so-called “hybrid reasoning models,” which it says combines traditional LLM capabilities with “advanced, dynamic reasoning.”

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Alibaba released the next generation of its open-sourced large language models, Qwen3, on Tuesday — and experts are calling it yet another breakthrough in China’s booming open-source artificial intelligence space.

In a blog post, the Chinese tech giant said Qwen3 promises improvements in reasoning, instruction following, tool usage and multilingual tasks, rivaling other top-tier models such as DeepSeek’s R1 in several industry benchmarks. 

The LLM series includes eight variations that span a range of architectures and sizes, offering developers flexibility when using Qwen to build AI applications for edge devices like mobile phones.

Qwen3 is also Alibaba’s debut into so-called “hybrid reasoning models,” which it says combines traditional LLM capabilities with “advanced, dynamic reasoning.”

According to Alibaba, such models can seamlessly transition between a “thinking mode” for complex tasks such as coding and a “non-thinking mode” for faster, general-purpose responses. 

“Notably, the Qwen3-235B-A22B MoE model significantly lowers deployment costs compared to other state-of-the-art models, reinforcing Alibaba’s commitment to accessible, high-performance AI,” Alibaba said. 

The new models are already freely available for individual users on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub, as well as Alibaba Cloud’s web interface. Qwen3 is also being used to power Alibaba’s AI assistant, Quark.

China’s AI advancement

AI analysts told CNBC that the Qwen3 represents a serious challenge to Alibaba’s counterparts in China, as well as industry leaders in the U.S.  

In a statement to CNBC, Wei Sun, principal analyst of artificial intelligence at Counterpoint Research, said the Qwen3 series is a “significant breakthrough—not just for its best-in-class performance” but also for several features that point to the “application potential of the models.” 

Those features include Qwen3’s hybrid thinking mode, its multilingual support covering 119 languages and dialects and its open-source availability, Sun added.

Open-source software generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. At the start of this year, DeepSeek’s open-sourced R1 model rocked the AI world and quickly became a catalyst for China’s AI space and open-source model adoption.  

“Alibaba’s release of the Qwen 3 series further underscores the strong capabilities of Chinese labs to develop highly competitive, innovative, and open-source models, despite mounting pressure from tightened U.S. export controls,” said Ray Wang, a Washington-based analyst focusing on U.S.-China economic and technology competition.

According to Alibaba, Qwen has already become one of the world’s most widely adopted open-source AI model series, attracting over 300 million downloads worldwide and more than 100,000 derivative models on Hugging Face. 

Wang said that this adoption could continue with Qwen3, adding that its performance claims may make it the best open-source model globally — though still behind the world’s most cutting-edge models like OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini.  

Chinese competitors like Baidu have also rushed to release new AI models after the emergence of DeepSeek, including making plans to shift toward a more open-source business model. 

Meanwhile, Reuters reported in February that DeepSeek is accelerating the launch of its successor to its R1, citing anonymous sources.

“In the broader context of the U.S.-China AI race, the gap between American and Chinese labs has narrowed—likely to a few months, and some might argue, even to just weeks,” Wang said. 

“With the latest release of Qwen 3 and the upcoming launch of DeepSeek’s R2, this gap is unlikely to widen—and may even continue to shrink.”

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