These are the smartwatches that support Google Pay 2024

One of the most useful features of having a smartwatch is being able to tap and pay for items right from your wrist. You can leave your wallet at home and even your phone in your pocket or bag! There are many great WearOS smartwatches, but not all of them have this capability.

If you want to be able to buy your morning coffee or tap to pay for the subway, you'll need a smartwatch that has NFC support for contactless payments. You don't necessarily need a smartwatch with LTE: as long as your phone is nearby, it will work.

How does it work? Load your payment cards, including credit and debit cards, into the wallet application. Once loaded onto your devices, you simply call up the card and hold the watch up to the payment terminal, just like you would the wallet app on your phone or even a contactless payment card. It scans and voila! You have paid. More and more retailers and shops are accepting contactless payments, so there are very few places where you won't be able to use this feature.

This isn't a sole reason to choose a smartwatch, of course. It's a cherry on top of a great model that meets your fitness, health, wellness, notification, and design needs. Here, we have rounded up the best smartwatches with Google Wallet support. We've tested and reviewed each one, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.

Samuel Contreras

Sam has been an Android fan since first trying out the HTC Evo 4G at a Sprint store. As a phone technician, he became familiar with what matters most to those picking a new phone and accessories and has been writing about carriers and plans at Android Central since 2019.

At a glance

Best overall

While the latest Galaxy Watch 7 will look familiar to owners of previous generations, improved hardware under the lens, including upgraded sensors, makes it a strong upgrade. This phone is powered by the Exynos W1000 SoC from Samsung with 2GB of RAM in tow. With 32GB of onboard storage, the watch almost looks like a phone from the spec sheet.

You can get the Galaxy Watch 7 in two sizes: 40mm and 46mm. The larger watch is a bit heavier at 33.8g and has a 1.5-inch AMOLED display with a 425mAh battery. The smaller watch comes in at 28.8g with a 1.3-inch display and a 300mAh battery. Both sizes get the same array of sensors and features, so you’re not giving up functionality no matter which size you choose. They both come with all of the expected water and dust resistance ratings with 5ATM, IP68, and MIL-STD-810H. You can get the watch with Wi-Fi only, or with 4G LTE support.

This watch runs One UI Watch 6 on top of Wear OS 5, so Samsung Pay is the default for tap to pay, but you can quickly download and enable Google Wallet for payments. The battery life is strong, but as our Galaxy Watch 7 review points out, upgrades to the heart rate sensor remove the ability to use reverse charging with your Galaxy phone. Still, the overall improvements make it a great choice for someone looking to upgrade from an older model, but Galaxy Watch 6 owners may be underwhelmed by the fairly minor changes.

Best from Google

The Pixel Watch 3 is an improvement in almost every way over the Pixel Watch, with even improvements over the Pixel Watch 2. Despite looking almost identical on paper to the Pixel Watch 2, the seemingly minor modifications make a difference. Among these is the display that's not only brighter but also larger, especially with the now larger size option. It's also upgraded to Bluetooth 5.3, has Wi-Fi 5GHz for faster downloads, and improved battery life.

There are also cool new apps like Morning Brief, Google TV remote controls, offline Google Maps, and more. If you opt for the LTE version which would allow you to pay for items from your wrist even without your phone, it comes with two years of complimentary data, which is an added bonus.

One thing that's not great about the Pixel Watch is the use of a proprietary wireless charger. We would have preferred that it used a universal standard like Qi for wireless charging. Nevertheless, battery life is solid on this watch and the total package is still quite strong. Our review names it it Google's "strongest wearable entry yet."

Best value

If you're looking to try out a smartwatch without spending a ton of money, the TicWatch E3 from Mobvoi is still a strong option. While this watch is a couple of years old, it has been updated with Wear OS making it more useful than ever. Since it's equipped with NFC, you can use it for payment with Google Wallet. The battery is fairly large at 380mAh and with the Snapdragon 4100 CPU and 1GB of RAM under the screen, you should get over a day of battery life with strong performance.

When it comes to hardware, this watch is still quite capable with workout and sleep tracking. The watch is IP65 rated so there's nothing to worry about if you get it wet, or want to wear it while exercising in the pool. Unfortunately, it only comes in one size so it may not feel like a perfect fit.

Best last gen

The Google Pixel Watch 2 continues what was started with the first Pixel Watch with an updated design, faster hardware, and numerous other refinements found in our Pixel Watch 2 review despite looking a lot like the older model. This is one of the best last-gen Wear OS smartwatches you can buy with strong health tracking features and integration with the Fitbit app.

Speaking of software, this watch makes good use of the Fitbit app with quick access to your health tracking information. That being said, Fitbit Premium requires a subscription, so to get the most out of this watch you'll need to sign up. It would have also been nice to see multiple sizes, but the Google Pixel Watch 2 is still one of the best Android smartwatches you can get with Google Wallet payment support.

Best battery life

The OnePlus Watch 2 is a unique Wear OS watch in that it runs two operating systems with two chipsets. RTOS sips battery life to help the watch achieve up to 100 hours of run time for basic functions. This works in tandem with Wear OS, but fails to fully deliver on its best-of-both-worlds-promise as we discovered in our OnePlus Watch 2 review. Despite this, the watch still works well, even if we'd have liked to see more use from the crown button.

The watch is well-made with premium materials like stainless steel giving it a nice look and feel. You can get it in matte black or silver and shiny with a band to match. The screen is fairly large at 1.43 inches and looks great with a 60Hz refresh rate. Overall, this is a solid watch with a few unfortunate compromises, but with a nice build quality, long-lasting battery, and Google Wallet, it's still a good pick.

Best premium

The Galaxy Watch Ultra is ultra in both size and price with a $650 price tag, but with a durable design, excellent hardware features, and Samsung’s strong software and updates, this watch is still a strong premium pick. In terms of internal hardware, it’s not too different from the Galaxy Watch 7 with an Exynos W1000 with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The display, though a similar 1.5-inch AMOLED panel, can deliver up to 3000 nits of brightness so you can see it clearly while you’re outdoors in the sun.

The watch only comes with a 47mm case, which is rather large and heavy, but given its hardware credentials, many people won’t be bothered by the hefty 60.5g weight or 12.1mm of thickness. The 590mAh is also a big upgrade over the Galaxy Watch 7. As you would expect, it’s water and dust-resistant with 10ATM, IP68, and MIL-STD-810H rating. It’s also made of durable titanium.

The Galaxy Watch Ultra runs One UI Watch 6 on top of Wear OS 5. You can use Google Wallet by downloading the app and setting your default payment method to Google Wallet. According to our Galaxy Watch Ultra review, this watch is great for workouts with improved fitness tracking that matches the best trackers available. If you want a tough watch for workouts or outdoors, the Galaxy Watch Ultra could be a great choice if you don’t mind the price.

Best health tracking

The Fitbit Sense 2 feels more like a fitness tracker that grew up into a smartwatch rather than a smartwatch with health features tacked on. It has excellent battery life with up to six days on a charge. We saw up to four days with tracking enabled in our Fitbit Sense 2 review. As expected, this watch connects with the excellent Fitbit app for tracking and come with all of the sensors needed to keep track of your health.

While it didn't launch with it, Google Wallet and Google Assistant have been added to the watch with an update. What people may not love as much is that only one size is available and some functionality is limited out of the box like the ability to download or stream music from the watch.

Best fitness battery life

Our TicWatch Pro 5 review describes this watch as a Pixel Watch with a larger screen, which makes is a great choice for those who tried the Pixel Watch but found its single size offering to be a bit too small. Even so, this watch has so excellent features on its own starting with a powerful Snapdragon W5+ Gen 1 CPU 2GB of RAM for excellent performance.

The TicWatch Pro 5 has a 628mAh battery that's around twice the size of the battery in the Pixel Watch 2. With TicWatch's clever Essential Mode keeping the watch useful even when power gets low. With Wear Os and Google Wallet, this is an excellent watch if you can put up with its large size and hefty 44.35 gram weight.

If you don't quite like the look of the TicWatch Pro 5, you might be interested in the newer TicWatch Pro 5 Enduro model that features a few cosmetic updates as well as the move from Gorilla Glass to Sapphire Crystal over the display.

Best battery value

While the OnePlus Watch 2 has an attractive and durable design, it’s a bit too much for some. The OnePlus Watch 2R, on the other hand, keeps most of what makes the pricier watch great while trimming the extra bulk and weight to bring the price down.

The OnePlus Watch 2R is a fairly quick smartwatch with a Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 Gen 1 SoC with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage for Wear OS. It also has 4GB of storage for RTOS, a lower-powered system that handles basic functions like notifications. It has a 1.43-inch AMOLED panel with up to 1000 nits of peak brightness, so it should be readable outdoors.

This watch has a 46mm case made from aluminum alloy with Gorilla Glass protecting the display. It’s 13.65mm thick and has a 500mAh battery that gives it generally excellent battery life. Besides that, it even charges quickly with 100% possible in just an hour. The watch is also dust and water-resistant with a 5ATM and IP68 rating, but won’t stand up to abuse as well as some of the other watches on this list with no MIL-STD-810H rating.

As far as software, it’s a similar story to the OnePlus Watch 2 with Wear OS and RTOS available. Importantly, OnePlus has included NFC on this watch, so payment using Google Wallet is available. While this watch isn’t the best choice for fitness and doesn’t have the flashiest design, it’s still a strong pick with a reasonably low price for what you get.

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How to choose

Pick the right watch with Google Wallet

While all these Android smartwatches that support Google Wallet are excellent picks, there are a few we recommend above the rest. First, you'll need to decide whether you're more concerned about the features or the physical design. The good news is many of these options do an amazing job of combining the two.

If you're interested in a Samsung smartwatch, the Galaxy Watch 7 is the latest version with a few nice upgrades over the older Galaxy Watch 6. Sensors have been improved for better tracking, including heart rate tracking, and for some, will be worth the loss of reverse wireless charging support on a phone. You can get this watch with LTE or Wi-Fi-only.

If you want to stick with Google's designs, the Google Pixel Watch 3 is one of the best smartwatches to get for Android, and it's ready to go with Google services like Google Wallet with no tricks required. It has strong performance and its integration with the Fitbit app makes it one of the best smartwatches to get with Google Wallet payments.

Get the right fit

Some watches are fairly small and only come in one size. Samsung offers watches like the Galaxy Watch 6 in two sizes, 40mm and 44mm. The larger model has more battery capacity and a larger display that's easier to see but at the cost of more weight. The 44mm Galaxy Watch 7 comes in at 33.8g while the 30mm version is just 28.8. The new Google Pixel Watch 3 now comes in two sizes as well, 41mm and 45mm, weighing 31g and 37g, respectively.

Similarly, you can get multiple band sizes. Samsung offers a smaller band recommended for wrists between 130mm and 190mm while the large band is a good fit for wrists between 145mm and 205mm. There's some overlap, so there's some personal preference in how you like to wear your watch.

Some models, like the OnePlus Watch 2 only come in a single size, and it's a bit large. For downsizing in heft and comfort, you might prefer the OnePlus Watch 2R instead. Make sure you're picking a model that offers the right size and weight for your wrist so you can wear it comfortably all day.

What happened to Google Pay?

Google Pay has been rebranded as Google Wallet with the change finally reaching the U.S. in June of 2024 with the shutdown of the Google Pay app. The Wallet app will offer all of the same features that you already enjoy, with some added benefits such as the ability to store things like your Driver's License or ID, in addition to your various debit, credit, and promotional cards.

Despite the name change, you are still able to keep using it as you have already been using Pay while out and about. Google is just trying to provide a true digital wallet, giving you everything you need on the go.