I bought the knock-off Pixel Watch and Fitbit Air bands, and it’s crazy how good they are [Gallery]

I love swapping out the bands on my Pixel Watch 5 and Fitbit Air, but Google’s official options are not cheap. It doesn’t take long to find a plethora of knock-off Pixel Watch and Fitbit Air bands around the web and, as it turns out, they’re actually really good.

Over the past few generations, I’ve collected a ton of Pixel Watch bands and, at first, that was almost entirely first-party bands. For the first couple of years of Pixel Watch, third-party bands were either non-existent or of terrible quality, but they’ve gotten a lot better.

Last year, I showcased some knock-off Active Sport bands that, for $8, very effectively filled the gap for me while Google’s lineup was lacking some colors I wanted.

Since then, I’ve tried others. The most recent batch is a 6-pack of Pixel Watch bandsthat are copies of Google’s standard “Active” band. They’re made from silicone, not the fluorelastomer from past generations, nor the “Hydrogenated Nitrile Butadiene Rubber (HNBR)” used on Pixel Watch 5. But, in action, it gets the job done.

The bands sit somewhere between Google’s small and large sizes and slot into the Pixel Watch 5’s mechanism perfectly. If you handed this to me and said it was an official band from Google, I’d probably believe you.

To get this level of quality at such a low price is wild, all while getting colors that, again, Google doesn’t make. I found this while just wanting a purple band, but the price tag pushed me to just buy a whole pack, and the striking deep red included sneakily became one of my favorites.

Pixel Watch isn’t alone here – third-party knock-off bands for Fitbit Air are very good, as my colleage Damien Wilde has pointed outrepeatedly.

I originally bought the Stephen Curry edition Fitbit Air and, long story short, I don’t have that official band anymore. But the $9 (currently even cheaper!) knock-off I bought on Amazon is quite literally identical in quality, feel, and even the details. The only thing it’s missing is the Stephen Curry badge (which, frankly, I don’t miss anyway), but it still has that little piece of added material where the wordmark would have been.

The same goes for the matching band I picked up for my Pixel Watch 5.

Google doesn’t sell this band on its own, which is annoying, but the knock-off I bought is basically identical to what I felt during our hands-on with the official one back in August, though this one doesn’t have the space for the Stephen Curry badge the real one does. The lugs connecting to the watch are also different and not nearly as stylish, but I’m absolutely not complaining here.

Is it possible that Google’s supply chain is producing these near-identical versions? Given the quality at play, I really wouldn’t be surprised! That said, a lot of these are simple copies. It’s not all that hard to spin up generic versions of products like these.

I’ll still happily pick up some of Google’s official bands because it’s hard to beat some of those color options but, for the most part, it’s getting hard to go wrong with the knock-off Pixel Watch bands, and even more so with the Fitbit Air. The simpler tracker gets even better third-party options seeing as Google made the mounting mechanism free for everyone.

Whatever the case, third-party / knock-off Pixel Watch and Fitbit Air bands are in a really good place right now, and that’s refreshing after a few years of using this lineup every day.

More on Pixel Watch / Fitbit Air:

• Google confirms something was draining Pixel Watch batteries, fix rolling out
• The Metal Mesh Fitbit Air band is more versatile than you think
• Google Health 5.11 rolling out expanded 100+ activity detection to Fitbit Air, Pixel Watch

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