Honestly. I'll stick to my 35€ Mii band. I use it since 4 years now. Battery lasts over 2½ weeks. Can still read Whatsapp/sms, control my audio, measure heart rate and wear it inside the pool.
350 bucks just because the screen is bigger? Okay.
I guess I have yet to understand why I'd want it to run a full OS. Is it because of contactless pay? I think the new Mii band version can do that too. Maybe the only feature I miss, but then on when I go shopping I have my phone with me anyways.
Smartwatches with their super short life cycles are pointless. The short battery life doesn't make things any great. A smart band can last much longer on a charge, is cheaper, and accomplishes more of the same things like the latter.
One of the things I love the most about my Pixel watch is being able to listen to Spotify on a run, without lugging my phone with me. Do any of the smart bands have this?
I'm not sure. There may be some which do. I have my smartphone with me most of the time, which makes it a non-issue. But, for your use case, pixel watch is better.
well you can install applications and stuff.
these are a completely different category of devices, and can even sometimes even operate autonomously without your phone.
(like you can connect your headphones directly to your watch, launch Spotify on it and listen to music while streaming it using a built-in sim slot (not applicable to all of them but you get it, some high end ones can do that), or play music from huge onboard memory)
they usually have full mobile cpus, and unline bands (which usually have something like a 100mhz microcontroller with 5mb of ram and can run for about 2-4 weeks from a single charge) these things usually run for 1-7 days (depending on the model) without heavy use.