Do you know what a spudger is? I did not until I was already fingertips deep into performing open-heart surgery on the Google Pixel Watch 4 and realized that the implement, a plastic stick with one pointy end and one flat end, was already in my hand.

I was following iFixit instructions to try a full screen replacement on the watch from the comfort of my own home, and spudging turned out to be a key part of the process. The spudger is used for pressing, prying, pulling and coaxing the watch components in and out of place without damaging the metal elements.

But no sooner had I got to grips with it than I suddenly had to swap it for a pair of tweezers with pincers sharper than scorpion tails. I wielded them clumsily while trying to peel off a sticker holding the screen connector together. The instructions warned me that in extracting this well-secured scrap of tape I must be careful not to damage it.

I began to sweat as I tussled with both the sticker and my frustration. If you have ever tried to remove chewing gum from your hair you will understand what I mean, though you cannot just fill a smartwatch with peanut butter and hope it still works.

It is not exactly like I have experience in the field. Call me an ambitious amateur.

Once, for example, around the age of 10, I helped my dad repair our boxy television set with a soldering iron. On a couple of occasions in recent years, under close supervision from the iFixit team at tech shows, I have tinkered with laptops and phones. I never electrocuted myself in physics class while playing with circuits. I am also pretty good at jigsaw puzzles. That is basically it.

But I wanted to make a go of it because I fundamentally believe product repairability is important. Extending the lifecycle of products means less waste, less need to constantly mine the Earth for rare minerals and less impact on vulnerable communities around the world, including the use of child labor in dangerous conditions. It also means we can get our money worth out of our ever-more-expensive devices.

Increasingly we have the right to repair our own electronics thanks to regulations that compel companies to design their products for easy repair and to make parts and instructions accessible. But it is one thing to repair a laptop or even a phone. Wearables, from the laudably compact to the fiendishly tiny, are a whole other degree of difficulty for both manufacturers and consumers.

By early 2025 every US state had introduced some form of right-to-repair legislation, with 10 laws currently in effect. Meanwhile in Europe the EU Right to Repair Directive is set to come into force at the end of July. Theoretically we should be starting to see repairability and parts availability trickle down into the tech we buy. In reality progress is painstakingly slow.

We are kind of at the point where right to repair has passed legally, says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, an advocacy group that offers repair guides for high-tech consumer gear and sells tools and replacement parts.

But compliance? It is uneven, Wiens says.

Tiny tech, big problems

As I set out on my repair adventure I felt pretty intimidated. Not because the stakes are particularly high, but because I would like to be able to prove that even for me, an idiot with a screwdriver, this is possible. Because if I can do it, so can you.

The Pixel Watch 4, which came out last year, was an obvious candidate for me to tear down and then rebuild, because Google has been proactive in making this wearable repairable in a way that no other smartwatch maker has yet attempted.

They kind of swung for the fences early, and they are out ahead, says Wiens.

The company reengineered its watch from the ground up, without adhesives, so someone like me could disassemble and reassemble it without breaking it. Possible, that is, but not always straightforward.

Throughout history watchmakers have been considered artisans as much as they are technicians. Working on watches of all stripes requires dexterity, patience, precision and a steady hand, none of which are qualities I innately possess, nor have I done much to cultivate.

I could have made this process easier for myself by choosing something larger and less fiddly to repair, but at this point in time there is a well-established repair ecosystem for phones, laptops and bigger electronics, whether that be local repair shops or cafes, company-led efforts such as Apple support for self-service repair.

Examine the spectrum of iFixit scores and it is clear that many phones still pose a challenge, especially the newer foldable variety, but as a category repairability has improved significantly over the past decade.

The same repair ecosystem and focus on repair from tech companies are not currently in place for wearables.

That is an issue, because the number of wearables has been skyrocketing as we adorn ourselves with tech to track our sleep and our workouts, to provide the soundtrack to our lives and to observe and record the world around us. I am talking not only about earbuds and smartwatches but also newer gadgets including smart rings, smart glasses and a whole slew of niche AI peripherals. These items do not come cheap and ideally will last at least as long as, if not longer than, our phones. If we cannot repair them they will quickly end up in the trash, adding to the growing mounds of e-waste piling up around the world.

A study published in Nature last December by researchers from Cornell University and the University of Chicago found that demand for health-focused wearables could approach 2 billion units by 2050. Cumulatively they have the potential to generate 100 million tons of e-waste, increasing pollution risks to communities worldwide.

By far the biggest contributor to these devices carbon footprint is the production of their printed circuit boards. The researchers concluded that if devices are designed to be modular and repairable their circuit boards can be reused time and again, extending their lifecycles and reducing the need to constantly mine for new materials.

Here we have both a problem and a solution, so why are tech companies not doing more to implement it? For a long time there has been a perception that wearable tech is simply impossible to repair, which has led many companies to avoid trying. Instead they tend to rely solely on recycling and trade-in programs to offset the environmental damage.

When it comes to repairability wearables pose without a doubt the most challenging frontier of consumer tech, says Matt White, head of sustainable design at deep tech powerhouse Cambridge Consultants. But it is a challenge that he has first-hand experience overcoming.

I first met White at CES 2026 in a dimly lit Las Vegas hotel suite with his colleagues. The show is famous for its endless stream of shiny consumer tech launches, but the team brought something very different, a proof-of-concept repairable smartwatch called Ouroboros.

The idea behind the project was to identify the roadblocks to repairability, whether engineering, cultural or legislative. What the team discovered, says White, is that building a truly repairable product requires not only a determination from its inception but also a commitment to it as a north-star priority throughout the design process.

It is a business transformation, it is not just a product design transformation, he says. That takes a lot of guts, it takes a bit of a leap of faith and a bit of a bet on innovation for companies to do that. I think that the reward is there, but it requires the right kind of mindset.

How Google reinvented the Pixel Watch

Google is already seeing that reward, even though it released the Pixel Watch 4 only last summer.

The reception after launch has been better than we could have hoped for, says Francis Hoe, group product manager for Google Pixel Watch.

First up there was the acknowledgment from iFixit, which awarded the device a 9 out of 10 repairability score, that Google had created the most repairable smartwatch on the market. Most watches like the popular Apple Watch score 3 or 4 out of 10 at most.

This was validating, Hoe says, but he also appreciates the way the community of Pixel Watch owners has responded. He says he loves to go on Reddit and see people promoting its serviceability as well as discussing how easy they found the watch to repair.

It is a little surprising, he says. But it is good to see that feedback.

One such Reddit user who completed a successful repair said the iFixit guide was easy to follow and it took them less than an hour, much better than my 90 minutes.

I am familiar with doing maker projects, soldering, etc, but I think anyone could do this pretty easily, they said. I do have small hands, so not sure if that helped.

There were some nerves around how people would actually find the process of repairing the device, according to Hoe. And having taken it apart and put it back together again I can understand why. On the iFixit website it ranks replacing the screen on the Pixel Watch 4 as moderate on the difficulty scale and says it should take between 30 minutes and one hour.

By the time I tightened the final screws in the Watch I was about to hit the 90-minute mark. But ultimately despite the fiddliness of the operation I completed it.

The remarkable thing about the Pixel Watch 4 is that from the outside it looks almost identical to the Pixel Watch 3, but the two products share almost no DNA. Even the screws that hold the watch together, one hidden under each watch band, are a new addition. Previously there was just glue.

The assumption was that once the device was sealed that would be it, says Hoe. Now that things have to go in and out both the components and the order in which they are assembled have been completely rearchitected. Many parts have been shrunk, the haptic engine was swapped for an alternative and the connectors needed to be extra robust to survive being attached and detached. The battery was a particular challenge.

If the battery gets smaller battery life gets worse and that is obviously a huge selling point of wearable devices, says Hoe. It meant fundamentally changing our battery strategy.

The last thing Google wanted to do was make any part of the Pixel Watch experience worse for the sake of repairability, whether that be reducing battery life, increasing the device size or making it less waterproof.

Tech companies often use the difficulty of waterproofing as an excuse for not prioritizing modularity and repairability, says Ben Hatton, connected devices analyst at CCS Insight. But the direction of travel is beginning to change.

Seeing things like the Google Watch and smartphones becoming more repairable but not sacrificing IP68 and 69 ratings for it proves that actually that is not really a compromise that has to be made, he says. That major argument against preventing water ingress is starting to be maybe debunked a little bit.

Those IP ratings indicate resistance to dust and water infiltration. The 6 in the first position indicates the highest level of dust protection while the 8 or 9 in the second position are high marks for water resistance.

In this article:

Tiny tech, big problems

How Google reinvented the Pixel Watch