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If it’s Apple AirPods Pro are the benchmark to measure the quality of any new pair of wireless headphones, then Google has won with the new Pixel Buds Pro. Not only do they sound better than Apple’s flagship headphones, they cost $50 less, have better battery life, and come in prettier colors.
These headphones work well with iPhone devices, but their full features shine when paired with an Android device. For starters, they come together quickly. You can easily connect to multiple devices and switch between them, so if you have your headphones on while watching a movie on your laptop and a call comes in, you can just answer the phone without doing anything. Best of all, these buds never fell off during my plodding runs, feature wireless charging, and did I mention a cute egg-like case? What more do you need for podcasts and Beyoncé?
Form fitting buds
The best part about the Pixel Buds Pro is how comfortable they are in your ears. The medium-sized buds are peanut-shaped and easily fit into the medium-sized ear canal. I tried to stop these passengers with their heads out of my ears. I took them on a 7 mile run through the woods. After said run, I showered with them. Despite the lack of ear fins, they stay in there perfectly – they use the same standard silicone ear tips you find on most headphones, but the overall ergonomics make them hug my ear holes.
The outer surface of each bud has a few colors. My favorite is tangerine orange (or what Google calls coral), but my review unit was discreet gray, which looks nice but isn’t that exciting. To be honest, one reason to get these over AirPods is the aesthetic difference between Apple’s monolithic white and Google Play’s pastels.
Using them is as easy as AirPods. The exterior of each bud is touch-sensitive, with familiar controls. Tap once to play or pause, double to skip songs, and long press to turn active noise cancellation on or off, depending on how you want to hear the world. I also like that swiping left or right adjusts the volume – too often headphones with touch sensors forgo volume controls for playback.
These buds are also plugged into Google Assistant, so you can shout “Hey Google” and ask it to set a timer or play a certain song. It’s handy for the few times I don’t want to touch my phone, but it’s still a novelty in public, so you might not feel like you’re yelling at yourself. To each their own, I guess.
Like the controls, the case the buds come in is cleverly designed. It’s hard to put the headphones into the wrong slot, and I love how flat they sit on the wireless charging pad between listening sessions. Holding is also good. Like a little Tic Tac.
into the music
The single 11-mm dynamic driver in each Pixel Buds Pro delivers an incredibly robust soundstage, thanks in large part to Google’s excellent digital signal processing and noise cancellation.
Music comes with presence and personality, especially in the bass, which tends to punch and separate more than I’ve heard from previous Pixel Buds. When listening to my test playlist, the midrange is the only place where the knobs lose some definition. That’s to be expected when a single driver has perfect bass response and sparkling highs (and performs well) – you tend to miss something, somewhere. Still, I’m glad Google’s engineers are focusing on areas that most people care about.
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