If you’ve read my review on the OnePlus Buds Pro you’ll know that I recently lost them at the gym and was in desperate need of a replacement as I use my earbuds all the time. Listening to videos at home without disturbing my family, walking the dog and of course at the gym, so getting a new pair was a top priority. After a little bit of research, less I usually do out of desperation, I ended up deciding on the Pixel Buds Pro from Google.
Contents
Design
The Pixel Buds Pro are some of the plainest looking earbuds I’ve seen from the Android side of things. Everone who has an iPhone just defaults to airpods but there’s a huge amount of options out there for Android users (not to say that Apple users cant also use them). Airpods are just plain glossy white, no fancy design cues or colour accents or metallic edges. Coming from the OnePlus Buds Pro to the Pixel Buds Pro is quite a difference in design language.
The Pixel Buds Pro are entirely made out of a sort of soft touch plastic that feels quite nice actually. They give me a premium but sturdy feeling. Like Google wanted to make them feel nice to hold but also didn’t want the case or the buds looking horrifically scratched after a few months. I personally went for the most boring colour option, the “charcoal” variant. Or grey as us normal people call it. I think I would have liked for this grey to be more of a black but it’s good enough. The case remains white however as it does with every colour variant of the buds, which is a bit strange.
Comfort
The buds are the “bean” style of earbuds, if that’s the correct term. They don’t have a stem like the airpods do and instead have a larger more round shape with a flat panel on the outside of them which acts as touch controls. As with most earbuds, there’s three sizes of silicon tips in the box encapsulated in a strange little tube. I tried all three sizes and was honestly not sure if any of them were the right fit. It took me a couple of days of switching them around to end up just using the default mediums size.
The Pixel Buds app has an earbuds seal check that should be able to tell you if your earbuds aren’t seated correctly but I honestly don’t believe there’s any accuracy to this tool. I’ve tried it at least 40 times and no matter how my earbuds are sitting the result can be either a perfect fit or both earbuds are completely wrong and I cannot for the life of me tell what is actually affecting how well they’re supposedly seated in my ear. I think I’ve got the fit right now though despite the fact that the app can’t decide whether I have or not. My only complaint is that I sometimes get a sore right ear wearing them but this has happended with every pair of earbuds I’ve owned and must be due to a strange quirk of my ear anatomy.
Sound
Scientifically speaking I’ve got no idea if you could describe the sound of these buds as good. Reviews say they’re sort of above average but still not best in class which I believe is a similar description the OnePlus Buds Pro were given. Upon first using the buds I wasn’t that impressed, they sounded okay but nothing to write home about. I knew however that there was a firmware update that added a five band EQ to the Pixel Buds app to allow for tuning them to your liking. So I made sure to update them straight away. I do think the buds sound noticeably better once tuned using the EQ. I think sound is a lot to do with personal preference so if you do buy them I highly reccomend spending some time fiddling with the EQ to find out how you like it best. I personally have set my EQ to this:
From what I’ve seen of other EQ settings in the past, this is a pretty pleasing EQ style to alot of people, the V shape. I like the extra bit of thump that comes with the added bass but also like to hear some of the more hidden bits and pieces in the higher range as well to make it feel like I’m hearing some hidden details.
The one issue I have with the audio is the volume, which is such a strange thing to be bothered with but honestly it’s just so weird. The volume gets high enough I think but for some reason it feels like there’s no granular control of the volume up at the higher levels. It feels like the first 70% of the volume slider doesn barely anything and then top 30% changed the volume drastically. Like I said a very strange issue but not a dealbreaker.
Features
Active Noise Cancellation is a feature I specifically search for when looking for audio products these days. I got a pair of headphones, the Senneheiser HD4.50 BTNC many years ago that had noise cancelling and it really does make a huge difference if you’re trying to concentrate in louder environments. I personally think that the ANC on the Pixel Buds Pro is pretty impressive. It definitely block out the droning repetitive sounds that ANC should always be capable of blocking and does a decent job with other stuff. Voices do tend to make it through fairly easily especially if you don’t have music blaring but with music on as well you’re definitely not going to be disturbed.
The transparency mode is also pretty good, and can be turned on and off super quickly with the touch controls, alot faster than I could manage on the OnePlus Buds Pro. Everything sounds quite natural through the transparency mode, not robotic or tinny.
The google assistant is also available through these buds which may not sound that impressive as you can access the assistant on most other sets of earbuds but trust me these ones just do it better. Google has integrated the assistant into these so well. On other buds when you trigger the assistant it’s just like when you trigger it normally on your phone by saying “Ok Google”. The card for the assistant pops out the bottom of the screen and the assistant starts to listen.
On these however, it seems more like the assistant knows that it’s the Pixel Buds Pro that you’re using and so acts differently. You press and hold on the earbud for a second to start the assistant and for the duration that you hold your finger to your bud the assistant will continue to listen. This is much better as the assistant only listens to exactly what you want to tell it. and no more. Your input will always be perfect because you’re telling it exactly when to stop listening. There’s some nice audio cues to tell you that it’s started and stopped listening and it then answers your question or completes your command. If you just press and hold and then release your finger the assistant will also trigger and will simply give you an update on the notifications on your device.
You can also personalise what apps it will read notifications for to stop it having to read out hundreds of useless garbage from apps you don’t care about. It can also read a notifiaction to you as you receive it. A small ding will sound when you receive a notification and if you want to hear the contents you just need to tap the earbud to have the assistant read it out to you. A really well integrated set of google assistant features I have to say.
Price
Buds from Sony, Bose, Anker, B&O and so many more are flooding the market from prices as low as £20 to as high as £300. I personally don’t have £300 to be throwing at a pair of earphones so my budget was closer to £100. This is around what I payed for my OnePlus Buds Pro which I was really just looking for something similar to. I even considered just buying another pair of the OnePlus Buds Pro but I thought it best to try something new. I managed to get the Pixel Buds Pro on sale on Amazon for £129 which I think is an acceptable price. Certainly better than their retail price of like £200. I certainly wouldn’t have been buying them for that price. I think this is the perfect price for these buds. The much higher pricing just wasn’t justifiable I don’t think, and certainly not from before it had the EQ setting available.
Overalll I’m quite happy with the Pixel Buds Pro. They’re nice looking, if a bit bland. They sound good, fit well and have some pretty impressive ANC. Their integration with the google assistant is also very impressive and there overall smooth integration with the android OS is probably the most important thing that Google managed to get right with them.
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