Google - Pixel Buds True Wireless In-Ear Headphones - Almost Black

I'm guilty of having way too many headphones and if you've read any of my previous reviews you'll know that I have an addiction to them, so I had to add the Google Pixel Buds to my collection. I reviewed these using an Android based tablet, with the latest firmware for the Pixel Buds and also installed and configured the earbuds using the Google Pixel Buds application. First off these Pixel Buds are adorable looking and feel very high quality. The build quality of the case is fantastic and I love the matte finish. The earbuds I received were "Quiet Mint" and were a very pleasant shade of green. The case itself comes with a USB-C to USB-A charging cord, different sized earbud tips, the charging case and the ear buds. All of the items included are high quality and the packaging was fantastic. You know you're getting a premium product when opening up these headphones for the first time. Being equipped with Bluetooth 5, these ear buds will work with any device capable of a Bluetooth connection, but will excel when paired with a Pixel or Android device. I'll be reviewing these as being used with an Android device. I do not have a Pixel phone, but all features are available with any Android device that is current in version and has the Google Pixel Buds app installed. The app will allow your Google Pixel Buds to download firmware updates and lets you customize features such as turning on Google Assistant and spoken notifications. One exclusion that I did notice was that you were not able to customize the gesture controls as these seem to be hard coded into the ear buds. These Pixel Buds fit great in my ears. Fit is a pretty subjective topic, but these do come with 3 different sized tips and little hooks that put a little bit of tension on the inside of your ears to keep them in place. These didn't fall out during normal activity, but I wasn't able to work out with them during the review period, which is a shame since they are rated to be water and sweat resistant. I believe working out with these would be fine as the fit was very secure and I never felt like they were working their way out of my ears like I have with other headphones in this price range. The sound of these Pixel Buds is fantastic. I played a variety of music through and all of it came out clear and defined, even at higher volumes. Mids and highs were great, but they may be lacking on the low end for some people as the sound is very neutral or flat. I find this great as I dislike headphones that boost sound to fit a certain profile. There is an "extra bass" option in the Pixel Buds app that you can toy with if you'd like to adjust the bass to be a bit heavier, there is however no customizable equalizer to toy with. Gesture control is for the most part fantastic. Swiping back and forth on either ear piece adjusts the volume and feels very natural, play, pause and skipping by tapping are all very natural feeling as well. This natural feeling stops when you turn on Google Assistant though, as to activate that you have to press and hold the ear bud and this happens accidentally all too often when taking an ear bud off or adjusting one. I suggest turning off Google Assistant in the Pixel Buds app if you find yourself accidentally activating it. Once paired with an compatible Android device you'll be able to see the battery life of the case and each individual ear bud natively on the device. You can use each ear bud independently which is a fantastic feature and calls came through loud and clear. No issues with the mic or hearing people on either end of the call. Charging the Pixel Buds was easy via either the cable or wirelessly charging them via a compatible Qi charger. Now the big elephant in the room is noise cancellation. These do not have active noise cancelling, but they do passively block out a lot of noise due to the way they fit into your ear canal. I think at this price point it's not a huge omission, but still one to consider when purchasing these. For a little more you can get comparable headphones that do offer active noise cancellation and a transparency mode. This is not a deal breaker for most people, but for some I am sure this would be a valid concern to rethink this purchase and the reason why I give it 4 stars instead of 5. Pros: Comfort Style Build Quality Android Integration Sound Quality Cons: No Active Noise Cancellation Fit May Be Hit or Miss

I'll start off this review with the bottom line. If you own a Pixel, do not even hesitate to purchase these. As far as I am concerned, these should be included in the box with the phone. Continue reading if you care to learn more about why I am saying this. From the moment these are unboxes, the premium look and feel to the experience is evident. The egg shapes housing the buds call home, is made of a rough and easy to handle material. Everything feels extremely solid and well made. The "egg" is on the larger side due to housing a battery which is able to charge the buds on the go. When popping open the top, you are greeted with the buds themselves. I my case, two mint green buds that resemble a candy like appearance. They are really a lot of fun to look at. One of the things that draws me to the Pixel line of product is often this initial feeling of "fun". The buds themselves are small and low profile in design. If you have your Pixel phone near by, one the top is open, you are greeted with a "connect pixel buds" notification that IMMEDIATELY comes up. Clicking "connect" instantly pairs them and they are ready to use. Google calls this "fast pair" and it is quite a magical experience. These also work on iOS devices, though connecting them requires connecting them like you would a typical bluetooth. It also lacks all of the cool features which makes these unique. I'd stick to Android phones, especially Pixel phones for these. While paired to the Pixel, you can check battery life and other features by either dragging down the notifications bar (to check battery life) or opening up the connected devices settings on the phone, so turn on or off specific settings, such as in ear detection (super nice feature), advanced audio, swipe gestures, etc... I found removing the buds from the egg was a little challenging the first time, but once I performed this action a few times, you learn tricks to get them out easier each time. Placing them back in couldn't be simpler. They sort of "drop" back in and click magnetically in place. Placing the buds in the ears is also very pleasant. You insert them, then sort of "twist" to fit. I found these fit very snug in my ears and after a second or two, I didn't even notice they were there. The rubber material is super soft and comfortable. The overall audio experience is excellent. I found regardless of the media I was listening to, the Pixel buds replicated the sound perfectly. Highs, medium, lows, all came through. I found these to sounds more like an over the ear headphone vs. your typical ear buds. The rubber nubs that fit into your ears create a seal which helps with bass and noise cancellation, like an over the ear would. However, the small form factor and lack of pressure against your head, removed the negatives from larger over the ear headphones. Google has updated these since they released with a "bass boost" feature which enhanced bass if you like more of a boomy sound. I found this to be my preference and I found the "boomyness" of the sound very nice. When making calls, these buds also didn't disappoint. These buds are equipped with a "Clear Calls" feature which has two beam forming mics which focus on your voice. There is an accelerometer which detects jaw movement so they know when your talking vs listening. When talking, the mic focuses on your voice and tried to. drown out background noise. Every time I asked "can you hear me ok?" I got replies "yes, you sound VERY clear". These buds also have gesture controls for when on calls. When receiving a call, tap once on either bud to answer the call. To hang up, tap twice on either bud. Tapping twice also rejects a call if you don't want to answer. When not on a call, gestures can also help you to do other things: tap to play or pause music double tap to skip a track or stop the assistant tripe tap to rewind to go to previous track swipe forward to increase volume swipe backwards to decrease volume on Android 6+ press and hold to speak to Google Assistant These buds also have "sharing detection". You can give a bud to a friend (and they must be a good friend, because... well... gross in most cases). This will detect further distances from the buds and enable the feature. This allows gesture controls to be performed independently without affecting the other bud. Pretty cool on plane trips, or in areas where you cannot have the speaker turned onto the phone. Perhaps even a conference call situation where no other devices are present. These buds also connect to Goggle's "Find my device" feature. You can ring the earbuds if they are close and can be picked up by the "Fast Pair" setting. They also will ping the location when paired, and if too far aways, will show you their last known location. The buds support Google's "hotword" features. Saying something like "Ok Google" will initiate the Google Assistant when they are inserted into your ears. They also work with google translate to make language barriers even less of an issue if traveling a broad or to someone who cannot speak (or vice versa) native languages. I find this feature to be really cool, though I have not been able to really test this abroad, it works with my Spanish speaking friends well in tests. The battery life on these could be better, but I found workarounds to make them last all day. For example. Talk time is about 2.5 hours per bud. If I am on calls all day, I put in one bud, talk for 2.5 hours, then swap for the other to keep them going all day. This works great for me. Listening to other things like music, lasts about 5 hours. For this, I wanted both buds. So cycling for this task was less effective, but I don't typically listen to music, with buds in, for more than 5 hours, so this was fine for me. Lastly, these buds are easy to charge. The buds have both wireless and UCB-C port for charging. I found the buds are able to charge while placed on the Pixel stand. I very much have enjoyed the time spent with these buds. These are the ONLY headphones I would use with a Pixel device due to their tight integration and useful features. For iOS devices, I'd look elsewhere however. These are really "made by Google, for Google" and should be considered for that purpose. If you have multiple devices, being able to pair them in a more traditional way is super useful however.

Though they aren't without their issues, the Pixel Buds have so far been my favorite wireless earbuds to use. They sound good, the charging case isn't too big, and the experience of using them is as intuitive as I've seen on Android. They do feel a little expensive for what they are, but they're still a great companion for my Pixel phone. I like how compact the charging case is. It's about the size of a pack of floss and slips easily into that tiny little jean pocket. It charges wirelessly and over USB-C and has LED indicators on both the outside of the case and inside of the lid. I have noticed some small cracks start to appear on mine, but they don't appear to be growing or affecting anything. Pairing was about as easy as it could be. Opening up the case brought up the prompt onscreen on my Pixel phone. And after pairing each time you open the case you'll get an onscreen notification showing the battery level of each bud and the case, which is nice. The sound quality is very good. Not quite as good to my ear as my Sony WF-1000XM3's, but still very clear and well balanced. Noise canceling is not included, which is a little disappointing at this price. There is a feature called Adaptive Sound that is supposed to adjust volume based on the environment, but it's just okay by comparison. I've seen stories of others having connectivity issues, but so far I haven't experienced that on mine. The touch controls work pretty well for the most part. Every now and then it does seem to mix up a press with a swipe, but overall I prefer the controls over most other earbuds I've used. Google Assistant is easy to get to with touch or voice and is much more responsive than other buds I've used, where you often have to wait a second or two before addressing it. The battery life seems to hold up to what Google lists and falls a bit short compared to others offer in similarly priced buds, but it's more than fine for my usage. Overall while I wouldn't consider these to be the 'best' wireless earbuds in this price range, I still like them more than any others I've used so far.

PROS: - Recent firmware update fixes a lot of previous issues (connection/battery/etc) - So many features; most optional, all work well - Good, clean audio playback for music and phone calls - The case is amazing. Small, comfortable in hand, just a delight - Touch controls that actually work and make sense! (and easily turn off if/when you need to) - battery life is not top of it’s class but it is in line with the average and 10min quick charge gives you 2 hours of playback. I tested this personally and it was accurate - comfortable long term wear - an app that actually works and one stop shop for feature controls - quick connect to android devices - Google assistant available by touch OR voice - using google translate you can have conversations in another language with ease - better look that airpods CONS: - Occasional connection issues, mostly fixed with updates. Nothing worse than what I get with other BT devices at this point. After 3 days of excessive use they barely lost connection about two times, always in the same spot of my house due to interference in that room. - battery life is standard, but 5 hours can drain quickly on long trips. Galaxy buds claim closer to 11 hours on one charge but pixel buds can give you 2 hours with just 10 min of charging - No noise canceling but most low noises are blocked out naturally OVERALL/TL;DR: I really tested every aspect of these buds trying to find some faults and issues but it seems google has thought of almost everything after some needed updates. As a person who really likes options and control over those options, I like that just about every feature has the option to be turned off if you don’t like or want it. This means you can customize the buds to your needs and turn off anything you don’t like. For android users, these buds are so much more than headphones to play music or make phone calls. With google assistant turned on (which can be audible triggered or simply touch triggered) you can get notifications from your phone read out to you AND respond to texts or google hangouts (while it’s still alive) or other apps, hear your emails, and just about any app notification you want but, you guessed it, you can turn on or off which apps you want to hear notifications from based on your needs. You can also do all the basic assistant commands like control your smart home devices, or ask questions, play youtube/spotify content, anything you would do with your assistant on your phone is now available in your buds. Along with the buds, the app is great and the case is small, sturdy and just a joy to hold. It’s the new fidget spinner for me. It fits nicely in the small pocket in jeans which prevents it from rubbing on keys or phones and holds extra battery juice to top up your buds when needed, and oh yeah, also has wireless charging for quick and easy recharges. You can’t go wrong with these buds; a lot of complaints were made early, especially with connection issues but recent updates have brought more features and fixes. When I tried to cause bad connections or drop outs, I could not get them to fail, even in some pretty aggressive testing. WHAT'S IN THE BOX/FIRST IMPRESSION: When you open your new pixel buds, you get the case, the buds, some extra sizes for the ear tips, a charging cable (USB-C) and a quick start guide. The packaging is what you expect from google and everything feels clean and sleek. As soon as you hold the case in your hand you understand why everyone is raving about it. It’s close in size to the airpods case, a little smaller than the galaxy “pill” case and considerably smaller than lower cost brands. It almost looks like a flattened egg. The top flips in such a satisfying way and the buds are held with a magnet so strong that shaking the open case as rough as I could did not make them fall out. With the buds still in the case, I flipped it open and my android phone (samsung) immediately recognized the buds and asked me to pair them and prompted me to download the pixel buds app which you definitely want to do to get the most out of these headphones. After pairing I slipped them on to test them out. Once I tried the buds on I could tell I needed to try a different size and found that one ear is smaller than the other, so give those other sizes a try, it helps with sound quality and comfort. Now, about comfort, I have not found any type of in-ear wearing device that I would call comfortable, but these are better than some others that i’ve worn and I was able to wear these for at least 2 to 3 hours straight before I started to get itchy or a slight swollen feeling. In my book that counts as above average comfort. With the buds properly fitted and the walk through done on the app, I started to play some music (afterall, that’s what I want headphones for right?). I tested out some of the usual music I use to test audio quality and felt, for the most part, they sounded pretty good. Google recently added a base boost option in the app and that definitely helped fill the low end that was missing and overall the quality is plenty good that the average user won’t have any complaints. I couldn’t turn them up to 100% without damaging my ears but they did hover around 70 to 80% when I was in a noisy area. While listening to music, I received a hangouts message and was happily surprised to hear the hangouts notification tone followed by a prompt from the google assistant telling me who sent the message and how I could listen and respond. Which brings me to the features. FEATURES AND EXTRAS: Like I said, when I received a google hangouts message (or text message) the buds would notify me and tell me how to hear the message and respond, but what was really nice is if I ignored that prompt and the sender proceeded to send 5 more messages, she mentioned she would be quiet now and just play the notification chime. In other words, the assistant knew she had already explained to me what I could do and didn’t continue to interrupt my music explaining it. That’s a level of intelligence that you don’t find everywhere. When I did choose to reply, I would record my reply, she read it back to me and sent it off. This ended up allowing me to carry on a text conversation with my friend without ever taking out my phone AND still listening to my music. Now, maybe you read that and thought, “that’s stupid, I don’t want that interruption all the time,” well that’s fine, just turn it off in the app. While you're in the app, check out the other features available. You can turn on adaptive sound which will adjust the volume automatically if you go to a louder or quieter room or turn on the (currently experimental) attention alerts that will lower your volume and chime if the buds hear a crying baby, emergency sirens or barking dog; all of which have their own on/off option. I turned on barking dog because my dog barks allllllll the time and noticed it would work better when he was very close to me barking but hit or miss at a distance. As I said, this is still a beta feature they are testing so expect that to get better in time as well. That said, it’s a nice option to have, especially if you’re walking on the street and need to be alert. I don’t have a busy street or a baby so I couldn’t test the other two options. Other notable features include in-ear detection to play/pause when you remove a bud, an option to find your missing buds with either location information or by playing a tone through the buds, a sharing mode which lets you share one bud with a ...bud..dy and gives you both separate volume controls, and lastly a quick guide reminder of the touch controls if you forget what does what. You can also find firmware update info and other important help and device info in the app. As far as touch controls go, I have to say, they work really well and seem to be easy to learn. One tap to play/pause just seems right, swiping forward and back for volume makes sense etc. It’s easy to learn and, unlike other buds I have with touch control, I haven’t had a lot of issues with accidental touch while making minor fit adjustments. If you do have issues, turn touch controls off in the app or better yet, just ask the assistant to turn them off. These buds are packed with features and they actually work as intended and can be controlled rather easily. LAST THOUGHTS: I admit, I am a bit of a google fan, but not so much that I can’t admit when google gets it wrong (it happens...sometimes too much), maybe one would argue the first attempt at pixel buds would be a good example of missing the mark, but these pixel buds 2nd gen are not one of those mistakes. It seems google worked hard to address issues and concerns and although they had a rough start out the gate, some firmware updates have fixed a lot of issues and turned these buds into major contenders to the big names from apple and samsung and have a unique look that some don’t like, some do, and others don’t care. Personally, I think they do look a bit like a mentos mint but I also don’t think that’s bad. I got green...oh sorry, google calls the color “quite mint” and so I just tell people they’re spearmint mentos and embrace it. Hey, anything that isn’t a white twig hanging out of your ear is a win. If you have an android phone and use the google assistant already and enjoy google products, you will not be disappointed in these earbuds. Maybe if you bought them on release day you would have complaints but all the recent updates have turned these buds into Apple killers. Long live android! ….oh and iphone users who don’t like airpods, these buds work for you too, just less features I believe, sorry I can’t tell you more, I don’t have an iphone to test on. Would recommend, if you’re on the fence, buy em.

Google - Pixel Buds True Wireless In-Ear Headphones - Clearly White For any headphone I always put sound quality and comfort as my two most import requirements. The Pixel Buds have a very natural sound at a low volume but they just didn’t impress with that WOW! you would expect. And at higher volumes the sound tended to get muddy. I think not supporting a high definition bluetooth sound codex is a strange oversight on Google's part. Setting the bass boost in the dedicated Android apps helps with the lows but I was missing the sparkle in the highs that gives you the dynamic range you expect in in-ear headphones at this price level. I ended up keeping bass boost off since it does affect overall clarity in the volume levels that sounded best for me. I will say the actual stereo separation was very good. I used the large eartips to get a good seal and prevent the Buds from falling out. Three eartip sizes are provided with the Buds. The fit for me using the large eartips was good but I would have liked a bigger selection to choose from. The two smaller eartips didn’t work for me and couldn’t hold the Buds in my ears. Since sound quality and comfort are very unique to each person it can’t be the two single features that define these Buds. One outstanding feature is the Buds case. It is quite attractive and feels very good in the hand. I easily got five hours of battery life playing music and taking calls. This left me with around 15% of the reported battery left before it was back in the case for recharging. The case supports a quick charge to the Buds so a 10 minute charge should give you another 2 hours of listening. I like that the case uses a type C USB cable and also supports wireless charging. Another outstanding feature is the touch controls which I found to work very well. Because of the design of the Buds the touch controls are very easy to access. You might need a little time to get used to them but simple gestures like swipe and tap worked flawless for me. Other Buds I have tried also might support some of these features but the Pixel Buds just seemed to work very well for me with just a little practice. The paring process was very quick and easy on my Galaxy S10. And once paired I was taken to the Google app store to download the dedicated Pixel Bud app. There you have a lot of control over most of the Buds features. It should be no surprise these Buds work well with Google’s Assistant. And the app gives you very good control over how you want to interact with the Assistant including removing that as a permission or managing its notifications. The Buds themselves have a unique look. I have the Quite Mint color which is an interesting color and they also come in, Clearly White, Almost Black and Oh So Orange, and no, I didn’t make these names up. One of the features I was most interested in is the real time language translation. I travel internationally and I am looking forward to putting this feature to more use. In my testing it seems to work very well and with a little practice I think this will be a great tool and a truly killer feature. I struggled with this review simply because the Pixel Buds are just amazing when you sum up the features available here which I can only touchon. You have full access to Google’s AI, a great physical design and phone companion and although I am not as impressed with the sound as I would like it is not bad. With my prior experience with in-ear headphones the sound can improve over time. I have found that early reviews of sound quality can be deceiving as expectations can be high. But later you may find the sound improves and you wonder how you got it so wrong. One thing is for sure, the Google Pixel Buds are an amazing bit of technology that provides a load of useful features you can use everyday.

So far I'm loving my Google Pixel Buds. Initial thoughts: super clean design, lightweight, and feel great in my ear. They come in a protective charging case which feels well built. This review is for the Mint color buds. You charge the earbuds case, which then charges the earbuds. There's a slight learning curve to these buds because of how much they can do. I've been literally glued to my instructions that came with the buds so I can know their full potential. I love how this syncs with my Google Assistant! Battery Indicator. Wireless charge case gets plugged in and it has 3 indicators: Solid White Dot: Case is fully charged and can charge the buds Solid Orange Dot: Charging Blinking Orange Dot: Case is not fully charged and has less than one charge for earbuds Battery Indicator. Open case to see battery status light of Earbuds: Solid White Dot: Fully Charged earbuds Solid Orange Dot: One or both earbuds charging Blinking Orange Dot: Earbuds still have some battery left, but the case doesn't Blinking White Dot: Pairing mode Gestures with Phone: Tap once to answer phone call Tap twice to end call When ringing, tap twice to reject call Gestures with Music: Tap once to play/pause Tap twice to skip song Tap three times to go to previous track Swipe forward to increase volume Swipe backward to decrease volume You can also use your Google Assistant to turn on or off controls It's pretty cool that the earbuds will charge when it's not plugged in. This makes it super convenient while on the go. I can put the earbuds in the case and plug it in. The case dot will turn white when that's fully charged and then I can go somewhere knowing the buds are still charging. The only downside is that I'm not entirely sure how long I can go between charges. I can do an experiment by leaving the earbuds out, but I don't want to ruin the battery. They feel great and comfortable in my ear. I went on a jog and they didn't fall out or slip once. The only time it fell out was when I went to pull the left bud out of my ear to say hi to a neighbor (socially distancing of course). To my surprise when I pulled both out it paused the music! This was a really cool feature that was pleasantly surprising. The sound quality is fantastic. You can really tell Google really tried for this. I tried several music genres from Queen to Jay Z and the quality is great. It's important to point out that these aren't designed exclusively for music like Beats by Dre. So it's impressive how good the music quality sounded. I instantly noticed it. Pros: Easy setup and pairing Clear Music Clear and clean phone calls Lightweight Durable Case Wireless charge case Long charge cord Comfortable feel3 different size eartips (small, medium, large) Google Assistant Water/Sweat resistant! (Perfect for jogging) Cons: Slight learning curve More expensive than most Not fully noise cancelling Wireless distance from device Overall: I highly recommend the Google Pixel Buds. I opted to hold off on ear buds until this point and couldn't be happier with my decision. The quality is noticeable in both music and phone call. It's clear and clean. I'm a bit disappointed they aren't fully noise cancelling given the price, so hopefully Google can develop one.

I have a small chubby ears and it's difficult to find ear buds that fit well without trying to pop out and without hurting. I tried the Galaxy Buds Live before these because I had heard how comfortable they were, I couldn't wear them for more than 10 minutes before they started hurting. I can wear these a lot longer specially if I don't place them all the way in, the wing sticking out. If I do need them while being active I put them all the way in and they stay put, I can go about 45 min before my ear hurting. I reposition them and go another 45 min. The sound is good but I did like the buds live better. That being said I needed something comfortable not something that sounded the best, but the quality is there none the less.

I'm a supporter of google, but these really disappointed me. I had waited since finding out that Google was going to release their own wireless earphones, I knew that their first roll out of them had problems, so I waited until the blue ones were available which was when they announced that they weren't going to have any more problems. They were wrong. Sometimes one earphone shuts off or doesn't connect. It has good sound quality, but it doesn't make up for that problem and the problem of having to adjust it from falling quite often. I hope their next version will be better and will make up for these since they are not reliable. They are cute though!